After a long pause, I am returning to this blog. I’ve accumulated a lot of photos and will share them in the coming months. It’s been quite the year. Glad to be done with it.
I wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year!
Adieu 2020!
Beach safari
This is a quick visual report on a sunny summer day’s activity for kids of all ages, an annual July ritual on Saturna Island in coastal BC.
Around 1 p.m. last Saturday, people started showing up at East Point, on Saturna Island, to come play and discover critters at the edge of the Salish Sea.
The point was a busy place, with divers headed into the water, to gather all kinds of creatures and bring them back to shore, so everyone could have a look…
Tanks were set up on the beach, with recirculating water, so their temporary residents would be comfortable.
And everyone gathered to hear about the animals and plants that make the intertidal zone their home… Student biologists from the University of Victoria were on hand to share their knowledge about life below the surface.
There were sea stars, in their variety…
California sea cucumbers…
Sea urchins, including this big one (and look at the little baby one in the tupperware container on the side)…
And crabs, including these kelp crabs…
And we learned that male crabs have a “lighthouse-like” marking on their abdomen…
… while female crabs have a wider plate on their abdomen… So now, we can tell them apart. Also, notice that this female has been busy adding some camouflage greenery to her legs and back…
Finally, this brown kelp is known as Sargassum, an invasive algae now present in the Salish Sea… We can pick it and plow it into our gardens as fertilizer without any guilty feelings…
And finally, no Beach Safari is complete without a little kite flying! There was a nice breeze, and people gave it a shot.
Summer weekends, the right time to go play outside.
Life on the coast
Above: the Chrome Island lighthouse, near Denman Island, BC.
On a sunny day, the British Columbia coast is unequaled. You can watch all kinds of boats at work and at play … and I’ve decided to share a few examples of the action.
First, a seine fishing boat, with its net all rolled up, travelling the channel between Vancouver Island and Denman Island, on the BC coast.
This is a crab fishing boat. The fishermen are busy hauling in the traps, surrounded by a cortège of noisy gulls. The fishermen have to immediately sort their catch, throwing back any females, and males smaller than 165mm across the shell. The gulls hope that some crabs don’t sink fast enough…
This little volunteer armada moved a 200 foot concrete dock from Swarz Bay on Vancouver Island to Saturna Island, some 28+ km over smooth and rough waters… all in the preparations for the annual Saturna Lamb Barbecue. Save the date, the party is on July 1st.
This was taken earlier this spring on Hornby Island, BC, when a departing Coast Guard vessel passed in front of our boat. The cormorants did not seem at all disturbed by the action. Blasé birds…
And under wind power, a few Sunday sailors head for Browning Harbour, Pender Island, BC.
Looking closely
Over the past months, I have taken a lot of photos of landscapes and seascapes. They will start to appear in my photo gallery.
But this post is about taking the time to get close up to things, taking a very intimate approach to photography…
Ordinary things hold mysteries, and those are revealed by the lens. Like Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota), that very common wildflower, at the end of the season, all curled up.
Or the belly feathers of an unfortunate American Goldfinch, which died after flying into a window.
Or the abstract condensation pattern on the side of the Brita filter.y.
Or the back of a Fiddlehead ficus, all dried up and revealing its patterns in the afternoon sunlight.
Or the otherworldly creature-like appearance of this kelp bit of flotsam, on a beach in Ucluelet, BC.
And the drops left on a McIntosh apple, after a rinse in the sink, and before the apple pie baking session…
The Passage of Time – An exhibition of my photos
Everyone is cordially invited to the opening reception of my exhibition, June 24, 4 to 6 p.m. The opening will be followed by a dinner prepared by chef Hubertus Surm.
(Reservations for dinner: 250-539-5177)
The exhibition at the Saturna Café goes to August 2, 2017.
“Narrative is anchored in the passage of time. A story unfolds in the tension between a beginning and an end. Singly and in juxtaposition, these photographs by Andrée Fredette are replete with stories. An image of a seemingly deserted Mayne Queen is paired with a photograph of a ghostly Saturna, producing a tinge of anxiety and uncertainty. Again, an empty path in the forest tells a tale of fear and disquiet. Further, the infinitely small (feathers) and the infinitely vast (the awesome sky) are conjured up. There are no figures in these photographs despite the great variety of subject matter. An irony resides in these works: it is suggested that they evoke the passage of time, yet photography congeals duration. This irony adds a layer of complexity — a dialectical interplay — to our experience of these artworks: we move from duration to time’s suspension and back again. Also, some of these works underline the materiality of the photographic medium, a salutary move in the era of digital media. Meditation portrays an ethereal, almost monochromatic sky — the surface of the photograph is underlined. Also, grains of sand and the grain of the photographic object conjoin in a literal manner. There is a hint of nostalgia in all these works: the backing in aluminum recalls photography’s metallurgic substrate —silver—and the quasi alchemical nature of work in the darkroom, a process which has almost been entirely eclipsed by digital technologies.”
— Jean-François Renaud