Tag: Weather

Categories
Landscape Photography

Fog and Intimacy

Lone Tree in Fog, Williams Farm, Wyebridge, ON

There is something about fog that produces a sense of intimacy. Our view of what lies in the distance fades almost to nothing. All that remains is whatever stands in the foreground. I made this photograph on New Years Day. I make a habit of rising to greet the sun on the first morning of the new year, but when I got up on January 1st, 2022, I found the world shrouded in fog. After nearly 2 years of a global pandemic, attended by a growing cloud of disinformation, fog may be an apt way to start a new year.

I stood alone in a field with a solitary tree and the two of us communed for a time. To be honest, I can’t think of a better way to begin a new year. To be honest, I can’t think of many people I’d care to engage this way. I wish more of the people in my life would treat me the way this tree treated me. It didn’t challenge my thoughts and hint that maybe I’m a fool. It didn’t tell me I’m wasting my life on trivial pursuits. It didn’t tell me I’ve let myself go during the pandemic. The tree was a good listener and leaned in when I let my voice fall low.

I take it as a given that we can enter into relationships with trees. When I was young, my best friend and I built a tree house in a big maple. While we were still in the planning stages, we decided we couldn’t nail boards in place as that might hurt the tree, so we lashed everything with rope and twine. We discovered early on that we weren’t the only creatures to shelter in that tree. There were squirrels, robins, frogs, ants, beetles, lichen, and moss. That tree presided over our childhoods like a benevolent elder.

I have difficulty standing by when people cut down a live tree. It feels to me like an act of violence. I can understand why some people become tree-huggers, and I can understand, too, why industrialists adopt derisive tones when they use the term. A tree-hugger challenges everything an industrialist stands for. Despite the industrialist’s bluster, I’d rather be a tree than a chain saw.

Categories
Country Life

The Impact of the Climate Crisis on Maple Syrup Production

What is the potential impact of the climate crisis on maple syrup production? The answer to this question varies depending on your time horizon.

Looking at issues likely to arise in the near future, what keeps maple syrup producers awake at night are the consequences of extreme weather events:

• Wind and ice storms can wreak havoc on trees and can destroy sap lines.

• Wild temperature fluctuations can bring the maple syrup season to an abrupt halt. For a good run, maple syrup producers depend on a succession of days where the temperature climbs a little above freezing during the day and then falls a little below freezing during the night. A sudden warm snap can force the maple trees to break dormancy which means buds form and the sap stops flowing.

• Drought adversely affects the health of the trees and also increases the risk of catastrophic destruction by forest fire.

Looking to the medium term, even subtle changes in climate can make a region more hospitable to invasive species. We’ve already seen this kind of devastation with the mountain pine beetle spreading eastward from British Columbia. And the emerald ash borer has overrun the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest region (the region where most maple trees grow). A similar infestation affecting maple trees could obliterate the industry.

In the long term, there looms the possibility that the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest region will become too warm to support maple trees. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that by 2100 the “maximum sap flow region is projected to move 400km to the north.” This echoes a more general claim from Jeffrey Sachs. In his 2008 book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, the noted economist offered something of a silver lining scenario: agricultural losses would be offset by gains in other regions, most notably to the north.

While it may be true that there will be maximum sap flow potential further north, it takes more than favourable temperature to grow a maple tree. If these (American) writers actually visited locations 400 km to the north, they would discover that one important ingredient is missing: suitable top soil. The challenge here is the Canadian Shield, a gigantic slab of igneous rock. During the last ice age, glaciers scoured it bare and relocated all that wonderful gravel and dirt further south. In Ontario, the Canadian Shield supports Boreal forests but cannot support mature deciduous forests. Someday, perhaps. However, soil development and forest growth are processes that happen over millennia. Nobody is going to be tapping trees 400 km to the north anytime soon.

While these “silver lining” scenarios are well intended, they are unhelpful to the extent that they feed climate crisis denialists.

People walking on a lane at Williams Farm, Wyebridge, Ontario
Categories
City Life

An Ice Storm Transforms the Face of the World

Frozen Fruit

Unusual weather events can transform the familiar into the utterly alien. Winter stretches on and we grow accustomed to the same scene greeting us morning after morning from our window. The low light. The drab streets. Our world hardens into a frozen sameness. While this feeling is typical of Februaries, it is a feeling that has been compounded these last two years by the global pandemic, especially if we have been subject to lockdown or have felt anxious about going outdoors.

And then something happens that jolts us from our ossified view of the world. It grabs us by the shoulders and shakes us. That something can be a personal event: a near miss as we’re stepping off the curb, for example. Suddenly our heart races and it reminds us that we are alive after all. Or something that affects us all, like a major weather system that sweeps across the entire continent.

I remember how an ice storm struck the Toronto area in January of 2014. We haven’t had such a storm since then. Entire trees toppled under the sheer weight of the ice. Power lines came down. Nature inflicted on the city a terrible beauty.

