At this time last year I didn’t have a blog. And I hadn’t yet found the wonderful world of passionate photographers/writers/creative individuals out there blogging their hearts out.

Wow. What. an. amazing. and. happy. discovery!

If you’ve visited my blog at all this year, I sincerely thank you. If you’ve taken the time to leave a comment, you’ve done me an honour. I do read all comments, and as much as possible, I try to visit your blogs to get to know you and share some appreciative comments on your work. I truly respect the effort it takes to maintain a blog and keep it fresh and relevant.

In 2013, I hope to discover more…about you…about me…about blogging, and about photography, creativity and self-expression. I know that many of you are on similar journeys, and I so look forward to the riches you will share with the world in 2013.

Cheers to all of us!

I love a little Ella Fitzgerald at this time of the year…Maybe you do too.

We’ve had a huge snowfall in eastern Ontario and things are looking very “White Christmas”y.

I’ve been out and about with my camera. I hope to share some images this week.

In the meantime, I hope the spirit of Christmas touches your heart and the magic of the season is sprinkled over your days and is never far away throughout the new year.

Thank you so much for spending some of your time with me in 2012 and sharing some of yourself.

The Shortest Day

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Susan Cooper

Linking to Kat Sloma’s Exploring with a Camera

This photo was taken in Clare Park, a gem of a park in central Ottawa (Ontario, Canada). One of my dear friends recently organized a time for neighbours to come together to decorate one of the trees in the park. She calls it the Charlie Brown tree. I captured a few photos of it yesterday and it is just delightful.

In the spring and summer you can often find my friend in the park planting hostas and shrubs and other plants that have been donated to beautify the park. Her love and energy have helped to make it into a lush oasis and place for fun and repose. With infectious enthusiasm, she has rallied many to make a huge difference to the neighbourhood.

This is the Comfort Maple, thought to be the oldest sugar maple in Canada. It is probably more than 500 years old.

This tree has special significance for my family. My father, my mother, my sister and I have all photographed it over the years — in all the different seasons. Any time we have visited it, we have been awestruck by it, and it has shared with us some of its strength.

I think about what this tree has been alive through — some of the most horrific events of modern history, as well as some of the most hopeful and exciting. It was here long before anything we now recognize as North America.

Through it all, it has continued to grow — to hold firmly onto the ground, to take in the light, to burst into amazing colour, to delight many, to shed its leaves and retreat into itself over winter, only to bud again in the spring. It has repeated this cycle hundreds of times. We who live now have such a partial  picture of life — touching a tree like this helps us to take a longer view.

When I recently photographed the Comfort Maple, it was December and the tree was naked, silent and sober looking. When my sister, Elena Galey-Pride, who lives not too far away, photographed it earlier in the fall, it was dressed in glorious and exuberant colour. (She captured the beautiful images in the gallery below.) But both times, it appeared strong and determined, rooted to the earth — its very soul a part of the land it inhabits.

This tree, which is located in North Pelham, is called the Comfort Maple because it is on the land of the Comfort family.

I have been drawn to looking at pictures of the tree this weekend as I grapple with the heartbreaking loss of life in Connecticut. I can’t help but think of all the other brutal, inhuman acts being suffered by by fellow humans all over the world — the very young, the very old and all ages in between — things that go on every day and are not covered 24/7.

But I also have to think like a tree and know that there are trillions of acts of kindness and bravery and deep compassion happening at the very same time. Humans who reach out to their brothers and sisters in recognition that we are all completely and profoundly interconnected. I find a small measure of comfort there.

This was one of the very first textured flowers I ever attempted. Call it beginner’s luck, but it came out fairly well in spite of my lack of technique and rudimentary grasp of Photoshop and layers. But I just remember having so much fun creating it. And today it is still a personal favorite and one of my most popular pieces on Flickr.

I think it will always be important to me because it gave me a hint of what was possible with photography. It was the beginning of a new and exciting direction that I’m still exploring and learning about. I’m hanging this work in the gallery over at Photo Art Friday which this week features our favorite or best pieces of photo art. I can’t wait to see what else is hanging there!

and the moon rises, so beautiful it 
makes me shudder, makes me think about
time and space, makes me take
measure of myself: one iota
pondering heaven. Thus we sit,

I thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s 
perfect beauty and also, oh! How rich
it is to love the world. 

Mary Oliver

There’s nothing like the time around twilight for taking pictures. There is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. The light transforms from gold to blue, from warm to cool, from real to surreal. I am often surprised when I look at images I make during this time of day. The camera picks up tones that my eye did not notice.

I was out walking on the shore of the St. Lawrence River today, near the Fort Wellington Lighthouse at Prescott. I had intended to photograph the lighthouse, which had been converted from a windmill and was the site of a key battle in the War of 1812.

But then, as so often happens to me, I was drawn to the water. The sun had set but it was still light enough to see. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time. I gingerly climbed down the slippery wooden steps and made my way out onto the rocky shore.

I first faced the direction where the sun had been, leaving an apricot-coloured smear behind and tried to capture the overall vista as well as some of the details. Then I turned and looked back toward the bridge to the United States. And there it was, the almost-full moon, glowing in its reflected light, suspended high over the bridge, echoed in the globe-like lamps lining the span. I tried to hold onto it in my photograph.

The air was chill and the scene was still. The blue hour had worked its particular magic. I couldn’t help but take a measure of myself, as Mary Oliver writes, as one iota pondering heaven. And then, as night started to fall, the last of the day’s glow illuminated my way as I retraced my steps back to where I had come from.

Today, I’m linking up with Lissa Forbes’ Walk and Click Wednesdays. This week Lissa focuses on “light” in all its many meanings. And why not drop over and see what’s happening at This or That Thursdays.