A bit late but here is Week 30 for my #50WithA50 project. We were away on a short staycation so I took some photos of an old railway bridge that I like. The main photo I planned to take (and did take) was a night time photo but I also went there on a couple of occasions to scout out spots from which to shoot. On one of those scouting trips I grabbed some images with my 50mm lens as well.
Been very quiet here lately. Sorry I’ve spent most of my time taking family photos and haven’t gone out to take landscapes. I generally don’t like to post photos of people, which is something I have to get over, so I’ve not had many photos to post here. I also think I need to get over the idea that if I don’t take it with a DSLR I don’t post it here. My phones take pretty good photos these days, like this one. I didn’t want to take my non waterproof gear out in a recent blizzard but I have a waterproof Moto G3 and went out with that instead.
Tomorrow July 1st is not just Canada Day, in Newfoundland and Labrador it is also Memorial Day when the province remembers the sacrifice it made during World War 1.
100 years ago at 8:45 a.m. on July 1st 1916 the 780 men and officers of The Newfoundland Regiment moved forward against German positions at Beaumont-Hamel of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. 20 minutes later most of them were dead. 110 survived, 68 were present for roll call the next day. In total during the war 1600 Newfoundlanders lost their lives
2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the battle and as part of the commemorations Opera on the Avalon is planting one metal forget-me-not in what is called The Garden Of Tears outside the Arts and Culture centre in Memorial University (itself named in memory of the battle). This is a picture of one of those flowers where a member of the public has hung a card remembering a relative of theirs who died in the battle.
I had a busy start to the month with some protests to take photos at and a couple of photoshoots with studio lights that I was trying out. I am also looking at revamping my websites. This blog will probably stay much the same but I’d like to put a proper website to show case my work in front of it. I’ve been trying out a couple of wordpress themes and layouts and I think I’ve settled on one that I like and will use so hopefully I’ll get a new site up at a related url in the next few weeks.
As a result I didnt have much time to work on a post this month but I did find one image that I thought was apt for the month of political protest that has been May. This was taken after a large protest outside Confederation Building. An old man stopped at the wall overlooking the city all on his own to rest and enjoy the sunshine for a few minutes.
Newfoundland just had it’s first of what are likely to be several austerity budgets and having gone through Irish austerity I have to say this is the austerity budget to beat all austerity budgets. I won’t go into details here because there are just so many things wrong with this budget that I could rant for pages and still not have covered everything. I’ll sum it up by saying if you ever wanted to see a budget that could make you wish for the warm loving embrace of the International Monetary Fund this is it. It’s enough to get Newfoundlanders out to protest in their hundreds and thousands, which for a place where protest attendance is usually numbered in single digits shows that the Liberal government may have overestimated how far they can push the ordinary people.
It’s been a busy few weeks so I haven’t had a chance to take many photos for the blog. Here’s one I took a few weeks ago when the pond was still frozen enough to walk on. Some guy went ice fishing, which is brave for two reasons. One it’s ice fishing and two the pond doesn’t look like one you would want to eat fish from. I didn’t see him catch anything and he didn’t fall through, at least not while I was watching so it probably all worked out for the best in the end.
