Shelagh's Lens
Bringing Vancouver and the world to inspired travellers
Fire Sky
Those who have lived in an area in which wild fires have consumed trees and buildings may look at this and recall the thickness of the air, or again taste smoke in their throat.
We lived in Kelowna during the time of 2003’s Okanagan Mountain Fire, and this is an image looking westward from our back yard, in the early days before officials attached the “firestorm” designation to the flames. While none of the homes in our immediate neighbourhood caught fire, a number of our kids’ classmates became homeless and a mini construction boom followed over the next year or so.
As might be imagined by this afternoon photo, the lighting and atmospheric conditions in general were off kilter. Within a day or so of this picture, ash began a slow, deceptively gentle rain upon our property. As the fire grew in scale, the evacuation alert became a reality and our neighbourhood took on a Twilight Zone atmosphere when a police cruiser crawled down the road with its driver using a megaphone to order residents to evacuate our homes.
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Constrained
… and yet exploding with nicotania and other vibrant florals that might be found in any gardener’s beds – although perhaps not on the same scale as found here in Versailles!
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Nooks and Crannies
… abound here in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, and one can only imagine trysts past and present. The grounds are striking, both for their grand designs, but also for the simplicity of flower choices to be found within some of the beds.
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Historical Drama
It would be lovely to wander the halls of the Palace of Versailles without an accompanying throng of visitors and, in approaching this staircase, it was a treat to soak up this vision of stonework and light sans fellow travellers.
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Landmark
San Francisco, on the west coast of our continent, is home to many memorable sites, including the Transamerica Pyramid, dressed to kill in crushed quartz and seen here from the waterfront.
The building was designed with both environmental and architectural integrity in mind. While there was opposition to this intrusion on the skyline, optimistic – and accurate – visionaries installed signage around the site in 1969 identifying it as “a San Francisco landmark since 1972”. Locals and tourists alike can thank enlightened civic officials, who enacted a special shadow ordinance that is no doubt at least partially responsible for the obelisk/pyramid shape which, unlike other skyscrapers, doesn’t preclude filtration of air and light to the streetscape below.
If you worked here, you’d want to be comfortable with height. At 48 storeys and 260 meters (853 feet), the building was completed in 1972 and remains the tallest building in northern California. It’s sturdy, too; while the Pyramid wobbled for more than 60 seconds in 1989’s Loma Prieta earthquake (and its uppermost level travelled almost a foot during the quake), there were no significant injuries to either occupants or the building, which received LEED Gold status in 2009 and Leed Platinum status in 2011.
A couple of lesser known tidbits? The building is situated on what was, long ago, the city’s waterfront; city officials came to this conclusion when excavation yielded ship remnants. Its location, the Bay Area, is also home to Laura Macky, a photographer whose work and spirit I admire.
What I appreciate about this image, as much as the significance of the architecture, is the setting framing it. Call me a water baby, for oceans, inlets, bays and so on always steal the show for me, but I also love the repetitive ripples of the dock, flanked by proud, stalwart lamp posts.
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Old Montreal
We’re back to window shopping and playing with reflections today, with a visit to Old Montreal.
My visit to Montreal earlier this year coincided with a tremendous rainfall, and so I particularly appreciated the colourful images of birds in one gallery – and all the more so for their vibrant interfacing with the old stone building kitty-corner to the gallery.
On the same street, Rue St. Denis, Kaliyana offered gorgeous clothes. Then, the next morning, a walk to visit Montreal’s famed Schwartz’s Deli (more on the lovely people there another day) took me to another area of town, and this boutique with a significant statement in plaid – Scotland Forever! Let’s see what today’s referendum brings …
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Concrete Giants
What might a pair of twins from Brazil do over the course of three weeks in the summer in beautiful Vancouver, Canada? Well, if they are talented artists Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, also known as OSGEMEOS (the twins), they participate in the Vancouver Biennale’s public art exhibition and leave the city that much more colourful and interesting.
They also leave locals and tourists grateful for their transformation of six 23 meter (75 feet) tall silos that also serve as tremendous goodwill for Ocean Cement, located just steps from our city’s popular Granville Island Public Market.
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Distortion
Efforts to capture scale sometimes backfire in unintended, but interesting ways – as in this image.
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Vintage
… charm and character, both of which are found in this old perfume bottle.
Some women may recall, as do I, their grandmother’s dressing table with perfumes, jewellery box (we are talking a different era) and so on. The bottle at the left is found on happy display in a lovely friend’s home, and one wonders if her grandmother might be surprised to know that a remnant of her dressing table and era have found a place of honour in the home in which her great grandchildren have been raised.
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Forest Lounge
No, not that kind of lounge. We’re back in the woods again, with ferns circling an old trunk that’s hosting new life. This image is from West Vancouver’s Lighthouse Park, which is home to old growth trees, fresh, clean air and, of course, the lighthouse seen in an earlier post.
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