the 2007 poster
Near Thurso QC. A livestock feeder moved every few weeks leaving rings of trampled earth as evidence of where it once stood.
A "kiss" in a field of grain near Cambridge, ON. This pattern was likely formed when the farmer sowing this field avoided a soft wet area.
Near Thurso QC a tractor raking hay into long lines captured my attention. Suddenly these two ravens joined me in a nearby thermal.
In a wetland on the North side of Ottawa River in Gatineau, QC across from Orleans, ON. With no perspective providing scale some have surmised this a satellite photo, others have likened it microscopically to an amoeba. The colour and texture of this unexplained pattern - is it natural or man-made - change with the seasons.
Conveyor belts at the Thurso QC pulp mill moving wood chips such as those piled in a cone on the right. This is an intermediate step in the processing of logs into pulp and paper.
From just the right altitude and angle the sun reflects back from saturated mud flats adjacent to a stream in Ryanville near Lac-Ste-Marie, QC. The brightness in strong contrast to the black of the stream and the shadows of the snags that have not yet fallen to join their bleached neighbours.
The industrial effluent ponds situated between the pulp mill in Thurso, QC and Ottawa River. Although many Canadians are familiar with the odour emanating from this and similar ponds, when asked most viewers have not been able to identify them. Instead the warm brown tones have been likened to mocha cappuccino.
No, this is not a tropical island. It is a gravel bar in quarry near Merrickville, ON. The birds are Canada Geese.
Rows of square hay bales casting shadows and leaving impressions near Navan, ON.
Precisely spaced rows of corn split with geometric precision by a set of power poles, under which, ironically, some vestige of natural vegetation flourishes. The less than perfect merging of the rows suggest that the operator might, many months before, have proceeded from the background to the foreground unable to perfectly match the line laid before he reached the poles. This field is in the vicinity of Stittsville, ON
Urban sprawl in Oshawa, ON. There is not a single person visible on this early summer afternoon. This scene is interchangeable with the outskirts of almost any urban centre.
Near Buckingham QC, this tree stands in aesthetic perfection in balance with its own shadow, the land-form and texture around it.
A tractor raking hay into long rows near Thurso, QC.
In the vicinity of Navan, ON this is some kind of earth or gravel processing facility in which windrows of red earth merge through bright green algae growth into water shaded by darker green algae.
A graveyard in Lowe, QC. The monument to each person made prominent by its shadow.
Gravel processing facility on the north side of Ottawa River in Gatineau, QC. Except for their abrupt angles the patterns formed by the flow of raw materials through industrial systems are akin to the patterns of natural biological systems.
These are hummocks, small knolls of vegetation in wetland that stretches along much of the North side of the Ottawa River between its confluence with the Gatineau River and Papineauville, QC. This area has a great range of textures and colours corresponding to the great breadth of ecosystems that it covers.
Log truck and grapple about to unload more raw logs for the Thurso, QC pulp mill. The immense piles of logs provide a sense of scale to the sheer size of and immense resource consumption of industrial wood processing facilities.
