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Recent Posts

  • June birding: An immature bald eagle, western tanager and more
  • Haisla Bridge Replacement Project Girder Launching Ceremony
  • A mink on a log. How I got the shot (plus some bald eagles)
  • Canada Geese overhead
  • “It’s not a costume” Racism protest in Kitimat

RSS Model making and diorama photography

  • A cold, wet winter on Arch-to
  • Dollar Store Dinosaurs
  • Star Wars #ourgreatindoors
  • The Rusty Romulan
  • Hot chicken Jedha

Portraits of Northwestern Crows

The weather in Kitimat has been awful during most of the fall, cold, windy, rainy, foggy and generally miserable. Not unexpected in a La Nina year.
I went down to Kitamaat Village for the monthly bird count in a rain squall. So the visibility was pretty bad. As I was about to leave, a half dozen northwestern crows landed right beside me, in the pouring rain and stayed long enough for me to shoot their portraits.

October 11, 2021 Robin Rowland
BC, birds, crow, Douglas Channel, Kitamaat Village, Kitimat, nature, Photoblog, Sony RX10iiiBird , Bird photography , birds , British Columbia , crow , Douglas Channel , Kitamaat Village , Kitimat , rain , storm , Weather

People of the Snow Truth and Reconciliat...

Members of the Haisla Nation and people of Kitimat braved an Environment Canada storm warning with heavy rain and wind on September 30, 2021 to mark The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Haisla elder Marilyn Furlan opened the proceedings with a prayer. (Robin Rowland)

 

Most participants wore orange to mark the other name, Orange Shirt Day. It marks the time an indigenous girl had an orange shirt taken away in a residential school. (Robin Rowland)

Marking Truth and Reconciliation in a rain storm. (Robin Rowland)

Sunny Stewart-Pollard helped organize the reconciliation event hosted by volunteers from the Haisla Nation and members of the Kitimat community. (Robin Rowland)

 

Barb Campbell watches the event. (Robin Rowland)

The tables with decorations and gifts represent all the holidays that children in residential schools missed. (Robin Rowland)

 

 

A boy waves a Truth and Reconciliation flag. (Robin Rowland)

Watching in the rain. Kitimat Counsellor Terry Marleau (second from right) and Mayor Phil Germuth (far right) (Robin Rowland)

Shelley Irene Bolton drums as she leads the Haisla Braid drummers and dancers. (Robin Rowland)

The sun did come out briefly for the Haisla Braid dancers and drummers. (Robin Rowland)

Three flocks of geese flew over the ceremony, the first and largest flock are snow geese, followed by a small group of Canada geese and then more snow geese.(Robin Rowland)

 

Geese fly over the ceremony. (Robin Rowland)

Musician and artist Arthur Renwick closed off the event with his own songs. (Robin Rowland)

 

 

October 1, 2021 Robin Rowland
autumn, BC, Canada, ceremony, Haisla Nation, Photoblog, Photography, Photojournalism, Reconciliation, Sony RX10iiiBritish Columbia , ceremony , dance , drumming , First Nations , geese , Haisla Nation , holiday , Kitamaat Village , Kitimat , orange shirt , rain , storm

Common Mergansers

Common mergansers at MK Bay, Kitimat, BC, September 2021

September 15, 2021 Robin Rowland
BC, birds, Douglas Channel, eastuary, Kitimat, Sony RX10iiiBird , Bird photography , birds , British Columbia , common merganser , Douglas Channel , duck , Kitimat , merganser , ocean

Remembering my visit to Florence, Oregon...

Remembering my visit to Florence, Oregon, which inspired the novel Dune

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)

 

 

August 7, 2020 Robin Rowland
birds, black and white, Ectachrome, Fantasy, gull, landscape, Minolta SRT101, nature, ocean, Photoblog, Photography, seascape, sunset, United StatesDune , Florence , landscape , ocean , Oregon , Science fiction , seascape , sunset

People of colour lives matter rally in K...

A few of the protest signs from the Kitimat, BC, “peopleofcolourlivesmatter” rally on Saturday June 6, 2020.

 

Kitimat Mayor Phil Germouth addresses the crowd at the foot of the reconciliation and friendship totem pole. (Robin Rowland)

June 6, 2020 Robin Rowland
Kitimat, protest, race, Sony RX10iiiBlack Lives Matter , BLM , People of color , People of Colour

Bees harvesting nectar from mountain cor...

A few morning shots of bees harvesting nectar from mountain cornflowers (centaurea montana) in my front garden.

June 6, 2020 Robin Rowland
Alpha 7II, flowers, garden, nature, Photographybee , bees , cornflower , mountain cornflower

Scream of the Forest photo book availabl...

The Scream of the Forest.

The photo book from my exhibit at the Kitimat Museum & Archives.

The Scream of the Forest knot on an old rotten stump in Kitimat, BC. (Robin Rowland)

“In the spring of 2011, I noticed a knot on an old stump that bore a remarkable resemblance to Edvard Munch’s famous painting collectively known as ‘The Scream.”

For the past eight years, I photographed the old knot in all four seasons, winter, spring, summer and fall and in all weather conditions, rain, snow, mist, and summer sun until it was destroyed in the spring of 2019. As the world hurtles toward climate catastrophe, species extinction and destruction of biodiversity, the trees and plants have no voice in the polarized political debates—but make no mistake the forest IS screaming.”

From the Kitimat Northern Sentinel
Knot to be Missed.

 

Order the book from Blurb.ca $33.69 CAD plus shipping.  Click on the  icon below for a 15 page preview.



The Scream of the forest

By Robin Rowland

January 21, 2020 Robin Rowland
Photography
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