Two themes to this post, reflecting some of my preoccupations of the past week. One is “inspiration”, which I have been exploring in the form of motivational posters for a rider friend, the other is “cold”, which has been an unavoidable subject here for the past couple of days. The “high” temperatures for the last day or so have been -25, with the overnight lows going down to -35. Throw in a briskish wind and the wind chill (which gives the equivalent temperature if you combine the effects of the cold and the wind) is in the mid minus 40s.
Despite (or perhaps because of) these extreme temperatures, I’ve been out getting shots with the camera. I had occasion to go past the weir on the river on Saturday, and was struck by the visuals of the atmospheric steam rising off the open water on the river. The city’s power plant is upstream, and it returns enough warm water to the river that most of the time the west channel of the river remains free of ice. I wanted to get some shots of these clouds of steam over the river, so on Sunday morning grandson Mark and I headed off to the weir in the minus 35 degree temperatures. I didn’t stay for an extended length of time as I usually do at this location in the summer when I am gathering pelican shots, but I got a satisfactory number of shots. Mark opted (wisely under the circumstances) to stay in the car which by that point was reasonably warm and cozy. I wondered what the three odd lumps were at the edge of a bit of open water until I trained the telephoto lens on them and discovered, somewhat to my horror, three Canada geese hunkered down in the snow, right at the edge of the open water.
Never content with just one go at any given subject matter, I decided to pass by the site again today while I was doing my shopping on that side of the city. In addition, I was a bit worried that the geese might have been frozen into the ice, in which case I would alert my wildlife rescue friends, although I really don’t know what they could do in such extreme and dangerous conditions. To my surprise, when I got back to the weir this afternoon, there were no clouds of water vapor in the air above the open water. In point of fact, there was suddenly very little open water at all. The channel that was unfrozen yesterday was almost totally solid today, with only the occasional little area of open water. Not nearly the interesting visuals of yesterday, but I got some shots anyway, and noted that the goose hangout area had about twenty or so geese today, doubtless including the three from yesterday, and all facing a different direction, so quite definitely not frozen into the ice. That was a relief.
Top shot in this grouping is one I took this afternoon of the larger group of geese, probably rethinking their decision not to have headed south several weeks ago. In fact, most years there is usually a small group of hardy waterfowl who stay through the winter, so it can be done.
Shot two is of the water going over the weir, with the lacey ice and snow around it. Shot three shows one of the bridge supports with the mists obscuring the far shore of the river. That shot was taken yesterday. By today all the open water in this shot was solid with chunks of ice. Brrr.
There have been some motivational speakers for riders at the barn this fall, and my friend Shawna (daughter of my instructor at the barn and a trainer in her own right) wondered if I would be willing to make up a personal motivational poster for her, based on some shots I got of her this summer. She provided the quote, which is meaningful to her, and I put it together with the shots. I like doing this kind of work every now and then, and indeed am fond of using text with my visuals.
The bottom shot is the first one I did, with “her” quote and selected images. But then she made a comment about another of the horses she rides (she is the one who puts the miles on all the young horses from their breeding program, so she usually has a number of horses in her show string) saying something to the effect that Brook would probably never be a “poster child”. That made me feel badly for Brook who is a valiant little (relatively speaking for a Warmblood) mare with a lot of heart and try in her. She’s been doing well in her training and showing, and I thought she really *should* be a poster girl, so I had to make up the “moon” poster featuring Brook, so she would have equal billing. She’s definitely a “poster worthy” mare in my opinion.
©Copyright 2008 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Judy Wood’s website.
