Niagara Falls abstraction

From this date a year ago, here’s an abstract view of Niagara Falls.

Vaguely related quotation for today: “Ce monde-ci est un vaste naufrage; sauve qui peut; mais je suis bien loin du rivage!” “This world is a vast shipwreck; save yourself if you can; but I’m very far from the shore!” Voltaire wrote those words in a letter in 1754. Unfortunately this quotation often circulates on the Internet in a reworked form with a modern Pollyanna-ish addition about singing in the lifeboats that reverses the sense of what Voltaire said in his letter.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Again a bird and Niagara Falls without the falls

On July 25th we stayed on the American side of Niagara Falls late enough to get a colorful sky while walking back to our car. And so ends the series of pictures from our visit to Niagara Falls.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Not many people at Niagara Falls

Okay, so this post’s title is misleading; in fact hordes of tourists were at Niagara Falls when we visited on July 25th. Nevertheless, not many people at Niagara Falls photograph the plants there, but you could count on me to get a few botanical pictures. The first one shows swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) and yarrow (Achillea millefolium). In the second photo you’re seeing fruit clusters on a staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina).

Thanks to horticulturalists at the New York State Parks Department for identifying the species of the milkweed and the sumac. I didn’t ask them to try to figure out the identity of the tree whose remains you see standing below; perhaps it was another sumac.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Two gulls at Niagara Falls on July 25th

I took the first picture from the Canadian side in the morning and the second from the American side near sundown, each time with the lens zoomed to its maximum focal length of 400mm. Both birds spoke to me. Take that figuratively and you’re all right; believe it literally and you’re gullible.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

American Falls in warm light

Whether you call it late afternoon or early evening, the warm light near 7PM on July 25th enhanced Niagara’s American Falls. The dark area across the upper right is the embankment on the Canadian side of the Niagara River that we’d visited earlier in the day. I’ve added another view as a reminder of the way different vantage points and compositions change the feel of a scene. The black specks in the second image are distant birds.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Two birds soaring at Niagara Falls on July 25th

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Inanimate and animate on the brink of the abyss

So it’s our first close approach to Niagara’s American Falls on July 25th, and I’m noticing a tree limb on the brink of the waterfall. Eppur non si muove, and yet it doesn’t move, despite the rushing water.

And these Canada geese are calmly sure of themselves so close to the abyss:

Thanks to Shannon Westveer for identifying the birds.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Falling into abstraction

On July 25th in Niagara Falls, Ontario, I took many pictures—hardly surprising for one of the world’s natural wonders. Back in Texas a few weeks later I sorted through the photographs, seeing for the first time in detail what I’d managed to capture. In the images for which I’d used a telephoto lens zoomed to its maximum length of 400mm, clouds of spray had often masked details, pushing some of the photographs toward and into abstraction. Pictures like the one below reminded me of seascapes by the English painter J.M.W. Turner.

Notice that unlike the pictures in the introductory Niagara Falls post a few days ago, these are strictly nature photographs and show no people or human elements at all.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

The first shall be last

The first and mightiest of the waterfalls we visited during our trip to the Northeast is now the last to put in an appearance here. On the morning of July 25th we left the Toronto area, came around the west end of Lake Ontario, and in under an hour and a half found ourselves at Niagara Falls. People generally consider the Ontario side more impressive than the New York side because they get to stand right at the edge of the place where the Niagara River pours over a long curving cliff to form Horseshoe Falls.

Skylon Tower

Because Niagara Falls is such a tourist magnet, I decided to do something unaccustomed today by showing pictures that prominently include human elements along with natural ones. Intermittent posts over the next couple of weeks will feature views of nature in its own right at Niagara Falls.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman