Infrared revisited

I don't post a lot here these days. I guess I've really fallen out of the habit of just writing up everything I've seen, everything I've done, etc., etc... which, in a way, is a shame; because I look back at the last half of the previous decade and really see how I was spending my time and what I was doing with my life. A diary, of sorts, and I seem to have lost the desire to take the time. I regret it. No promises. I guess the best I can do is the best I can do...

But anyway, blah blah blah; the standard "sorry I haven't posted anything for a while" apologies out of the way; here's what I'm actually interested in this morning.

One of the things I do, sporadically, is take pictures and videos of the changing (or changed) landscape around here. Given that I've been doing this ten years now, or so, it's actually beginning to pay dividends that even I can now appreciate. I have a dash cam and not quite a month back, P-Doug and I were up in Bolton where considerable changes are happening to an area northwest of town that we know and love well. This morning I've been processing the video. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. :)

 

One of the many dated folders of "The Millennium Project"

In the process of doing it, I was strolling through the old photos, which are arranged by date. I noticed in one of the folders, I had a few infrared photos. Now, I've had digital infrared cameras since March of 2006; all of them Canon reconditioneds... G1 (subsequently sold to a friend), S70 (backup), and now an S80. I probably have several thousand infrared images... most of them nothing special, once you get over the fact that they're, y'know, infrared and all. But some of them, maybe one in every 25 or so, really do stand out. If the photo is taken between May and October, and it's a bright, sunny day with just a few interesting clouds in the sky, and you catch the angle of the sun on the leaves against the sky or water just right (and I still haven't put much thought into what that actually entails), you can really get some shots that you can really stare at for minutes and feel like you're not really on Earth when you do.

I spent maybe 15 minutes rolling through some of the stuff and picked out about a dozen images, then touched them up just a bit to boost the contrast (IR photography does have a tendency toward being a bit hazy). Other than that, I haven't altered them.

These following six photos were taken Canada Day, July 1, 2007 at Scenic Caves in Collingwood, Ontario. To my real surprise, I find I never blogged about this; especially given how many ethereal photos I took that day. I suppose I meant to at the time but never got around to it. One of the reasons might be because almost immediately afterward I and P-Doug and G took off for several days in Ottawa, and I did blog extensively about that.

What I really like about these photos is how much like, well, I guess a stereotypical idea of Heaven they seem to represent. Sunny. Serene. Timeless; even breathless. Everyone appearing to be dressed in white (natural fabrics tend to reflect infrared wavelengths; it's important to plants to be able to do this or they'd overheat). Oddly enough it was a surprisingly cold day for July; as I recall, it felt more like early spring than early summer. The day was unsettling somehow; I still don't think of it as joyful or contenting, and I'm still not sure why. But the photos I took in infrared light that day still impress me.

A few shots from Twelve Mile Creek; specifically, the Dundas Street bridge over it in Halton. I love how the water is black as ink but the trees look almost snow-covered. The abandoned supports once held a two-lane bridge that spanned the valley from the early 1920s till the late 1940s, when it was removed and replaced by the current four-laner (whose own days are numbered, I think, given the work recently completed at Sixteen Mile Creek not far down the road). The interesting thing is that not only did these supports survive, but within the past year or so they've been put back into use carrying a large water main, and even the bridge span was resurrected in the same original style (though narrower than two lanes). I'm hoping they eventually open it to pedestrians; it would seem a real shame not to.

Finally, a few shots from my second expedition under the 407 to the closed, cut-off stretch of Burnhamthorpe Road at Sixteen Mile Creek. These shots were actually taken by P-Doug, whom I asked to man the infrared camera for me that day. The low angle wheat stalks shot that ends this exhibition has always dazzled me and still fills me with good-natured envy. I only wish I could claim that shot, and the eye to compose it, as my own, but credit where credit is due.

First trek in 3D

Just about a week ago now, a lens I sent away for for my Rebel XT arrived. It's the Loreo 3D Lens-in-a-Cap, and basically, it's a beam-splitter that takes two slightly different angles of the same view and conveys them to the sensor of the camera. What you get is an image with two essentially identical views, left and right, side-by-side I the same image. Taken at the same instant, they capture a moment in time that, when they're superimposed together (like, say, by crossing your eyes slightly), recreate the view in three dimensions. It's a simple, but effective and inexpensive means of stereography.

