Northumberland Photography Club
In which November arrives, I join a photography club and visit Peterborough with a new camera.
Hello and welcome to my photo journal.
As October turns to November, the vegetation really begins to die back. Winter coats come out of closets or are bought anew. Everywhere, people grasp the last vestiges of seasons now past. Shooting from my car, I had just taken a picture of this flower myself when this walker stepped into the frame and bent to capture the resilience of this small flower holding its own against the winds blowing in off Lake Ontario.
There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Rumi
Here are a couple of photographs that were leftover from October. A hedgerow and some ornamental grasses. The colours of autumn have mostly subsided. Line and form taking on increased significance within the landscape, but light remains the secret sauce.
Along the roadsides, backlit grasses catch fire in the low afternoon light.
The clocks have now returned to their more natural state. It will be dark now by six.
Joining the Northumberland Photography Club
On November 4th, I joined the Northumberland Photography Club in Cobourg, Ontario. This was quite deliberate on my part. I had been invited back in the summer but said no as I usually do to such things. But that was before, when I was part of a couple. Now it’s time to build new habits, and to make an effort to get myself out more to meet new people with common interests in the wake of my wife’s passing.
The guest speaker on this first night of my attendance was a pet photographer who likes to shoot animal portraits with long lenses and narrow depths of field. It was an interesting talk, particularly the bits about facial expressions in the gates of moving animals.
I decided a few days later to see if I could get a shot of Henry as its been a while since I took a portrait of him. I do like shooting with long lenses and often use one when photographing the critters. I have to be quick with Henry though, as he always wants to walk towards me whenever I get down to his level. Shooting at eye level of any animal is crucial to most portraits, although as with every rule of photography, there will surely be exceptions.
Like the shot I made of Duncan which I posted as The Final Frame of last week’s article, I brought Henry out of the cat compound to peak his interest and find a useful backdrop to shoot against. His fur was somewhat disheveled, but for good reason. Duncan jumped him the week before and the attack blew up into an abscess on his lower back. It had burst the night before and I cleaned it up the best I could. The first medical emergency since our lives were turned upside down, he received a full inspection plus a shot in the bum the day following this image.
I think Henry misses Ruth the most of our three felines. He slept under her hospital bed every night of that final week and continues to hang out in that spot, even though the bed is now gone and the furniture has been replaced. It seems to be his new spot.
My first club outing took place November 8th in Peterborough. It was to be a two part excursion, the first being the Peterborough lift locks and the second the Peterborough zoo.
Part 1. Peterborough Lift Lock
Up first was Lock 21 of the Trent Severn Waterway, a canal system that I have mentioned before when I passed by Lock 20, Ashburnham on my way to the Canadian Canoe Museum. Although closed now to boat traffic for the season, the lift lock makes a worthy subject and about a dozen photographers showed up to give it their best shot.
A marvel of the early 20th century, its twin lifts raise and lower boats 65 feet. In 1904, when it opened, conventional locks typically had a vertical lift of no more than 7 feet so this marked quite a departure from the norms of the day. In the photo, both caissons (watertight containers) have been parked at the lower level, but when it is in normal operation, the lock works by gravity with each side cantilevered against the other.
The caissons are 140 ft long, 33 ft wide, and 7 ft deep and combined, carry over seven million pounds of water and that doesn’t even include the weight of the container itself or the boat(s) they are lifting. The top container actually carries more weight by allowing an extra foot of water depth or about 288,000 pounds which provides the additional weight needed to operate the lock. During each operational cycle, water passes through a connecting pipe from the upper to the lower caisson.
These outings are an opportunity to shoot a common subject together and compare notes. It’s also interesting to see the photos at the club meetings after everyone has had a chance to review their images and assemble their best shots.
A vehicle tunnel passes through the locks allowing traffic to move east west along Hunter Street East. From this access point, a couple of pedestrian tunnels allow access to the south facing wall covered by an iron grate like the one above. I find the wall exotic looking, with its mineral deposits bleeding through the stones.
I turned the tower reflection above upside for creative effect. I found the subject seemed to invite experimentation.
On this day I was testing out my new Fuji X-T50. The main advantages of this camera over my X-T3 are the 40 megapixel sensor (up from 26 on the older camera) which allows cropping in post without losing any detail. The camera sports in-body image stabilizer (IBIS) allowing for slower handheld shutter speeds. It is also a bit smaller and lighter too. Hard to say if the reduced size is an asset or not. Perhaps a bit less to hold on to. Of course, as with any new camera, there is a bit of a learning curve which can make it somewhat frustrating to use. Still, it was a good day and subject to try it out on, and I had some fun with the project.
The side of one of the two towers looked kind of like a back door to the pyramids. I added a bit of Topaz Studio 2 on the one below to pull more texture out of the scene and to bring details out of the darkness. Is that some sort of turbine in there?
