Category: Photography: Art Shots

Ah, Ginger was a lovely and loving dog.

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Two more iPhone Metro pictures, also from the Charlevoix station in Montreal. This metro is not only one of the deepest on the system, it’s also one of the most beautiful, with stunning stained glass windows that spill multi-colour abstract lights onto the upper escalators — as long as you’re there at the right time of day.

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It’s the person behind the lens, not the camera equipment, that creates the photograph — although using different equipment can lead to different effects. As much as I love my Nikon DSLR, I was delighted to find a series I took in Montreal last spring, to remember how much fun it was to take pictures there — with my phone.

Some of those photographs, which were also tweaked on my phone, focus on the interiors of two Metro stations, with their vibrant red and yellow mosaics, stained glass windows, and long, steep escalators.

I am intrigued by street photography, and in a city like Montreal, a small phone is a handy, unobtrusive way to get colourful shots — and process them on the spot, too.

I also like the rough edges of some phone photographs: the graininess in low light, the blurs… The quick focus, the immediacy, the wide angle. All free me from technical issues, so I can just enjoy the language of light.

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Pink shoes, blue shoes, orange shoes, too… Running shoes, working shoes, sandals and boots.

Sounds like the start of a children’s rhyme!

It’s also a summary of the shoes stacked in my front hall during a recent mini-renovation in our house. Mine, my husband’s, our son’s. (Though mainly the former and latter, I see; we must be the messy people who leave all their shoes by the door. Well, good to know that someone is neat!)

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No trickery, only common objects: One CD, one light source, one drop of water.

When CDs first came out, I was amazed by their reflective glow and the rainbows that shimmered across their surfaces when I tilted them into, and then away from, the light. I’m still fascinated by these properties. The sun, a flashlight, or even a beam from an overhead lamp will charge the surface with magic.

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A highly entertaining weekend project: Research freezing motion with flash, and test ways to capture water droplets in a dimly lit sub-ground room. Experiment with colour — the red below comes from the surroundings, not the water itself. (That is, no food colouring was used in this project. There was enough mess without that!)

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A section of a lace scarf in light olive green, a colour that reminds me of delicate spring buds in the rain.

I’m knitting this on teeny needles, following an Estonian pattern that features nupps, scallops and a garter stitch edging. It’s narrow, but slow going… Luckily, the wool is wonderfully fine and soft (and Canadian, too), so it remains an interesting project.

Once finished and blocked, the lace pattern will magically appear in what I hope will be exquisitely fine detail. (Lace knitting is an act of faith, trusting that the finished work will look like more than a muddle of yarn.)

For now, a photograph of this art/craft in progress:

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Found, at the back of a wonderful old room that’s now used for yoga by those who love the full light that streams in through windows on three of its four walls: An antique, tin-decorated trunk.

Swirls of scallops circle and repeat across the tin strips on the lid, a dance of four shells times eight, times 36, and more… I offer a sampling of their dance, in this detail from the trunk.

Some time after editing this photo, I was looking for an image to place on business cards, and came back to these scallops, which feel symbolic of life and creativity to me.

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