(Incidentally, before I really get rolling here, let me suggest to you that if you want to see any of the photos here in detail, particularly the stereographic ones, you'd probably do best to view them large. This can done by clicking on any of the images here... or better yet, click this link which will open a new window to my Flickr site where you can peruse them and others without disrupting the reading of the blog here. The trick, by the way, in case you don't know, is to cross your eyes slightly and bring the two sides of the image together, and when they're close enough together your brain will suddenly "click" the two of them into a single, three dimensional whole. One last note: anything you see with a white dividing bar up the middle is actually generated from two separate photos, taken with either the S80 or the S70. Ones with no divider and just a blurry merge are genuine one-shot 3D images taken with the XT and the Loreo 3D Lens-in-a-Cap.)

This summer just past, I became interested in a couple of old bridges on Dundas Street (a.k.a. Highway 5) in Halton Region; one over Sixteen Mile Creek and one over Twelve Mile Creek, which is also known at Bronte Creek. They've both been removed in favour of newer bridges, but the pillars that once carried those spans across their respective valleys are still there (in one case, at least in part). I visited the Bronte Creek bridge with P-Doug in July, though the shots I took then were from the existing bridge and from the old western, poison ivy-strangled abutment of the former bridge... I didn't take any shots of the pillars from down in the valley itself that day. As for the former six pillars once to be seen at Sixteen Mile Creek, they're now down to two... the other four have been torn out in recent months to make room for the newer-still bridge about to recover their course (and be twinned with one that will mean the destruction of the currently-existing span there, if I've understood the plan correctly). I suppose at any time in the past sixty years or so I might have wandered down there and seen those six tall, slab-like pillars standing like a row of dominoes, but by the time I realized they were there, most of them weren't. Well, at least I made the journey there — three times now, because it's under construction and the view changes week to week. It was that very fact that prompted me to want to record that change for people like me in the future who won't have had the chance to see it for themselves... and then to start recording how things look around here more generally. All this led to a desire to shoot it in three dimensions, and so I ordered the lens, and there... now you're up to speed.

So like I said, the lens arrived last week, and I knew the first thing I wanted to do was go back out to those bridges and record them in three dimensions. I asked P-Doug to come along. I was hoping for bright skies, because even with the limited work I'd already done with stereography, I've noticed that a strong contrast really enhances the effect.

No such luck, at least starting out. We got to Bronte Creek, and at P-Doug's suggestion, parked on the north side and began to wander down into the valley under the bridge. It was gloomy, but I started shooting anyway. In addition to the Rebel XT with the Loreo lens, I also had the S80 and the S70 there, and I was alternating between taking genuine one-shot 3D pictures and "cha-cha" two-image versions with the other two cameras. Something I can only manage this way, it occurred to me, was 3D infrared photography, which I've done now. I wonder if that was a first? :)

A couple of guys showed up and, while they weren't rude about it, they kept getting into the shots. They were trying to get down into the valley. Then they left. A few moments later, we were in their way when they started driving a red jeep down to the river! What for, we never did figure out; they were there less than ten minutes and then they took off again. But I got a number of nice shots down there of the valley, the pillars of the old bridge and the supports of the modern one, and then some shots similar to those from last summer, taken from the new bridge and the abutment of the old lost bridge itself.

I guess we were there a little over half an hour. On our way out, we bumped into a guy who was all suited up to go fishing in the river. Six weeks ago I was swimming naked in the Humber, but here we are in mid-November and this guy was all decked out in rubber to the top of his head so he wouldn't die of hypothermia standing in Bronte Creek. That's progress...

Smashed cell phone abandoned on the crash barrier of the Dundas Street bridge.

The three shots below were taken from the western abutment of the former Dundas Street bridge, now just a platform overlooking the valley below...

We headed along Dundas Street eastward to Sixteen Mile Creek, where construction of a new pair of bridges is underway. I guess there was a time when you could just turn and drive down into the park, but right now that's not an option. We did walk down that road into it, once we parked in the adjacent suburb. Those two pillars I'd seen before were still standing, but the new ones that will carry the next span across the valley in a year or so are already taking very visible shape. I keep wondering if those last two remaining pillars will survive, and as what, and for what. It's my self-appointed task to see. And record.

