I was through Madison, Wisconsin last September while en route to Vancouver. It seemed like a city I could get behind, geographically and culturally - it sort of reminded me of Peterborough with a state government attached. Its motto, "Forward," is appropriate - back in 1924 it was the bedrock of support for Bob LaFollette's Progressive Party, and it's not as if its politics have firmly tilted the other way since then. I explored the surroundings of the Wisconsin State Capitol, marked by well-maintained plants and the statue of Lady Forward.But tilt they have, and today you probably couldn't get this picture - even discounting the differences in seasons - because from what I understand, these the grounds of the Wisconsin State Capitol are packed by people 24/7, protesting against Governor Scott Walker's opportunistic attempt to take advantage of a budget shortfall and strip Wisconsin's public sector trade unions of their collective bargaining rights - among other things.People, it can be said, aren't too happy. It seems that people in Wisconsin want to go forward, not backward.
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For more than a century, the Fraser River has been one of the most travelled highways leading into British Columbia's interior. Without it, BC wouldn't exist as it does today. It's a thriving, working watercourse, nothing like the more domesticated rivers and lakes you'll find in southern Ontario - you can find everything from corralled logs waiting for pickup to enormous floating bins of presumably mine-related material somewhere along its course.Nevertheless, it's still a bit of an adjustment to be walking down Fourth Street toward the SkyTrain and look ahead only to see a tug like General Jackson go sailing by.
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Today is Flag Day in Canada, commemorating the replacement of the Red Ensign with a uniquely Canadian symbol, but I didn't want to go the obvious route and just post a picture of a flag and nothing else - that's pedestrian and has been done. Instead, I'll offer a snap of Burrard Pacific Breeze, one of the three SeaBus passenger ferries that link Vancouver and North Vancouver - public transit vehicles with radar. The flags of Canada and British Columbia catch the wind on the mast pretty well.
If only it was also a stat holiday. Then people might actually care.
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The Alex Fraser Bridge, spanning the Fraser River between Annacis Island and the mainland in Delta, has shown up in a few previous photos here, mostly because I like its architecture and it's generally a striking presence on the New Westminster riverfront horizon. Some time ago I was down there near to sunset, and managed to get this picture while the western sky seemed to be on fire.I consider myself fortunate that I stumbled onto this one - that the clouds were in such a spot that they framed the sunset, but didn't overwhelm it. Twenty minutes later, it was all gone but the bridge.
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I don't know if she's still there today, but for Wednesday and Thursday at least, the western cruise ship berth at Canada Place in downtown Vancouver was host to an uncommon visitor: USCGC Hamilton, lead ship of the Hamilton class of high-endurance cutters operated by the United States Coast Guard. According to an article in the Juneau Empire, Hamilton is making a series of port visits while returning to her home port of San Diego, California after finishing a deployment in the Bering Sea.When I first ran into her, before I could find any identifying marks, the Canadian flags that flew from Hamilton's mast made me think it was part of the Canadian Coast Guard. Nothing could be further from the truth. Canadian Coast Guard ships aren't even armed. Contrast this to Hamilton, which actually has a Phalanx CIWS mounted at her stern - meaning that its designers thought there was a legitimate chance that U.S. Coast Guard ships would find themselves in a position where they needed to be able to shoot down high-speed anti-ship missiles.
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It's in the realm of the split-second that the photograph is truly effective - preserving an instant that goes by so fast, the eye isn't capable of really seeing it, not as anything more than a blur. Not like landscape photography at all. I've been trying my hand at collecting shots like that when I have the opportunity, and when my anemic camera reflexes permit.I captured this yesterday down at Granville Square - the crow in question had been chilling on the light standard an instant before.
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Toronto's Kensington Market is one of those places that's difficult to pin down if you've never been. When describing it to Vancouverites I've settled upon "roughly, a combination of Granville Island and Main Street," but that doesn't really get the feeling across. The eclectic businesses, the busy sidewalks, the one-way streets and the Pedestrian Sundays - perhaps this is similar to what Kits was like forty years ago, but now I can't think of anything.Back in mid-September, a week or so before I left Toronto, I captured what appears to be one of the fixtures of the market; some kind of car that's been wholly reclaimed as a patch of nature. Perhaps if more cars looked like this, our cities and our world wouldn't be in quite so sticky a situation today.
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As far as I can tell, no one lives on Annacis Island. Aside from a rest stop toward the middle of the island, where drivers on BC Highway 91 can pull off the road for McDonald's or gasoline, most of it seems devoted to industry. I crossed it on foot on a Sunday, a fair explanation as to why it was so empty of activity - but it's not always so. While aboard a SkyTrain roaring toward 22nd Street Station, I was able to capture this plume of emission - whatever it is - rising from one of the Annacis industries in front of the Alex Fraser Bridge, on a typically grey Lower Mainland winter day.
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One of the things I've had to come to terms with since arriving in British Columbia is that geography can't be ignored here. It's not like southern Ontario, where there's the water and there's the not-water and that's pretty much it. Here, when the sky is blue and the day is clear, I can look to the southeast and see a stratovolcano - Mount Baker in Whatcom County, Washington, a mountain more than ten thousand feet high and a hundred kilometers away.I took this photo from the rooftop parking lot at the Oakridge Centre in Vancouver.
