Canadian Architecture and the Delta Stone Mill

Whenever I head out of town I always have my camera with me, as you never know when a photo opportunity will present itself even travelling well-worn routes. But I must admit that there are times when travelling down the road that I realize too late that I should have stopped. I have gotten better as I do try to stop more often, but for some reason I still miss opportunities. I really need to listen more to that inner voice.

Leaving a friend’s place early one morning, with the top down which makes sightseeing that much easier, I came across a building I had seen many times before. But this morning with the early light and the rich greenness of the late spring landscape this building seemed to beg to be photographed and I did listen.
While I’m not an architectural expert, I do remember that there is really very little true Canadian architecture, at least historical. The one item that did stand out in my memory was the Canadian Barn as pictured above. The main architectural feature being the double angled roof structure.

It was good to see a farm structure that was still showing that there was some life still left in that old building. It even had a fresh coat of red paint. What could be more Canadian. In the unreduced version it is easier to see the fine details of the flowers in the tall grass. If you scan carefully you will notice another red building peeking through the trees.




A little further down the dirt road was a more typical farmhouse rendition, at least in eastern Ontario, of what we have come to expect of old farm buildings. There is lots of character but not very liveable. I should probably ask permission one day to try and photograph some images form inside those dusty and dilapidated rooms. Nothing like a little dust in the air with sunbeams to create instant impact.

Delta Stone Mill

In the village of Delta they have restored the old mill that produced flour for the local inhabitants many years ago. As part of their restoration work they hope to have parts of the mill actually working. This mill is to be on the next Canadian stamp. Unfortunately though, not my image.
The link to the Delta Mill site is here Old Stone Mill

The above is a faux IR image. The orange, yellow, green sliders were set to maximum luminance in ACR. The sky was quite washed out in the morning so I added a gradient to replace the sky and create more of a normal IR sky (dark). The darker sky highlights the white foliage and lighter building better.
This is almost as captured but I did slightly increase the yellow and green luminance.

Digital Storage Solution

Costco in Canada has a very effective external storage solution. It is a Western Digital 2TB Drive that is mirrored as RAID 1, to give you an effective storage of 1 TB. The benefits of this type of solution is that should one drive fail and as far as I know all drives will eventually fail, there is still one drive that will still work. No permanent failure unless a major catastrophe such as lightning or huge power surge. There is software for automatic backups but I don’t use it in this mode. Cost is $309.00 CDN.

I will be away next week on a 5-day oil painting “en plein air” workshop in Lyn Ontario. This is my first time taking any type of workshop and the weather should be good for most of the time. While this is a small village there is an old mill and I will bring my camera because at least this item should be able to make some good images.

Niels Henriksen