By this time, the sun had come out at last, and I played around with the new lens a little more. I took pictures of simple things; the grass, the edge of the creek, the flood plain, the sides of the valley, the bridge itself in the distance. That's important, because in a couple of years, that bridge itself will be gone, just like the one it replaced. Someday people will wonder what it looked like, just as I wonder about the old one long gone. Hopefully, I'll be able to show them.

The flood plain was, 150 years ago, a village; it's now a park. There's a little pagoda down there that talks about the town, wildlife, and stuff like that. I stood back and tried to photograph it. It was at that point that P-Doug pointed at the new lens, which has three focal settings, and gently wondered if I had it on the right one. I didn't, actually; it was set for 1.5 m "close-ups", if they can be called that. There's a setting for 5 m, and another for infinity. I told him that I hadn't seen much difference between the three settings, but I decided what the hell and adjusted it appropriately. Well, once I got home and viewed them, I realized that most of what I'd shot till then wasn't bad, but was kind of soft-focus. Not really impressive. The shots after P-Doug's comment are sharp and definitely more striking. It's immediately obvious because the first "good" shot follows one that's essentially identical, except fuzzier. So... live and learn, live and learn.

We decided to go, but as it turned out, we ended up spending another half hour there at the eastern foot of the bridge. P-Doug found a way up into the scaffolding for one of the new pillars. I was game to follow, but the means of getting up to the first set of stairs was too daunting for me... I'm not a fan of heights, and I was carrying too much equipment to want to risk crushing it or dropping it. So, I took pictures of him climbing instead, and they were actually pretty interesting once I got home and looked at them.

I wanted to shoot from the level of the lip of the valley, but the shortest route was actually up the edge, rather than back up the road and around the church, and back down the "new" old course of Dundas Street. The way was steep, really steep; something like 60 degrees, I think, and it was just loose gravel and dry clay. Every yard gained meant two feet slipping back, sometimes more. I had this really weird sensation as I struggled with this. I suddenly remembered doing exactly this kind of thing dozens of times as a kid, but it was the kind of knowledge you sort of file away as irrelevant as you enter your teenage years and effectively forget. But I got this "oh yeah" moment of recognition as I tried climbing this stuff, and it was like being 10 again, all that once-practical information bursting forth after being dammed up for decades. More recent hiking experience suggested to me that climbing where there was vegetation — something to hold the soil — was a better idea, so I did that. I sat in the grass near the top for about five minutes, shooting down into the valley. In the meantime, P-Doug climbed the clay and was haunting the riveted undercarriage of the bridge at its eastern anchor. I joined him, and got some very nice shots of the ribbing of the bridge, built so long ago by men now almost certainly gone, with their handiwork itself due to follow in a year or two. But I have recorded it, in three dimensions.

We had a date with beer. We'd decided to cap the afternoon at Bryden's, which is, perhaps, our very favourite pub (mine, anyway), with its only possible competition the salubrious The Bishop and the Belcher near Church and Bloor downtown. Bryden's, on the other hand, is at Jane and Bloor, almost in Etobicoke; we've been to it a half dozen times or so since the start of the summer. But it was no mean feat getting there that Saturday. Heading back into the city on the QEW, we baled at Hurontario because that's where the traffic started. Then we followed along Lakeshore Road to Islington Avenue, up Islington to the Queensway, along the Queensway to Park Lawn Road, up Park Lawn to... its end. We wandered around trying to find Bloor and finally did the unmanly thing and consulted the map (hey, at least we didn’t stop and ask directions!). It took nearly an hour from Sixteen Mile Creek, but finally we parked south of Bloor and walked to the pub.

At Bryden's, some rare local beers are to be had, and we both like Red Leaf, by Great Lakes Brewery. That's what we ordered, in fact; a pitcher. Bryden's also has the best nachos I have ever had, anywhere, in my life, bar none. We got the El Grande with ground beef, jerk chicken, and pulled pork. My God, my mouth is literally watering right now remembering it. We also tried a couple of other Great Lakes beers... one is their seasonal pumpkin beer. I know what you're thinking; yuck! But it was actually very enjoyable... it had hints of cinnamon, nutmeg, and other spices, and I swear to you, had the subtle but definite aroma of pumpkin pie. It was a good, slow, easy-drinking beer. Another we split came in a can; this was Great Lakes' Devil's Pale Ale beer. To me, it tasted very much like their answer to Guinness, however "pale" it was intended to be (I suspect it's intended ironically, actually). The slogan was, "The Devil made me brew it." I kept the can and the coaster.