I also had a bit of fun with these tunnels. The shapes are really interesting and I loved the way the light bent around corners and fell off the walls.
With all the club members crawling all over the structure, it was perfect for grabbing a bit of intrigue as we got in each others shots. Of course, it looks a lot more clandestine than it actually was.
It was fun building stories in my mind around these images. I can see how the location would work well in a film.
Part 2. Peterborough Riverview Zoo
Let me start by saying I really have very mixed feelings about zoos. They can be critical places for public education and breeding programs. They can connect people to the natural world and develop a lifelong love of animals. They can have zoologic significance for species at risk.
They can also be prisons. Sometimes they are both at the same time. Sometimes a visit to a zoo is like a visit to see the consequence of man’s stupidity or at least our inhumanity towards animals. To say the least, zoos are complicated places that bring up complicated feelings. They are a good place to see the value of being able to hold competing ideas in one’s mind at the same time. Nothing is as simple as we would like it to be and zoos are a good place to meditate on this.
A visit to the zoo is temporary. But for the animals, this is their permanent home. A very artificial home at that, with strange monkey neighbours passing by and staring, sometimes cajoling, other times standing quietly. Many holding black boxes in front of them. An endless stream of monkeys of all sizes. I wonder if the animals think, “Where do all these monkees come from? Where do they go? What do they want?”
It is hard for visitors to imagine what it must be like for them. I wonder how many of us try or even entertain the idea?
Endlessly pacing back and forth along this fenceline. Stopping momentarily in front of a monkee couple pushing their baby in a stroller in front of them. The couple stare. The baby points. The emu turns and walks away, having seen it thousands of times before.
Some say I’m exotic. “Look at the big bird!” they scream at me and each other. But I am just me. What I’ve always been.
A meerkat does sentry duty while the rest of its mob sleeps the afternoon away. It’s a serious occupation that requires constant vigilance. But mostly, nothing happens.
Squirrel Monkeys come from the canopy layers of tropical rainforests such as those found in Central America and the Amazon. They are often captured and traded as pets or for medical research. They don’t belong in Canada, aren’t suited to our climate, and I don’t know how these ones ended up here.
Was there a humanitarian effort to save them from a far worse situation? They aren’t endangered, at least the common squirrel monkey isn’t. When NASA put a monkey in space at the beginning of their manned space program, it was a squirrel monkey, Miss Baker they named her, who rode the rockets red glare. Every exhibit I visit leaves me with questions.
The only animal I saw that you might also spot in the Otonabee River just outside of the zoo grounds is the North American River Otter. They have a nice enclosure for them here and they seem pretty happy with it. It’s fun to watch them cavort above and below the water. This provides unique viewing and photographic opportunities like the image above, but again I wonder at what cost to the animals. Not far from the river otters we found a building of crocodiles bathing in the afternoon sun. Here was another animal far from home.
When all is said and done, I remain uneasy about zoos. This one is unusual in that they do not charge for admission, not even for parking. They bill themselves as Canada's only free-admission accredited zoo. At the end of the day, I was happy to leave this place and felt sad for the animals unable to do the same.
And that concludes my first outing with the Northumberland Photography Club of Cobourg. I wonder where they will go to next?
I’ll leave you with a tune to reflect upon our own wild nature and the plight of animals in the zoo. Here is Wild Life by Paul McCartney and Wings.
Hi John - I came across your Substack from the link attached to your '1904' image on the Photowalk red assignment page. Since subscribing we have exchanged messages (I've really enjoyed that). Without delving deeply into your bio, reading this post I assumed you were in the UK as you mention Severn Trent and Peterborough then see you are thousands of miles away in Canada and that's what's great about the internet (when use properly) - the connection.
Anyway, seeing your boat lift above...about 10 or so miles from me is the Cheshire salt town of Northwich. The River Weaver and the Trent & Mersey Canal both run through the town. Being an important salt trading town years ago the water networks were used for getting the stuff to market. There is a boat lift that links the river and the canal lifting or dropping boats between the two. Cast iron construction and fairly recently restored. It is an amazing structure (the Anderton Boat Lift) so look it up if you want to disappear down a rabbithole of British waterways!
I'm also conflicted on zoos - some work is undoubtedly great but they were created as entertainment and conservation/research came later. A small zoo has opened on a farm near us. It went through four rounds of planning before betting permission to build (it didn't help that they had started to build without planning nor applying for a zoo licence first). Their main attractions seem to be meerkats and kookaburras - neither are endangered so kind of undermines the conservation story. We'll have to see how it goes but not expecting tigers.
Loved the photo of Henry (he is gorgeous, even ruffled!), and also especially the photos of the locks at Peterborough - those brought back fond memories of my own photo shoots there a couple of decades ago. Still an awesome place to roam and photograph, I see! Silly question around the zoo photos: the description of the emu image describes a couple with a baby in a stroller as a "monkee couple" - and I'm somewhat disconcerted, and wondering just what that means. ???