Central Library, Comrade

Tonight I went to the Richmond Hill Central Library, which is just down the street from where I live. I did not expect much, yet I wound up having an awesome shoot and got some results I'm very happy with. The Mill Pond is getting boring and a new location was just what I needed to spice things up. I found color, and I hope to find more as Fall progresses.

Fire hydrant... Richmond Hill is tough, we chain them down.

Tough and messy; as you can see we leave hoses lying around. Richmond Hill has many fine plants in the downtown core, and the city watering crews need to fill up somewhere convenient.

The bit of weirdness on tonight's outing - a basket.

The Richmond Hill Central Library is an ancient building. I got a chuckle out of the date stamp until I did the math and realized I'm not that young any more.

"I love lamp."

When I first got to the library, I was unimpressed with what I saw. I sat on a bench, and took a long look around me, searching for something to shoot. I started with benches and tried to get neat perspectives, half-imagining there were people sitting on them for portraits. This angle would have made the person small and squished, depending on how they were sitting. I picture old lady by herself.

Old man feeding pigeons. Or maybe squirrels.

As I looked around I started to notice detail, like this colorful moss highlighted by the setting sun. This was the beginning of the good light, but I didn't realize it because it was also very harsh.

And then I found the rotary sun dial. Donated by the Rotary Club. It was made of metal, and the vertical portion was ground brass, I think.

I switched from my 18-200mm to my 105mm macro (putting the 18-200 down face first on some rocks without a cap - I is smart), and got close.

Whatever the metal, it was reflecting beautiful colors from the setting sun. The colors were made more interesting by a tree between the sundial and the sun. Its branches were blowing in the wind and its leaves were disrupting the sun's rays as they moved. No two shots of the sundial were the same color because of the leave's shadows.

Still life macro never really interested me, but I'm looking forward to getting into it over the winter. The colors and detail in this case are fantastic.

I started working with shapes and composition, trying to give the images some flow.

The lines on the dial proved to be awesome depth indicators.

The light only lasted for about 10 minutes, and the best of that light for about three minutes. Near the end the rich bronze colors mellowed to cool blues and yellows.

I liked the circles in this image because it reminded me of water droplet rings.

I took a couple of shots of the setting sun as I walked home.

They're always so hard to pass up!

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.