So, once again, lots of topical conversation lost to the moment, but the grease of the wheels of good times. We headed back to the east side of town, rendez-voused with P-Doug's missus, and all did the roast chicken thing that evening at my place while watching 28 Weeks Later. All told, a fine use of a Saturday.

Twelve and Sixteen

On a couple of websites now I've seen photographs of tall, empty supports for a bridge that isn't there anymore, accompanied by a much larger one that is. I knew it to be in Halton Region on one of the many creeks that breaks the towns up, many of them only bridged at last in the past decade or so. But this was an older one, and I had it in mind that it was the Queen Elizabeth Way bridge over Sixteen Mile Creek. Trouble is, I was there in 1999, right at the base of that bridge, and there were no such remnants. I checked the aerial photos up and down the QEW, even on the Niagara Peninsula, but saw nothing. Could they have been removed? Had I missed my opportunity?

Last week, I happened to check one of those sites on a hunch. Sure enough, it turned out I had the wrong route. It wasn't the QEW. It was Highway 5... Dundas Street, over Twelve Mile Creek (a.k.a. Bronte Creek).

P-Doug came along with me on Saturday morning to check it out. An interesting walk was in the offing as well. Heading north, Burloak Drive (initially on the border between Burlington and Oakville, hence the name) is, as I remembered, closed for a chunk that makes it useless for cars trying to get between Dundas Street and Upper Middle Road, but I figured it should be just the ticket for hikers. To my surprise, when we arrived at the intersection of Burloak Drive and Upper Middle Road, we discovered Burloak had been permanently closed, and very recently. It looked like we wouldn't be dodging much traffic as we walked.


On the right, as we headed north, was the very sharp drop down to Twelve Mile Creek. On our left, through a very narrow line of trees, were the monster homes that have been being built there since around 1990. Oddly enough, about half way to Dundas, we came to a stretch of Burloak Drive that was still open! They had had to build a new access to it from the western subdivision, but it had to be done because a score or so homes still front onto Burloak itself, and those people needed access they couldn't get otherwise now that the road is closed at Upper Middle Road. A couple of minutes' walk through that small, privileged knot of homes and we came to the start of the ancient road closure, the one I had actually anticipated, that has been closed since at least some time in the 80s. There, the road closed in a little to become more of a trail; the decades had seen the course's partial return to nature. Beyond that, it opened up again, to a wider path that represents what was, till recently, the other open end of the road, now itself closed off all the way to Dundas Street. This section I can remember, barely, driving to explore way back around 1990, just to see where it went (nowhere, really).

This brought us to Dundas Street, Highway 5. Not a 400 series highway, but aside from the traffic lights, people pretty much treat it as one. It's on the verge of the countryside in Burlington, but even in Oakville, I've seen the city creep up to it, and then close in around it. What was countryside when I got my license 20 years ago is now the "new" upper fringe of suburban Oakville. Where we were in Burlington, it represented the northern limit... for the moment.

Traffic hurtled along Dundas Street as we made our way out on the sidewalk on the southern side. There, below us, were the pillars that once carried the traffic across the valley, dwarfed by the bridge on which we stood, but their very height and existence underlining just how high up we actually stood above the valley floor. I knew from my reading that those lonely supports carried a bridge was actually the third of four (the fourth being the current on) going back well over a century, I imagine. The third was built in 1921. P-Doug's investigation revealed that the cost of that bridge, back then, was just shy of an astounding $76,000. It's hard to imagine building something like that for less than seven figures, even in the 1920s; the current bridge must be worth tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars for all I know. While not as high or long as the current bridge (which is level with heights on both sides), and requiring drivers to descend a bit to cross and ascend again on the other side, the 1921 bridge must still have been impressive, especially in its day. Heaven knows what simple span down at the level of the creek it actually replaced; it must have seemed like a wonder of the world, out there at the edge of nowhere, one of the few means across back then. It served until 1948, when it was replaced by the current bridge, which was itself expanded to four lanes in 1979.

To me, the pillars look beautiful, seen in a line, long ago relieved of their burden and retired to the role of forget-me-nots. They remind me of fallen cathedrals at the edge of the water. Millions of people must drive by them every year with no idea they're even there.


