I considered studying the lyrics for the title song for the 1934 Cole Porter musical Anything Goes and coming up with some photo ideas from that. Then I considered doing something related to transportation and all things that actually “go”. But with everything that goes on this time of year as school and other organized activities wind down, I opted for the easiest possible approach: anything goes means photographer’s choice! And since I added more than 500 photographs to my Lightroom catalogue this month, I had lots to choose from. After the first round of sorting I noticed a possible unifying theme – shades of blue!
1. Evening Dip – The first Monday in June was K’s year-end band concert. He had to be there 90 minutes before show time to help set up, warm up, etc. Rather than drop him off, drive back home only to turn around and go back just a short while later, I took along my camera and went for a walk on the nearby university campus. Not only did I manage to find a couple of well-hidden geocaches, I also happened upon this Canada Goose family as they went for an early evening dip. It was interesting to observe the goslings drink, something I’d never watched before. I did get a photo of a lone gosling, neck stretched and head tilted up to swallow, but opted to share this photo of all five goslings because I like the way the evening sun sparkles on the pale, turquoise water.
2. Night Photography at Rothney Astrophysical Observatory – Later that same week I had the opportunity to drive a bit south of the city to the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory for a Q&A session and some night photography. The evening was organized as a behind-the-scenes, exclusive access event for the Beakerhead volunteer photography team. I learned that it rains diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter and that snow on Mars is frozen carbon dioxide. Around 11:00, the midnight blue sky was finally dark enough for night photography. The invitation for the event allowed for +1, so our oldest son joined me for the event. He’s busy setting up his own night sky shot in this photograph (standing just in front of the red box) of the small telescope observatory, with a couple of planets glowing overhead. Another member of the photography team walked into this long exposure with a flashlight, adding a bit more movement to the scene.
3. Looking Home – Around mid-month, a friend joined me for a long walk in South Glenmore Park. We saw a lot of water birds: Franklin’s gulls, Canada Geese and several types of ducks. We walked the trail that’s usually just above the shoreline, but I had to walk way off the trail to take this photo which shows how low the water level is. The water level was deliberately lowered to make room for spring rain and snow melt, to minimize the risk of a flood. Unfortunately, there’s been hardly any spring rain, so the water level remains very low even now. Everything was so green a couple of weeks ago, but it will soon start to brown up. We live on the low hill just visible in the centre of the frame, above the trees across the brilliant turquoise water.
4. Oncoming Rain Squall – We made it out to Canmore one weekend later in the month. Mr. GeoK and I enjoyed a long ramble on the Saturday. We spotted all kinds of wildflowers: Scarlet Paintbrush, round-leaved orchids, yellow Mountain Avens, brown-eyed Susans, wintergreen and even a few lady slippers. It rained all around us, but never on us. One rain squall came up the Spray Valley through the gap between Ha Ling (the cone-shaped peak just left of center) and Mount Rundle, leaving one small patch of blue sky to the northwest.
5. White Space – I recently joined a weekly photo challenge and one of the themes this month was negative space, with extra credit for white space. It was a good reason to haul out my homemade white box and try to get creative. I photographed a few different objects but wanted to push myself a bit more, so put together a simple arrangement of five sheets of card stock in different shades of blue, held together with a couple of binder clips. I did some similar arrangements of paper a year or two back, but created more abstract, close-up images at that time. It’s interesting how my eyes didn’t notice the blue reflecting off the paper, but how clearly it shows in the photograph.
That’s it from me this month, except to point out that I added a bonus image as the “featured image” for this post. Mr. GeoK took the photograph of me and our boys right after I passed my fourth degree black belt test for taekwondo. Our boys helped me train for the test, were my attackers for the self-defense portion of the assessment and helped hold the boards for the board breaking component. Thanks guys!
For a peek at what PJ means by anything goes visit A ‘lil HooHaa. All the other participants for this month will be listed in the link up at the bottom of that post.
The July theme will be posted at A ‘lil HooHaa on July 1 (which, coincidentally, is Canada Day). New participants are welcome to start the photo blogging challenge any time, so it’s the perfect time to join us!
Wow your pictures are absolutely beautiful! I love the colours and contrast on your pictures – my favourite is the second one 🙂
Wow! Great set of photos. The observatory photo is just stunning, one of those shots that I could see being turned into one of those evil 1000 piece picture puzzles. Well done.
These are all fabulous! Five hundred photos in one month! Wow! Your were busy, busy, busy. I love all of them…all for different reasons. The last one shows how vey unique and creative you can be! 🙂
That last one was definitely a lot of fun to put together. Love flexing my creative muscle.
WOW. That is all I can say. WOW! These are incredible. The night sky picture blew me away especially. That is frame worthy for sure. So gorgeous – especially the colors and the movement below.
When we were in California for Easter everything was lush and green. Our hosts said because of the lack of rain it would all be brown soon.
The bottom picture? That is so cool!
Great theme! I can’t pick a favorite from your photos. Each one captured another aspect of blue so well!
Thanks Kristi – kind of nice to pick a personal theme after the fact for once.
I love your shades of blue and all your photographs, they make me wish that I could get out into the countryside more or get closer to the sea. But for now I will have to make do photographing the city streets.
Loved your city streets photographs this month. I enjoy photographing architectural and public art, but still feel pretty hesitant about photographing people on the street…definitely an area I’d like to practice more.
I love the night photo, that is something that I definitely want to work on this summer.
Good luck with your night photography. I haven’t done a lot of it…just enough to realize that almost everything I know about daylight photography doesn’t apply!
Great stuff here again. Love it. The abstract is top notch! The night shot is among my favs as well.
Thanks, Mike. I haven’t done much night photography lately. It’s well past my bedtime when the sun finally goes down around 10:45! Hoping to stay up long enough to get the fireworks on Canada Day.
I like the picture of Canmore . I would like to go hiking in an area like that one of these days.
I hope you go hiking somewhere like Canmore one day soon. We have to pack along bear spray (basically a big can of pepper spray) whenever we’re on the trails here. You never know when you might encounter a bear (or a cougar), so I try to check the bear sighting reports so I know whether to be extra vigilant!
Thanks for the advice. I didn’t even think about possible bear sightings.
Beautiful photos!
Thanks for sharing them with us!
And very cool idea to show case white space with the last photo!
(I had the “goes” idea of movement too, but my month had other ideas.)
It seems a lot of us thought of the “goes” idea…and a few managed to work it in to their photo selections.
I had fun creating that last photo – I like the extra layer of creativity that comes with making the subject and then taking the photo.
You have an excellent set of photos for this month! I truly love that night photo with the sky and the movement. Very nice!
You seem like you have some great places to hike. I don’t mind a hike here and there, but find I get bored. I’m not sure why. I need something to go with it (such as geocaching). but I always tend to wander or not want to finish. I think part of my issue is not wanting to carry my camera equipment. I probably should start doing that more (I need a better camera backpack) and maybe that will get me to want to go out and hike a bit more. There are some good places around here, too, and many more not far from me.
With all that said, I love the photo of your hike. The view is incredible. Makes me want to definitely visit your part of the world one day.
Great job as always!
We used to use geocaches along the way as a way to encourage our kids to keep going on a long hike. It really helps to break a longer route up into smaller sections.
One of the main reasons we opted to go with the Olympus micro four-thirds format cameras is because they’re much smaller and lighter, more suitable for hauling along on a hike. And because we can all swap lenses around, we don’t have to carry a lot of extra glass, either.
I really like trails with lakes, streams and waterfalls for photography. Wildflowers are also appealing.
I hope you manage to get out on a hiking trail at least once this year. Look forward to reading all about it. 🙂