Determined to go out walking on this bright, cold Sunday in January, I put on long underwear, my big coat, and a scarf. I took along my small camera because I can easily carry it in my coat pocket and keep it warm with my hands. I wanted to catch opening day of the canal skating season.
On my way to the canal I saw this Smart car. I don’t know what Room to Move is up to but I don’t think I’ll google them, because that might spoil my theory that they do moving jobs by strapping your stuff to the top of a Smart car.
I’m no skater, but I really like it that people skate on the Rideau canal. For me it links us back to those famous Brueghel paintings from 16th century Belgium.
Here’s the canal as it looked today.
This is Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap.
Brueghel’s son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, also painted skaters.
Notice the guy that fell through the ice. Nowadays we have a paramedic-mobile at the ready for such mishaps.
I think Pieter the Younger just made up the guy that fell through the ice. Otherwise you’d have to ask yourself why he didn’t run down and save him, or at least start yelling for somebody else to save him. Then once he was saved he wouldn’t have been there to be painted.
Come to think of it, just imagine those guys sitting out in the snow at their easels with their scarves and gloves on trying to paint. Maybe they had such great memories they just had to look at the scene and then they could go back to their warm studio and paint it.
Tech note: The primitive digital cameras in use in the 16th century had a resolution of barely one pixel. Pieters the elder and younger would have had to take one million one-pixel photos and stitch them together with silk thread to approximate even a low-resolution photo of today. It is unlikely that the Brueghels used this technique, although Vermeer probably did.
And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. ;)
Skaters
Determined to go out walking on this bright, cold Sunday in January, I put on long underwear, my big coat, and a scarf. I took along my small camera because I can easily carry it in my coat pocket and keep it warm with my hands. I wanted to catch opening day of the canal skating season.
On my way to the canal I saw this Smart car. I don’t know what Room to Move is up to but I don’t think I’ll google them, because that might spoil my theory that they do moving jobs by strapping your stuff to the top of a Smart car.
I’m no skater, but I really like it that people skate on the Rideau canal. For me it links us back to those famous Brueghel paintings from 16th century Belgium.
Here’s the canal as it looked today.
This is Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap.
Brueghel’s son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, also painted skaters.
Notice the guy that fell through the ice. Nowadays we have a paramedic-mobile at the ready for such mishaps.
I think Pieter the Younger just made up the guy that fell through the ice. Otherwise you’d have to ask yourself why he didn’t run down and save him, or at least start yelling for somebody else to save him. Then once he was saved he wouldn’t have been there to be painted.
Come to think of it, just imagine those guys sitting out in the snow at their easels with their scarves and gloves on trying to paint. Maybe they had such great memories they just had to look at the scene and then they could go back to their warm studio and paint it.
Tech note: The primitive digital cameras in use in the 16th century had a resolution of barely one pixel. Pieters the elder and younger would have had to take one million one-pixel photos and stitch them together with silk thread to approximate even a low-resolution photo of today. It is unlikely that the Brueghels used this technique, although Vermeer probably did.
And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. ;)