On the morning after the storm had blown through, I stepped outside and was struck by how different the world looked. It occurred to me that I might live out the balance of my natural life and never again see the world in quite this way. And so I spent the whole day wandering, taking it all in, as if this might be the last day of my life.

Stop sign in ice storm with icicles dangling from the bottom.
Categories
Country Life Landscape Photography

Fence in Foggy Field

Fence Post in Fog, Williams Farm, Wyebridge, ON

The chief merit of this post is the alliteration in the title: three “F” words in a row is irresistible. I could have added a fourth, but then I’d be giving up my family friendly rating. But enough about rhetoric.

This is a variation on the theme of Kanso, which I’ve previously mentioned here and here, creating a scene of calming simplicity by removing elements from the image one by one until only the essential remains. Although photography in the real world often makes it impossible to remove elements from a scene (Photoshop notwithstanding), nature itself sometimes steps in and lends a hand.

In previous posts, I’ve shown how a backdrop of pure snow can render an utterly simple photo. In this instance, I turn to fog as my natural assistant. It isn’t perfect, but it helps. The fog softens the background just enough that it doesn’t distract us from the foreground, a single fence post. We can trace the line of fence posts that recedes across the field and disappears into the foggy distance.

I shot this on New Year’s Day, 2022 at Williams Farm in Wyebridge, Ontario. The scene arrived like a gift and, although I wouldn’t call myself a superstitious person, I took it as a portent of the year to come. At least as far as photographs go, I expect 2022 will be an excellent year.

Categories
Landscape Photography

February Photography Series: Winter Scenes

Tree in Blowing Snow, Wyebridge, ON

For the month of February, I’ll be presenting a series of photographs featuring winter scenes. Fitting given that, at least in the northern hemisphere, February tends to be the most wintery month of the year. Fitting, too, given that I’m Canadian and winter is intimately bound to the Canadian identity. Urban, rural, people, landscape, macro, sport, wildlife, anything goes so long as it’s obvious from the image that I shot it in the wintertime.

To kick off this series, I offer a landscape image, tree trunk in the foreground of a snow-covered field, line of trees in the background. Blowing snow adds an atmospheric effect. Whenever I’m out in blowing snow, I wrap my camera in a plastic zip lock bag with a little hole cut out for the view finder. Basically a camera condom for extra protection. When the weather gets extreme, I have a fancier “official” condom made from thick clear plastic. It’s like the difference between Saran Wrap and a Trojan.

As with virtually every landscape image I’ve ever made, I used a tripod for this one. However, I’ve discovered something interesting about using a tripod in snow. The guy who sold me my fancy Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod told me it would be the last tripod I’d ever own, implying that the materials are virtually indestructible. Guess what? I found a way to destroy a carbon fiber tripod.

Not far from the site of this image, I drove the legs of my tripod into a snowbank and the legs splayed, driven outward by a layer of ice hidden under a light dusting of snow. I heard a crack and one of the legs went wonky. On examination, I discovered that, no, you can’t crack a carbon fiber tripod transversely like a broken leg, but if you jam it just right, you can crack it lengthwise in line with the fibers.

Incidentally, I don’t want to be taken as dissing Manfrotto products. I immediately went out and replaced my tripod with another Manfrotto. However, don’t believe anyone who tells you carbon fiber is indestructible.

Categories
Street Portrait

Street Portrait of a Street Portraitist

Woman in beforetimes wears mask, not to prevent disease, but to conceal identity

There’s an unwritten code of street photography, and article one of that code is this: you can’t shoot photos of people if you aren’t willing to be shot yourself. In keeping with that code, I saw this woman out in a snowstorm lugging a pack full of gear; although we exchanged no words, I raised my camera and motioned towards her; in answer, she nodded, so I pointed and shot.

I made this photo in before times when a mask seemed an exotic thing, and I congratulated myself for such a rare capture. Now, it’s a rare capture to photograph a bare face. It’s odd how circumstances have flipped. Then, a mask seemed somehow subversive; it signaled an outlier wary of surveillance. Now, a mask signals a conformist wary of contracting and transmitting pathogens.

What is common to mask-wearers in both situations is the fact that obscuring the face closes us off from certain connections that facial expressions would otherwise facilitate. Now, as a diligent mask-wearer, I find it more difficult to make eye contact with the mask-wearing people I pass in the street. Even if I do make eye contact, I rarely present the kind of openness that makes strangers feel comfortable posing for photographs. They can’t see my smile. They can’t tell whether I’m a creep or someone they can trust.

This isn’t really a street photography problem. It is part of a broader social problem, a heightened sense of alienation and atomization that the pandemic experience has inflicted on us. Paradoxically, the fact that we all share in this experience may offer us a fresh point of connection.