Archive For The “black and white” Category
Super moon over Kitimat BC at 5:15 am, August 2, 2023. Most of the lights are from the LNG Canada construction project. (Robin Rowland)
Black and white version of the same super moon shot (Robin Rowland)
August sturgeon super moon over Kitimat, 5:13 a.m. August 2, 2023. (Robin Rowland)
The supermoon over Kitimat and the LNG project earlier at 4:30 a.m. (Robin Rowland)
Waxing 97 per cent super moon rising over Kitimat, July 31 (Robin Rowland)
Sunset over Kitimat and Douglas Channel, July 31, 2023 (Robin Rowland)
A week or so ago, I was going through box and box of old photos in the collection of my late mother, Catherine Rowland (nee Hill). Almost all of the images are people photos, my mother, her brother, parents and friends from 1914, when she was born, until the Second World.
I was surprised to find among all those photos two small shots of the Canadian War Memorial at Vimy Ridge in France.
It commemorates the battle where the Canadian Corps assaulted German lines at Vimy Ridge during the offensive of the Battles of Arras in 1917.
The memorial was planned in the early 1920s to mark the Canadian contribution in the horrors of the First World War. It was built on a foundation 11,000 tonnes of steel reinforced concrete with 6,000 tonnes of Seget limestone brought from Crotia to create the twin pylons.
Now here is the mystery, as far as I know my mother had no known connection to Canada until our family moved to Canada in 1951. It is likely that either my mother, or her brother, John Hill, took the photos on a trip to France, perhaps soon after the memorial’s completion in late 1935 and before the official opening by King Edward VIII, French President Albert Lebrun and Prince Arthur of Connaught on July 26, 1936 (which also would have been my mother’s 22nd birthday).
The original photos were small, probably direct prints from the (lost?) original negatives, about two inches on the longest side. The original prints were enlarged, enhanced and restored in PhotoShop. Restoration copyright 2023 by Robin Rowland.
The cloudy day creates an interesting atmopshere to the shots of the twin pylons.
The twin pylons at Vimy Ridge. (Catherine or John HIll, restored by Robin Rowland)
A 1930s image of Vimy Ridge. (Catherine or John Hill, restored by Robin Rowland)
The original photo (Robin Rowland)
Look closely and you will see the white head of a bald eagle perched in a tree at MK Bay, taken from MK Bay West Park.
The sun sets over the Dunes of Florence, Oregon, August. 1980. (Robin Rowland)
It was forty years ago, in August, 1980, that a friend and I drove from Vancouver, BC, where I was living at the time, to spend a weekend at Florence, Oregon, which inspired Frank Herbert to write the famous novel Dune.
That’s me at the beach in Florence, Oregon, in 1980.
Like many at the time, I was entranced by Dune as soon as I picked it off a drug store bookshelf probably in 1965. It was sometime later that I read someplace that it was Florence that first inspired Frank Herbert to write about ecology when he originally visited back in 1953 when he was trying to write an article about a US Forest Service project to use dune grass to keep the sand in check. After all that research, as Herbert said in the collection of his essays, Frank Herbert, the Maker of Dune (1987): “Before long I had far too much for an article and far too much for a short story.. But I had an enormous amount of data, with angles shooting off at angles to gather more.” The result, of course, was the blockbuster novel, then more novels, then spinoffs by his son, a movie concept that was never made, an awful movie that was made, a pretty good miniseries and a new movie that we hope to see this Christmas (if there are movies in theatres).
That trip has been a wonderful memory for years, so to mark the anniversary, I found some of the old slides, taken on Kodak Ectachrome, with my old Minolta SRT101 and scanned them. For a some where the colour did not survive four decades, I converted to black and white.
Sand dunes and grass at Florence, Oregon, August 1980. You can see a family building a sandcastle in the distance along the shore. (Robin Rowland)
That amazing sandcastle on the beach at Florence, Oregon, that could be out of a Dune movie or perhaps a fantasy novel. (Robin Rowland)
Sand dunes and grass at Florence, Oregon. (Robin Rowland)
Sand dunes are like waves in a large body of water; they are just slower. (Frank Herbert, “The Sparks Have Flown” in Frank Herbert The Maker of Dune).
Dunes and dune grass at Florence, Oregon, August 1980. (Robin Rowland)
Seagulls over the Pacific Ocean, the dunes and grass at Florence, Oregon, August, 1980. (Robin Rowland)
A wider view of the Oregon coast and ocean surf. (Robin Rowland)
Ocean surf on the nearby Oregon coast. (Robin Rowland)
Ocean surf. (Robin Rowland)
A small lake in a bowl at the peak of Trapline Mountain on a sunny August morning. (Robin Rowland)
GPS route to Trapline Mountain (Google Earth)
On Monday August 5, friends invited me along for a trip to Trapline Mountain to photograph the alpine. Trapline Mountain is about 30 kilometres east of Terrace, BC. You get to the mountain first by driving along the road that follows the Copper River and then taking a rough access road to the peak. At the peak is a BC Hydro microwave communications tower. The area is popular with photographers, ATV enthusiasts and the occasional campers in the summer and snowmobilers in the winter.
Black and white images
I have converted most of the images to black and white. Depending on the image I either used Photoshop or SilverEfx.
Another view from the peak of Trapline Mountain. (Robin Rowland)
Another of the mini-lakes at the peak of Trapline Mountain. (Robin Rowland)
The peak of Trapline Mountain. (Robin Rowland)
The tree line just below the peak. (Robin Rowland)
A vertical view of the lake. (Robin Rowland)
A sharp distant peak. (Robin Rowland)
Another view of the mountains. (Robin Rowland)
Flowers and reeds at the shore of a lake a little lower on the mountain. If you look carefully you will see a swarm of flies. (Possibly mayflies?) (Robin Rowland)
Bright plants track a small stream through the alpine. (Robin Rowland)
Ferns and flowers among the broken rocks of the peak. (Robin Rowland)
Colour images
The peak of Trapline Mountain is absolutely beautiful. So I have included some colour images.
A view from the peak. (Robin Rowland)
A closer view. (Robin Rowland)
Another view. (Robin Rowland)
GPS track to the peak of Trapline Mountain (Google Earth)
Haaland Ave. Waterfall
Haaland Ave. Waterfall tumbles off a cliff into the Copper River.
The Haaland Avenue falls on the Copper River, (Robin Rowland)
A pole among the rocks below the falls. (Robin Rowland)