I spent Christmas in Kamloops, the first time in nearly twenty years that I was away from home for the holidays. I’ll write more about that in another post, but thought I’d share one event with you now, just as a New Year’s bonus.
One of the things I did with my family and my sister’s extended family was to travel in a small mass (only a dozen of us this time) to the Wildlife Park east of Kamloops. Every year, the Wildlife Park is bedecked with lights, and it’s been a tradition in my brother-in-law’s family to visit the park every Christmas Eve. In years past, the park held an interdenominational Christmas Eve service, but that apparently doesn’t happen any more, so we went a few days after Christmas. My Mum and I were happy to join in because this event reminds us, and my sister, of similar family visits to Christmas light displays at the Park & Tilford gardens (attached to a local brewery) in North Vancouver when my sister and I were kids. At that point, my aunt and both sets of grandparents were often with us for this event.
This time, the ostensible reason for the trip to see the lights was rather too young to be able to do much more than stare in bemusement. At only eleven months old, my great-nephew doesn’t have much aesthetic sense. He had absolutely no comment to make about any of it. And talk about a babe in swaddling clothes: the poor child couldn’t move at all, stuffed as he was in multiple layers of outer gear.
In my childhood, the lights were just lights, in beautiful combinations of colours, but just lights. Now, lights have to be more than just lights, it seems. The Wildlife Park has gone in for lights arranged in configurations of images from popular culture, everything from ET to Charlie Brown and his gang to Noah’s ark, wildlife of Canada, leaping orcas, swinging orangutans and the twelve days of Christmas. I suppose this development makes sense, given that this display is geared more toward children than adults, but I didn’t have much interest in photographing these icons of our age.
I started off by taking some uncomplicated, rather dull shots of the lights that were just colours rather than themes, the first being the first photo in this post. Here are a few others.
I took a couple of snaps of my Mum and sister and brother-in-law for the family photo album.
I did like the distortions in these reflections in the pond below, particularly with the silhouetted ducks in the second shot, though they're admittedly difficult to see.
But as I continued to walk and snap photos, I noticed that every now and again, when my hand wasn’t steady, I’d get some interesting effects. A “mistake” photo like the one below, seemed to suggest some possibilities for playing with light.
The rest of the time I shot entirely randomly as I walked, without stopping to focus or frame the photos at all. And I’m pretty happy with the weird results I got.
How fun is that? Fountains and splashes and sprays of light. Even some squiggles that suggest light-filled calligraphy, perhaps.
Thank you, small great-nephew, for being the prompt for something I would never have considered on my own, visiting a display like this and having a bit of a revelation about what I could do with my camera. And the opportunity to reflect on the huge appeal of light at this time of the year. Aren’t we drawn to it? Isn’t it satisfying?
After offering you more than 3,000 words on feeding and watering horses in the winter in my last post, I thought you might enjoy a reprieve: some photos, a few words, some light.
Soon I will publish a post about the highlight of the past few weeks, actually the highlight of the last year. Stay tuned.
Happy New Year.
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