Nest Story

Last Saturday morning my friend Chad and I were in the living room when He noticed a robin was building a nest in the apple tree directly in front of the living room window. We watched it for a few minutes make trip after trip with some bits and pieces and slowly the nest was forming.

Over the next few days I kept my camera nearby and made some images as the robin moved in and started keeping the eggs warm. The mama robin was there day in and day out and even had some pesky black-capped chickadees drop by for a visit.


Late Wednesday night there was a nasty thunder and lightning storm, Thursday morning I saw the nest was empty but hoped all was well...

but when I looked closer there were two busted eggs in the grass below the tree:(

I climbed the tree to look inside the nest in case there might have been another egg but, alas the nest was and still is empty.

Perhaps the mama will come back and try again...

Moth!

A friend of Nannette's folks found a huge cecropia moth that couldn't fly* and thought of Ben's love all things creepy, crawly and slimy from a conversation she once had with him. She brought the moth to Memere et Pepere and they couldn't wait to show it to Ben so they hopped in the car and brought it over. Ben took it with him for the last day of school, where it was quite a hit with his classmates.



After lunch that day we brought the moth to the backyard and set it free on a branch were it remained the rest of the day. In the morning it was gone, perhaps in search of a mate.

*Cool facts:

With a wingspan of 5 to 6 inches, the cecropia moth (Hyalophora cecropia) is the largest North American moth. It is a member of the family Saturniidae. Cecropia moths are often referred to as silkworm moths.

Although these moths are common throughout North America, you don't often see them because they fly only at night.

Cecropia moths do not live long (about two weeks) because the adult cecropia cannot eat. In fact, they don't even have a mouth or proboscis! The only purpose of the adult stage is to mate and lay eggs.

Males cecropia moths have been marked and are known to have flown over seven miles in search of the wind-born female pheromone scent plume.

Fernwood in Colour

The Family and I went for a day trip to visit my folks in PEI on Victoria Day. The first image was made during what seemed the only 30 seconds of sunlight from the whole weekend.

This second image was made about an hour later near the beach in the quieter, overcast light.

Blackclip turns 3

Three years ago today, I started this blog not quite knowing where I would go with it. It was a "Walk to Far" . I'm still on my way to "far" but getting there is half the fun.

Project 40 IV: Shadow Self Portraits

For the last several months I have been making shadow self portraits in the various places I have been. I see them as a placemark, of where I have been either physically or spiritually, or both. I have come to view them as an ephemeral version of an Inukshuk expressed in the language of light. This series were all made during project 40.

On a more technical note, no tripod was used and there is no photoshop retouching involved. How is it that my hands are free?....

New Look

It's springtime! Time to open some windows, put some wash on the line and I thought what better time to spruce up the look of this blog. I wanted to update the look and feel and make finding archived posts a bit easier. It is also set up with wider screen realestate just to make the playground a little larger.

This image was made this past summer in Berwick, N.S.

Update: I decided to make use of this new canvas and updated some of the 2007 posts to improve the presentation of the images .

Project 40 III: Five Islands Panoramic

This image was created by stitching 4 images together. The beach had a great view of Five Islands and the light was wonderful. If the tide was a bit lower, it felt like we could walk out to one of the islands, but... I did'nt want to get the Coast Guard involved with project 40!

Project 40 II: Two from Bass River

Images were made, wine poured and pizza consumed, fun was had by all. Project 40 was quite sucessful.
I also came home with a cold, so it did slow down posting some of the results of my "seeing"

Here are two images made in the late afternoon sun in Bass River, N.S. Through the window is my pal Shannon. The weather both days was great.

More images and a facelift to this blog's design coming soon...

Project 40

Well, it's official. Today I turn the big four-oh. For my birthday, Nannette is sending me off for a photo weekend this Saturday and Sunday. I will be heading of to Parrsboro - Upper Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia area with my pal Shannon, who incidently was present for my 20th birthday. The next series of photo posts will be from what He has dubbed "Project 40". Keeping my fingers crossed for some good spring weather.

Cape Enrage V: Wide view

This image from the Cape Enrage trip I saw as more of a wide view. It is processed as a "split-tone" black and white.

Cape Enrage IV: Surf Sequence Redux

I revisted the sequence images and thought I would sandwich them together into one image. It almost feels like a surf x-ray to me.

Photo PocketMod from Lightroom

This is a Photoshop Lightroom project to make a photo PocketMod with any 8 photos using the Lightroom print Module along with a PDF print driver such as cutePDF and the PDF to PocketMod generator found at pocketmod.com . What's a pocketmod you say? well it's a nifty customizable booklet that is made with one cut and a series of folds using one sheet of paper.

This method should also work in many other organizing applications that allow printing of multiple files, such as Picasa or PS Elements.