Bench Walk
The other day I mentioned that I seem to have a lot of images of public benches in my archives, as well as the Adirondack chairs I showed in that post. Black and white benches, none of which are so plain as to be only black and white – the long one concrete one (with road stripes), for instance, is a pastel blue rather like washed out turquoise.
These too are gathered from archives going back 9 months or so, accumulated during various walks and outings with my camera.
One of many memorial benches, this on in Trafalgar Park looking out to Harling Point
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To view the images below in large format, launch the gallery viewer by clicking on any thumbnail, use the arrows to navigate and escape to return to this page.
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- On the Trafalgar Park lookout, Trial Island in distance
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- Dallas Road causeway near Clover Point. A typical City of Victoria Parks bench.
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- A bench in Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary, following rain.
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- In Beacon Hill Park near the gardeners work area, anyone want to watch compost, gently steaming?
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- Dallas Road, kitty corner from Ross Bay Cemetery, looking over Ross Bay to the Olympic Mtns
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- In Beacon Hill Park, one of many beside the Cricket Pitch.
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- One of many memorial benches, this on in Trafalgar Park looking out to Harling Point
Canon EOS 5D Mark ii, Canon 50mm/f1.4 lens, various exposures.
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I just love your B&W work! Great series here, my friend, absolutely top drawer!
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Thanks so much Toad. So many nice places for a rest or contemplative staring around here.
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I really like this mini series. Each shot is individually strong – lighting, POV etc – but collectively they really convey something extra
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Thanks Andy, glad you like them, and that you think they work well together even though taken months apart.
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What a wonderful collection. I love it. They all have their own character and place. I like the idea of rest and contemplation you mention to Ken.
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Thanks Ryan. After writing that earlier today, I came across this photo, which really emphasises that idea. At the same time it was interesting to see the benches in the cemetery, because both the cemeteries in my neighbourhood (Ross Bay Cemetery and the Chinese Cemetery) are nearly without benches.
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That seems odd. Cemeteries need benches – where are all the ghosts and skeletons supposed to sit on Halloween?
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Well, they could sit on the headstones and railings in Ross Bay, or on the altar in the Chinese Cemetery. I don’t think there are any benches in the Chinese Cemetery at all, just that lone Adirondack chair I sometimes do a post on, up on the bedrock beyond the end of the burial area. And Ross Bay has a few, but really very few. It was laid out in the British tradition of landscape gardening in the late 1800’s – maybe benches were not cemetery furniture in those days.
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An excellent collection of images, I particularly liked ‘Dallas Road causeway’ very well made.
David.
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Thanks so much David. Glad to see you have your computer back up and running, I am looking forward to more great shots from Oman.
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That float plane over Trial Island enhances the picture. How long did you have to wait for one to arrive in just the right spot?
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Around here that is not long – there are several scheduled flights per hour leaving the Inner Harbour. i did take two pictures of it though, trying to get the right spot and this one is better than the other.
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I think you’ll find shooting benches an ongoing practice for a lot of photographers. There seems to be a universal attraction to them. Once in a while I see some with people actually sitting on them. This is a real nice group of photos but i’ll pick the memorial benches in Trafalgar Park. It’s almost an aerial view, which is pretty unusual.
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Hi Ken – I am not sure what the fascination is – many are well sited for the view. An empty bench facing somewhere invokes the idea of thoughtful rest, though I did not have that on my mind when shooting. Maybe its the geometry or something.
That memorial bench pretty much is an aerial view – it is on a rocky slope, really a series of small cliffs with little terraces in between. I was on the next level up. I like it too, though I am a bit offended that the bench is so permanently made – I like the idea that they eventually rust away, or collapse on the spot and that memorial plaques on benches are designed for the lifetimes of people that knew the deceased and disappear with those generations. This bench might be there in 150 years, which is a bit excessive, and the motivation behind it perhaps a tad grandiose. But, I expect it will cause curious, if idle, thought amongst future generations, wondering who this exalted person was. The most interesting thing will prove to be that the bench is a memorial to the love of a son and thus more about him, than the father.
Now that I look at this earlier bench post of mine, with memorial, I realise that I am more inclined to count the thought and the choosing of the place to express it, than the permanence of its expression.
Actually, this brings to mind earlier thoughts when preparing blogs. In the fall I blogged (here) about a Cairn commemorating local FN history. It was on a very small headland, mostly paved over, that had something like 16 or 17 memorial plaques on it – on benches, picnic tables, cairns, slabs in the ground, etc. It occurred to me then, as it does again with this ‘monumental’ bench, that these things are the new cemeteries of a modern crowded world. So many people are being cremated, with their ashes spread in places like this, that it is hardly surprising there is an impetus to erect a memorial of some kind.
Around here we are getting to saturation point – there are a lot of benches in otherwise quite pristine locations and I suspect that the park planners will soon have to start saying no to requests to erect such memorials. I can see some interesting local politics in the future around who gets a bench, how many plaques can go on one bench, especially if originally paid for by one family (that is the deal right now, you want a bench, you pay for one that the city chooses), or about removing a poorly sited bench in the future, or replacing a decrepit one, and so on. To some it will seem like removing headstones from graves. I should have put all this in the body of the post I guess. I even planned a post at one time, now that I think about it, on this very topic.
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