Six Seasons Instead of Four

The seasons have always felt strange here in Canada. How do you reconcile six-ish months of winter with three other seasons? Why do the solstices and equinoxes line up so poorly with how the weather feels? (And no, I’m not talking about seasonal lag.)

Well, enter Kurt Vonnegut. Few things have transformed my worldview in the past few months quite like this:

“One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize that there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, spring doesn’t feel like spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for autumn, and so on.

Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves? Next comes the season called Locking. November and December aren’t winter. They’re Locking. Next comes winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold!

What comes next? Not spring. ‘Unlocking’ comes next. What else could cruel March and only slightly less cruel April be? March and April are not spring. They’re Unlocking.”

— Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: Bits of the Collage

Happy Unlocking everyone. Only two months until Spring!

Milky Way at Jimsmith Lake

Everyday 7

I finished up the latest edition of my Everyday project. Here's how I looked and how the project changed in 2017–2018.

Oct 23, 2017–Oct 22, 2018.

The collage is built by slicing up daily photos from the last year into thin vertical strips. The leftmost slice is Oct 23, 2017 and the rightmost slice is Oct 22, 2018. 

The median image is every photo from the past year stacked together. This is a good look at what my average face (and shirt colour!) was for the past year. 

The last image is a portrait mode comparison. This was the first year I could use the iPhone depth sensor to simulate a blurred background. The left side is with the portrait effect turned on. The right side is with the portrait effect turned off. 

A continuation of Everyday.

An Evening at the Calgary Stampede

Photographs from the 2018 Calgary Stampede. I go for the photos, mini-donuts, and fireworks.

Midnight Walk, February Snowstorm

Photos from Feb 8, 2018.

Photos for August 27–September 2, 2017

That's it for August! The month-long photo project was enjoyable and something I plan to do again one day. In addition to taking a daily photograph, I chose one photographer every week and wrote notes about their work. These two activities supported each other. I would learn a technique from a photographer and try it in my own work during the week. 

I wasn't bringing my phone on every run by the end of the month. But I would bring it if I went out at sunset or at times with nice light. Doing this encouraged me to explore new routes. 

The eclipse pinhole viewers reminded me of a tradition at my school. One of the photography classes would black out all the windows in a classroom and make a room-sized pinhole camera. I never had the chance to participate so I made my own at home this week. 

I was reading about David Alan Harvey this week and his approach to layering in photographs. I learned that one of his techniques is to find a static subject and then wait until something interesting happens in the background. 

I set out to take photos of the highway from an overpass but found trains instead. I brought my tripod along so I could try shooting at night with low ISOs. Using a tripod made me much more intentionaI about the photographs.

This was the last day of August and the official end of the month-long photo project. I challenged myself to find something interesting without leaving the house. We've had abnormally orange, late afternoon light from the forest fire smoke so I waited until it was just right to take this photo. The photo is cluttered, but it felt like a record of a place that is lived in. 

More orange light from the forest fire smoke. I was looking at the different ways Andrew Kim and Luke Beard take photographs of drinks in restaurants, and I noticed a common technique using angles and the corner of a table. It's not executed perfectly here, but it certainly made a difference in the composition. 

Bridge silhouette. Also using a tripod at night.