On our way back, we wandered into the brush a bit to see if we could get to the little platform that was the western approach to the 1921 bridge, which you can just glimpse from the modern one. There was an overgrown slope, and I was curious enough to make my way down. P-Doug sat this one out, which is ironic because in my experience it tends to be him, rather than me, who will push exploration the extra yard. I got a handful of shots and made a climb back up to Dundas Street (path of least resistence), worrying about the suspicious three-leafed plants coating the place since I was barelegged and, moreover, barefooted since I'd come down the slope. I met P-Doug at the junction of Dundas Street and Burloak Drive, and we retraced the course back south to the car. I never did develop an itchy rash, thankfully.

[Oct. 9, 2008 -- I've since learned that the what you're looking at in the shots below -- the green carpeting, the shoots, the vines clinging to the trees -- is in fact a sea of poison ivy.]

[Sept. 20, 2010 -- Actually, no, now that I look at it again, I'm doubtful it is poison ivy. Poison ivy springs off in alternating sets of three, long middle stem bracketed by shorter ones on either side. This stuff has recurring pairs along the stem with just one odd leaf at the end... I don't think that's poison ivy.]


A thirst was upon us. The map indicated that malls nearby were few and far between, but when we got to Great Lakes Blvd. and Rebecca Street, we were greeted with the sight of a new plaza that featured a place called Wild West, apparently specializing in chicken wings. Right of out the 1880s, the sign said "ICE COLD BEER". Sold. We stopped. We did, indeed, have beer. I had a chicken wrap and the guilty pleasure of fries I shared with P-Doug, and he had cajun wings. The menu there was unlike anything I've ever seen. It must have listed 80, 90, 100 different flavours of wings. And the portions you could order them in ranged from a "single" serving of 10, right up to a "Hillbilly Deluxe" serving of a 1000 — the very definition, I think, of conspicuous consumption. It just begged for a shot.


By the time we left, it was early afternoon, and we were still game to visit a place I'd been before. At P-Doug's suggestion, we had on our agenda trekking to a closed part of Burnhamthorpe Road, bisected and isolated in the 90s by the construction of Hwy 407. It's tricky to get to; the first time I was there, I was really just guessing that a tiny creek shown going under the highway might yield a means. It does: an 8'-wide tunnel that was probably constructed to let wildlife in and out. We parked and made our way beside corn rows to the tunnel, then sloshed along for two minutes to the far side.

Also: in May, I acquired a used Canon PowerShot S70 and sent it to Australia to be reconditioned to shoot infrared images (previously I'd been using a Canon PowerShot G1 for this, but the S70 is of higher quality and yields images more than twice as large). As we set out, I asked P-Doug to man the S70, and from here on in, the black and white images you'll see are infrared images taken by him.

P-Doug took this infrared shot of yours truly wading to the end of the tunnel under the 407.



The closed stretch was shorter than I'd remembered it. It must be a trick of the lens; the photos from last time, all I really had to go by, exaggerate the distance by about double. Just after you join the road, there's a section about five feet wide that's been washed out to a depth of about three feet. Oddly enough, there's a large black and orange traffic cone there, to warn off traffic that ought to never arrive (but just might in the form of ATVs). Hornets had made a home in it, unfortunately for P-Doug, who put his hand on it and drew back a finger stung.

P-Doug, as I said, was wielding the infrared camera. When we arrived at the field at the end of Burnhamthorpe overlooking the creek, we separated for a couple of minutes. He waded into the field where he took these poetic shots of wild grass from the hip. Personally, I think they're the best work the day produced; as I said to him, not merely a record of events, but something iconic.


The above four shots show the valley of Sixteen Mile Creek from high above it. The drop off is clifflike, and probably over a hundred feet. It's a beautiful view.


You'd have to look closely to see it but there's a living room chair up in this tree. The first time I saw it, last summer, I imagined some teenagers had put it up there as a joke. Later on it occurred to me that it was up there to give a hunter a perch from which to spot, and shoot, deer.



We followed the road along the way I'd gone before to a large, deep arroyo carved into the land. We went a bit beyond it and found ourselves at the far end of the same field along the line we'd come in on; essentially, we'd travelled a semi-circle; a beautiful walk through the forest. On our return, we found a spot in the grass at the edge of the cliff overlooking the creek, and we settled back to sunbathe for an hour an a half before making our way slowly back down the closed road, under the highway, and then back to town.