Weekly Photo Challenge

BC Place ii

 

After leaving Granville Island our weekend walk took us to the east end of False Creek from where when you look back you can see the residences of Olympic Village on the south side built for the 2010 games, the Cambie Street Bridge way in the distance, and BC Place Stadium on the north side. This panorama shot was taken from the deck outside the geodesic dome of Vancouver’s Science World that opened for the World Fair in 1986 (Expo 86). As you can see the pedestrian and cycle pathway takes you around the creek and then carries on to Stanley Park so all can enjoy one of the world’s most accessible, varied and so often stunning urban landscapes.

 

Science world
Granville Bridge v

 

We’ve arrived at Granville Island on our weekend walk and here below the Granville Street Bridge you can see the Aquabus water taxis waiting to take you up and down False Creek. The photobombing seagull was a complete surprise however and clearly felt the landscape wouldn’t be complete without him. Serendipity at work once again.

Check out the great Granville Island website and learn all about one of Vancouver’s jewels.
 
pigeons

between bridges iv

Our walk now takes us under Burrard Bridge and past the fishing boats and sail boats moored in False Creek as we make our way towards Granville Island situated under the Granville Street Bridge, with the high rises of downtown Vancouver seen across the water.  The yellow building in the centre is a popular Vancouver restaurant appropriately called Bridges. And so within a few short steps the landscape has changed again.

Kits beach iii

Yesterday’s landscape for the Weekly Photo Challenge was of English Bay viewed from Burrard Bridge here in Vancouver. Today the landscape is from our afternoon walk along Kitsilano Beach, with people strolling or playing beach volley ball in the warm afternoon sunshine.  This glorious beach is a favourite subject of mine as you know and the original Beauty and the Beach was posted in August 2014 with several photos featuring all the activities you could expect to find on a warm summer’s eve.  Hard to believe that it is only the beginning of Spring as it felt like a summer’s day today.

English Bay

Walking across Burrard Bridge in Vancouver this morning and looking out to English Bay the view was more spectacular than ever. I paused in the middle of the span and took this shot using the panorama setting on my iPhone 6S. It was only later that I checked this week’s Photo Challenge from Cheri in which she has invited us to “share a photo of a landscape: a wide establishing shot of a scene in nature or an urban setting.” I think this will do don’t you? 🙂

If you would like to see more pictures of this beautiful Art Deco Bridge that was opened in 1932 check out my post a bridge for all from November 2014, which I posted at that time for the third week of Cheri’s Photography 101.

Happy first day of April.

camelliaspectives

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For this week’s Discover Challenge: Perspective Ben states “We each inhabit a specific vantage point from which we blog” and asks What’s yours? As those of you who follow my blog will know my vantage point is always both visual and written, so in response to Ben’s question I thought I would express my camelliaddiction once again today with pen, ink, watercolor and photography, with one final image that is clearly very much about perspective.

camellia P&I ii

camellia studies 31.3.16

camellia ix

WPC: Half-Light 2 continued…

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I thought I would add a follow up to yesterday’s post, inspired by The Lady of the Camellias for the photo challenge Half-Light, as these camellias are just too spectacular not to share.

camellia v

“The theme of The Lady of the Camellias is a love story between Marguerite Gautier, a “demi-mondaine” (“courtisane” in the original French, i.e., a woman “kept” by various lovers, frequently more than one at a time) suffering from tuberculosis, and a young provincial bourgeois, Armand Duval. The narration of the love story is told by Duval himself to the (unnamed) narrator of the book. She is named as the Lady of the Camellias because she wears a white camellia when she is available to her lover(s) and a red one when her delicate condition precludes making love.”   Wikepedia

camellia iii

Weekly Photo Challenge: Half-Light 2

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camelia

My beautiful camellia bushes are flowering once again, which is why I couldn’t resist a second response to Krista’s challenge for this week’s photo challenge “to share a photo inspired by a poem, verse, song lyric or story.” This one is of course inspired by Alexander Dumas’s novel La Dame aux Camélias.

Looks like my camelliaddiction is back.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Half-Light

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clouds

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all.

Joni Mitchell 1967

Last posted for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Half and Half in July last year, it seemed to be a good time to revisit one of my favourite photos, which was inspired by Joni Mitchell’s wonderful voice and poetry, for this week’s photo challenge from Krista who asks us to “Share a photo inspired by a poem, verse, song lyric or story.”

Joni Mitchell wrote “Both Sides, Now” in March 1967, inspired by a passage in Henderson the Rain King, a 1959 novel by Saul Bellow. (Wikipedia)

I was reading Saul Bellow’s “Henderson the Rain King” on a plane and early in the book Henderson the Rain King is also up in a plane. He’s on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did. Joni Mitchell.

Enjoy the unforgettable voice of Joni Mitchell singing one of her greatest songs once again.