Well, the revolving door has whizzed around a few more times, leaving me feeling a bit spinny in the head and wondering where the week (the summer, the year to date!!) has gone. It continues hot and sticky, making everyday functioning a tad challenging, although I know there are a lot of parts of this continent that would be glad to have our summer weather–both in the areas where they aren’t getting enough summer, and those that have too much.

We’ve gone into hot and dry classic prairie mode here, and the fields and crops are all ripening almost visibly as you watch. No more nice yellow canola fields. They’ve dulled right down as they head into their next stage before harvest. I’m not enough of a field person that I can even tell which ones *are* canola any more now that they’re not bright yellow. And it has been years, perhaps decades, since I’ve seen endless miles of golden wheat in the fall as used to be the norm when I was younger. Not a lot of wheat being grown in this area at any rate.

I’ve done a fair few photo outings this past week, starting Monday with a visit to the local zoo with grandson Mark to check out what was happening. We saw the “new” bears that are recent arrivals, two young (as in teenage if they were human, I’d guess) grizzlies in a new display area that has just opened. One of them was making the best of his situation when we were there, interacting with the environment and generally seeming pretty relaxed. The other one, sadly, doesn’t appear to be adjusting well and spent its time pacing in repetitive patterns that I fear don’t bode well for its mental health.

I appreciate the chance to photograph animals like these and the other zoo species, but on the other hand if I let myself think about it at all I find zoos quite depressing and sad places to visit, for a variety of reasons. One “good” thing about the camera is it lets you focus (literally and figuratively) with a different mindset, and is definitely a tool that removes the photographer emotionally from the situation they are photographing. Works that way for me, anyway. This isn’t always a good thing, but it does help in these circumstances. And yes, I do realize that most zoos do the best they can for their animals and are in some cases the main hope for the survival of some species.

I decided this would be a good week to work on my sunset collection, so made a couple of trips out to the country in pursuit of good skies. One of the forays took me past the site of one of my favourite horse herds from last summer, who I hadn’t yet seen this year in their pasture. I was greatly heartened to see them back again when I went by on one of my sunset excursions, so I’ll be going to and from Ebon the long way from now on when I ride in the evenings in hopes of getting some shots of this herd.

An unlooked for but very welcome addition to the sunset shots were some moonrise shots I got the same evening. I was heading south from Ebon to the horse herd road when I glanced to the east and was astonished at the huge pinkish moon just rising beyond the inland terminal buildings by the train tracks. It was enormous and virtually full.  Moonrise and moon shots are another on-going fascination for me, and I got some good ones that night. You have to be in the right spot at the right time for these, as with my lens and the fact that I shoot hand-held only (no tripod or long exposures), they are pretty hard shots to capture. Another small victory for my photography this past week has been going manual, where I am setting the parameters for the shots, rather than going with having my very smart camera set the exposure etc for me. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, but it really paid off with some of the sunset shots where I was able to optimize the images in a way I couldn’t achieve in the past. I’m basically a person with a good eye and art training who doesn’t know the mechanics of photography, so it’s an on-going learning process, and it’s nice to feel that I’m actually making some small progress in my understanding. Well, in truth I don’t *understand* it as such, but I know (sometimes) what to do to get the results I want, which is really all I care about.

No horse events on the week-end, unusually, to be made up for by two happening simultaneously next weekend at different stables. I had a booked shoot at Ebon on Saturday morning that was quite entertaining, with one of the young women riders wanting shots of herself in her graduation dress with her horse. We had planned to do this at the actual time of her graduation (from high school) in June, but the time got away from us then. We beat the worst of the heat and got a bunch of nice shots of the pair of them. I was going to feature one of them here but I have my limit plus I’m having technical problems, so I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead on this one!

Shots (not in the order I had planned, but since the system refused to load them at all the first two times I tried, I’m not going to be fussy about this for fear of it going rogue on me again) are of the big moon rising (no Photoshopping of the moon’s size here!!), sunset over the trees out in the country, the “well adjusted” young grizzly making a quick exit from his pool, and a field of canola taken a few weeks ago when it was in bloom. I love the total minimalism of this kind of landscape shot. That’s pretty flat, even for around here!

Re. technical problems–this is my first blog post from the new computer system, which considering how totally at sea I was a couple of weeks ago represents a major triumph for me. I’m still really struggling to make sense of things (mostly Bridge and iPhoto for downloads and photo organizing) and there’s a discouraging amount of things I still don’t even know how to look up, never mind actually execute, but I am making progress.

Ha!! Decided to give the shot of Kat and her boy a try and I got it to load as well. Maybe by next time I’ll be able to put them in the order I want. Or not.

©Copyright 2008 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Judy Wood’s website.