Our Local Cranberry Field

It's Sunday again and the Fall weather is really taking hold. Thick grey and white clouds steadily churn overhead. The promise of blustery wind -to finish stripping the trees- is in the air. Quick wind blasts flicking around jagged corners sends leaves tumbling across lawns. Sidewalks are covered in squishy red, orange and yellow carpets. Window screens are filled with caught drops like syrup in a waffle.

And.

It's cranberry season. Has been for a few weeks now I think. When the fields are flooded and they collect the glistening ruby orbs floating on the surface. And I finally got to take pictures of the flooded field and the ripe and waiting berries.

Behind the local Canadian Tire and its neighbouring industrial park sits a moderately sized cranberry field. Nothing nearly as big as the fields out in Langley or Mission but a cranberry field none the same.

British Columbia produces about 37 million kilograms of cranberries anually. A value of $49 million.

There is Something Magical about B&W Photography

Another beautiful Autumn Sunday greeted us today as we headed out for our usual breakfast.
I've been subscribed for over ten years to a great site. digital-photography-school.com/
I've always found valuable information and wonderful photographic encouragement and ideas and I look forward to their weekly emails every Thursday.
Reading through the latest newsletter, I realized that my humble little NIKON D90 can actually take B&W photos. Yes, I've been oblivious all these years that it can shoot in b&w! I feel stupid that I didn't know sooner but oh boy. This is a game changer.
I have been in awe of the iconic b&w work of Ansel Adams for decades. Even got a few shots of my own when I was still using an old Minolta SRT 100 film camera that I thought he might have approve of.
Well, I didn't make it to Yosemite National Park today but I did shoot things around the city.
[none up to Adams' standards by any means, but a great revisiting of the genre for me!]

Changing Trees and Terminal Avenue

Another Sunday jaunt. Yummy breakfast. A very rare trip into the 'big city': Vancouver. And what we went to 'look at' were streets where mini communities are being allowed to park. There is an overlooked portion of the population that have been able to stay out of the 'homeless' books. They are living in vehicles - on streets that authorities - for the time being are being overlooked. 

For me it is like a glance at a dystopic scenario that is only going to get bigger. Rag tag communities that are just squeaking by. Yet they are making the best of it. 

Could we survive in a society like that?

~ ~ ~

Then on the way home we managed to catch a few trees in the middle of shedding their green coats for the winter. What is that saying on the internet? "Fall is here and the trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let things go".

[To note: none are award winning images since they were all taken from a moving vehicle but shareable just the same. And I had fun playing with the 'auto haze removal' filter on some of these images. Because I could.]