These are by a French Canadian photographic artist, Denis Collette. I love his use of color, and his approach to his art. He photographs the area surrounding his home, then uses the photographs as inspiration for these impressionistic creations.









"First, the majority of my pictures are taken on my homeland… I use a similar approach as Thoreau… For me, photography is a metaphysical approach… I don’t decide on subjects… it’s the light who decides… and when my heart says… 'OK Woodsman'… I shoot!!! :))"

The wind had been really strong the nite before. A couple of feet of sand accumulated in some places on the boardwalk...



Big chunks of this old pier broke off & washed up on the shore...



There can be a fine line between having an ocean view & being part of the ocean...



Every time a nor'easter blows thru the coastline changes as the ocean claims the land..



No matter what the weather there are surfers who'll go out...



..and crazy fishermen!

Link

There's a path that leads to the river about 5 minutes from my house..



I walked past the steep steps that lead to an area my son & his friends called their 'clubhouse' lol..



There are some playing fields on the other side of the road..



Here's the gazebo where lots of people go to take wedding photos. Anyone who gets a day like this is lucky. I've seen bridal parties freezing their a$$es off in the winter, hair in a whirl & smiles frozen on their faces lol...



I walked down this path..



..crossed the parking lot & sat on a bench looking out over the river.



The water is amazingly blue sometimes...



There's a little lighthouse downriver...


And that's about it. Someone else likes this walk, I was really surprised to find these photos hosted on Flickr. They were taken just a few days ago too, so this is just what it looked like this morning. : )

The title of this blog would seem to be self evident, right? Lol I saw a show on the Animal Planet that featured a guy doing that very thing. The name of the show is 'I Shouldn't be Alive'. Well, no kidding if ya try to creep up on four wild elephants. He lived to tell the following strange tale. The show started off talking about what an adventurous man he is, traveling to all sorts of places, finding his way around on his own & living on whatever he could earn along the way. One of his adventures took him to Wuhan, China to teach English for a couple years.

The English translation of the Chinese name his friends gave him was 'I Don't Know', a portent of bad things to come. He'd only been there about two months when someone told him about a park in a remote part of the province where wild elephants could be seen roaming their native habitat. When he had a few days break from teaching Mr. Adventure decided to go check out the elephants. He hopped a bus & rode for 5 hours to get to this sanctuary. He wondered why no one but him got off at that stop; he thought there would be tourists galore eager to walk amongst these wild elephants.

No, Mr. Adventure was the only one who wanted to do that. He whipped out his camera & started to film & narrate his stroll into the elephant park. It was a beautiful jungle like setting. He hoofed it over a bamboo bridge, noting how rickety it was & even carefully filmed the sign posted after the bridge that said 'Danger: Wild Elephants May Appear Suddenly'. He also noted it was getting late, and darkness would soon be falling. Nevertheless he plodded on a few miles further, babbling on about his disappointment at not seeing any elephants. Finally he decided to turn back, sagely stating it would not be wise to spend the night in the park.

He began to retrace his steps, when lo & behold he spotted 4 large elephants feeding from the tops of trees in the distance. They didn't seem to notice him, he confided to the camera. Unsatisfied with the photos he got from that distance, he decided to 'creep up on them' as he put it. The narration now shifts to him in the present, post encounter with the elephants. With 20/20 hindsight, he noted attempting to get closer to the elephants was not a good idea. When he was about 50 yards away they saw him & made an instant decision to charge. Mr. Adventure ducked behind a tree & wrapped his arms around it.

Unfortunately these elephants were clearly smarter than he was. Undeceived by Mr. Adventure's tree hugging maneuver one of them circled behind & they had him surrounded. They were all stamping & trumpeting,  and the ground was shaking. Then the elephant in the rear charged, gored him in the stomach & tossed him high into the air. Mr. Adventure fell to the ground in a crumpled heap & just lay there. After a minute the elephants decided he was no threat & disappeared back into the trees. Mr. Adventure felt his stomach, which was hurting like the dickens. He had been gored pretty thoroughly; he could feel his intestines hanging out & needless to say was having trouble breathing.

But all was not lost for Mr. Adventure. A local carrying a bundle of wood found him lying there & ran to get another man to help carry him out of there on a makeshift stretcher. They got him to the hospital & the doctors were amazed to be faced with a badly gored Westerner on the brink of death. They did a bunch of even gorier surgery to salvage his intestines. Cut to present day Mr. Adventure, who held up his shirt to display his scars & unsightly football sized bulge on one side of his stomach, the only viable place left to put his intestines. Lol by the end of the show I was shaking my head over this adventure of Mr. Adventure.

I mean, really. Who would creep up on four wild elephants just to get a better picture?