Saturday, April 4, 2020

Missed - April 4, 2020


I'd left the house well after 7pm, closer to 7:15pm or so.. sunset was supposed to be sometime around 8:15, I thought I had time, but in reality I didn't. By the time I got downtown any direct sun was gone.. In spite of that I kept on hoping to find something to photograph I ended up parking the car near the west end of Prince's island.

I walked towards the Peace bridge thinking that I really didn't want to take the obvious bridge photos from this location (ie, one's I'd taken before). There was still a very low chance that the sun could do something like light up the sky but I wasn't very optimistic.

I took a hard right on the path onto Prince's island and walked over to the apex across from the Peace bridge where there were a few runners. I took a few zoomed in shots trying to for photos through the lines on the bridge. The posted photo below is zoomed out and was better than any of the other shots.


run




Overall I was feeling somewhat frustrated. The last few days were overcast and cloudy with no light and I didn't bother to go out. With the possibility of a sunset I left the house but really didn't have a plan or an idea of where to go and now that I am here I missed the sunset and the sky isn't cooperating. It also didn't help that my face was sore.

On Thursday I had a regular dental checkup scheduled from months ago that was cancelled due to the Covid-19 virus and only emergency services only being provided. As the date for the appointment approached I started to get this pain in a tooth that had been crowned after a root canal many years ago. I had hoped that I could have it checked out during my scheduled visit but that was canceled so I had to book an emergency visit.

As it turns out it's not that uncommon for a root canal to miss some nerves in the roots of the tooth and for that nerve to act up at some point in the future. I was put on antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory for the pain - which seemed to work for about half of the time between the prescribed doses. By Friday it felt like the meds weren't working and it was getting worse. The dentist is only open M-F so I was worried it'd be a pretty rough weekend. (spoiler: by Sunday the pain seemed to be subsiding and by Monday I wasn't taking the anti-inflammatory any more.. phew. I suppose I'll have to have the root dealt with as some point though)

Continuing to walk around on Prince's island I spied a small burst of sunset colour through the dense tree branches. I wasn't far from the pedestrian bridge that spans the bow river which might offer a view so I started jogging towards the bridge. Once there, the colour was concentrated but there wasn't really any compositions that I could find so I hung out on the bridge for a while looking for something else.

I'd settled on taking a photo of the skyline that I wasn't real happy with because of the lack of light. There were a few pedestrians so I ended up waiting for them to exit the frame before taking the shot. I didn't think there'd be enough contrast between the bridge and the background but looking at it later the photo kind of grew on me and I think it turned out better than I had initially thought.


blues
From here I walked back towards Eau-Claire then followed the path back towards the Peace bridge. I tried to take a photo of the bridge but my creativity was lacking and my attempt was half-hearted in the darkening light.

I decided to just head home and on the way back to my car I saw the scene below. The light and the head had caught my eye. I didn't bother with my tripod and braced the camera against a street light to take the shot.

more blues
When we put effort into doing something it's nice to have a sense of accomplishment at the end. As I drove home and reflected on the photo walk I felt like I'd gotten something with the last shot and that the whole outing wasn't just a waste of time. The bridge photo turned out better than I thought, but I think I'll try that composition again with different light.

Click here to view larger versions of the posted photos.

Thanks for looking.


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