Photo above from Iolanda & Dwight
Morning Fog
A slender band of fog covered the tops of surrounding buildings this morning, and by the time I returned from my workout, it had evaporated into the heat.
Sunprints
At the International Center of Photography on the Avenue of the Americas in NYC, I finally found some long sought sunprint paper for sale (along with a pinhole camera kit, hurray, I can't wait to try this!), and in Vancouver, I started to experiment with it.
First, I collected some leaves, branches and pine cones on a walk in Lighthouse Park.
Later, while hanging the laundry outside the backdoor, enjoying the cool breezes and the chirps of hummingbirds alongside the buzz of seaplanes over the harbour, I saw some fluffy dandelions and wondered what they would do to the sunprint paper. I left them out in the sun for a few minutes to see what happens. Pale shadows of the dandelion fluff.
Still working to perfect the sunprint, in Toronto I found a perfect maple leaf and placed it atop the paper in the sunshine, where I promptly forgot about it instead of dunking it in water after the prescribed 1-5 min.
Happy mistake, however, as it was the best one yet, the perfectly outlined maple leaf shape standing out crisply against a nice dark blue background.
Back in Dubai, the sunny locale that first inspired the sunprint purchase, I collected some of the fragrant flowers that we see around the apartment, and placed them out for a longer-than-recommended amount of time (this seems to be the secret, 1 to 5 minutes is what the instructions say, whereas 10 minutes results in good, sharp images).
I love how you can see the overlap of the petals, it's like a subtle watercolour painting. Such a favourite. I will spend the summer looking for other little goodies that can make for interesting sunprints, what a fun project, just how I hoped it would be.
View From A380
I love booking window seats so that I can watch the changing landscape below, but this was my 2nd flight on the doubledecker A380, a majestic plane, and there's no real point to the window seat because the massive wing takes up about 80% of the windowframe.
NA Reunion Tour, Part 3: Toronto
From Vancouver, we flew to Toronto for a few days in one of James' former hometowns. It's a city that I have only explored on a few daytrips many years ago, so I was eager to get the guided tour of all the fun places, like:
College Street, the Islands, Saint Lawrence Market, Kensington Market, Spadina, Queen's Park, Yorkville, Yonge & Eglinton, the tunnels and the Blue Jays!
NA Reunion Tour, Part 2: Beautiful British Columbia
Some of the majestic scenery seen on our travels home to Vancouver.
Two Weeks Later, Lots of Little Changes
Settling back into the routine here in Dubai, there were so many noticeable changes in the landscape during our few weeks of vacation. New billboards, new signs, new improvements on our usual driving routes.
A little too blurry to read, but there was a) new graffiti on the perimeter of the construction site, reading "The Plot Always Thickens" and b) a circular cricket field had been traced in the sand (you can see a portion of it in this photo as well).
In the photo below: An older photo, showing in the upper right-hand corner a portion of an entire set of buildings, the headquarters for construction, the parking area for the managers, and a place where the ubiquitous white buses would line up to pick up the labourers at the end of their shifts.
And now, it's just GONE.
Elsewhere, construction has continued to quickly rise in the sky.
And a bulb that was just sprouting when we left has also shot higher in the sky.
Also, note in the garden photo the Venus flytrap that I planted in my garden today, a sudden stroke of inspiration at the Garden Centre, as it will no doubt be well-fed in our window.
(We came home to a confetti scattering of little tiny gentle flies, dead along the windowsills, having hatched somewhere in our air conditioning ducts during our time away and flown into our apartment towards the beckoning glorious sunshine in the windows. They're not annoying like mosquitos or common houseflies, rather they're little softies. They fly like little seaplanes, apparently struggling to take off and then quickly coming in for a landing. Easily swiped with a hand, they are easy to clear away, but now we'll see if our Venus flytrap can take care of the task. It's like getting a cat in a mouse-ridden apartment.)
NA Reunion Tour, Part 1: Brooklyn, Manhattan, Rutherford
I love little notebooks and journals, and at a favourite stationery store in Granville Island, we found the "One Line A Day" diary, wherein you write a sentence once a day for the next five years. This will be really neat a few years in, when I can compare one day's summary to the previous years.
As there are way too many stories and photos to share from our North America Reunion Tour, I'll copy the daily summaries that I wrote for the NY part of the journey here. Seeing how much we did leaves my breathless once again, what an exciting city, what a terrific reunion back with such great friends!
May 4 - DUBAI TO NYC: Landed at JFK, taxi to Brooklyn Heights, met Shaleen & Ian at S&Shanty's amazing apartment. Subway to Village, High Line walk, Amy's Bread lunch (fake $50!), Tim Hetherington exhibit, Standard Biergarten, Mets game, Delta Club Seats and sleep.
May 5 - NYC: Woke early, James and I walked Brooklyn Heights Promenade to Dumbo, Almondine Bakery. Brunch at Felix, back to High Line, strolled Bleecker, Suresh & Kay joined us, saw Alison. Over to Chuckie's Kentucky Derby party. Dinner @ Momofuku Ssam.
May 6 - NYC: Woke early again, James and I walked to Smith St. Brunch at Spitzer's Corber. Quiet afternoon at Moma. Back to Bowery for drink at The Wren and dinner at Hecho en Dumbo.
May 7 - NYC: Caught bus to Rutherford, did my banking, bus back to Port Authority. Lunch at Amy's Bread, subway to Washington Square, saw Monsieur Lazhar @ Angelika, dinner at Spotted Pig. Photo Institute pinhole camera gift.