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When you're using a zoom lens, it changes the camera's view of the world - what you see is not necessarily what it sees anymore. Sure, it brings what's far away into a clearer focus, but it likewise distorts what's nearer at hand. The National Post had trouble grasping this concept back in 2009 when the streetcar right-of-way on St. Clair Avenue West was set to open. It's the same way a 134 foot long train can look barely bigger than the average bus depending on what angle you're looking at it from.With all that in mind - I took this shot from the railfan seat at the front of a Mark I SkyTrain last week, on one of those exceptionally rare nice winter days. If I recall correctly, this section of track is just past Nanaimo Station, and despite appearances, TransLink has yet to convert the SkyTrain into a roller coaster. To normal human eyes, that descent is so smooth and gradual it's difficult to even notice.
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I came across this small pond while I was wandering through Phoenix's Papago Park, looking in vain for any signage directing me to the Desert Botanical Garden. It's strange thinking of the desert as an abode of any life other than that which is specifically geared to surviving in those burning sands - something that probably colors my perceptions of the Valley of the Sun as a whole.But, still, it seems peaceful and calm. You might even say it's an... oasis.YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH
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As this extended stretch of photo-only posting continues, I offer this for your consideration - taken right around sunset along Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona, this looks to me like it belongs on some 1980s album cover - in fact I had to put on "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister because it just didn't feel right without it. I had always thought that sort of thing was just artistic license.I haven't converted to an all-photo format yet, though. Tunnel Visions: Phoenix's Metro Light Rail, for one, is going to be going up soon.
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It took me a while, looking at this photo just now, to notice the evidence of human intention behind the African Savannah at the Phoenix Zoo - I believe that wire fence, between the giraffe and the palm trees, is it. Just another reflection of how the camera's eye can trick, depending on where it's pointed - 180 degrees away from this is the bustle of the zoo, and about fifty people or so jostling for position to get pictures of the giraffes as they trundle toward their elevated foodbox. It was feeding time, you see.
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I'm surprised this photo turned out, so close to the sun; my old camera probably would have been overwhelmed by the light, but my new one was capable enough to just make lens flares. Here, I've caught a Bombardier CRJ200 flying for US Airways Express descending into Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on the sort of blue sky day that's common for the desert in January.
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Returning from Phoenix to Vancouver, for much of the flight the ground was concealed by heavy clouds that didn't begin to break until we reached Puget Sound, and not meaningfully until the plane descended below them. As the plane breached the low levels of cloud, its descent path put it right above Point Roberts, Washington - an exclave of the United States created by the razor-straight 49th parallel, cut off from the remainder of Washington State by the water and by British Columbia. It seems almost like the ultimate bordertown - with no small hint of vague unreality.
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Among the diverse array of animals in residence at the Phoenix Zoo is this particular cat - a Sumatran tiger, a member of a critically endangered species. There are barely hundreds left in the wild, with their habitat in the jungles of Sumatra being constantly pressed by palm oil cultivation. This tiger's presence at the Phoenix Zoo is part of a preservation program - a "lifeboat" should the worst happen, and the species go extinct in the wild. It wouldn't be the first time - the Arabian Oryx went extinct in the wild in 1972, but was reintroduced in the 1980s thanks in part to the presence of a herd at the Phoenix Zoo.Just look at that tiger. Full of majesty. And claws, and teeth.
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What we see isn't necessarily what's there. Take the logo of TransLink, Metro Vancouver's public transit provider, visible on the front of the second-generation Mark II car photographed below during a stop at Metrotown Station. When I first arrived in Vancouver, and for a while after I returned for good, all I could see in that logo was a dude bodysurfing - the dot is his head, the squiggle his body, and the arc his board. It was only rather later that I came to the conclusion that it was probably supposed to be the sun, a mountain, and the coast instead.I can be empty-headed sometimes. And by sometimes I mean frequently.
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In the course of my travels, luggage transfer is always one of those things that's been dealt with invisibly; you put your tagged bag on the conveyor belt, and then hours later you grab it from the carousel wherever it is that you were headed - unless you don't tip the baggage handler, in which case it will be in Honolulu. In between the beginning and the end - it's rare you have a chance to see it.Just after my plane had pushed away from its gate at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, I caught this AeroMéxico Connect Embraer ERJ 145 at the next gate over loading luggage, getting ready for its own flight to Hermosillo.
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Also known as the Phoenix metropolitan area, but I guess that sounds insufficiently exotic. It was when I saw them from the air that the sheer alienness of Phoenix's environs really drilled themselves into my skull; I can't look out over this sprawl, this endless chain of subdivisions that's somehow been tied together into multiple cities, and not see a vague sense of wrongness. It's the color of the ground that does it, desert brown - while I'm all for building cities in marginal land, all the better to keep prime agricultural land being paved over, there are places less marginal than the desert.
If you look carefully, you can see downtown Phoenix in this photo, about three-quarters of the way toward the horizon; aside from two condo towers in Tempe, it includes the only real skyscrapers I know to exist in the Valley of the Sun.
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Exactly what the title says - I encountered these palm trees not far from the intersection of Mill Avenue and University in Tempe, Arizona, silhouetted against the burning clouds as the sun dipped down. I never thought that desert skies around that time of the day looked like they do in media... but they do. Hell of a way for a January day to end.
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