City Daily Photo Theme Day: Green

The first day of each month is a theme day for members of City Daily Photo. For March, that theme is Green, and you can check out how other members are interpreting that theme right here.

I am in the midst of a series on Winterlude, the annual February celebration of the best season one can ask for here in Ottawa and Gatineau, and so most of my material reflects that. I took this first shot when the ice sculptures were being carved in the Byward Market. The touches of green from the background appealed to me, and the light around the sculpture was shifting from blue into green. The sculpture itself is the work of a Russian team, and depicts a violinist.

Here we have the green Arabic lettering on a flag, taken on another day at Winterlude. This Iraqi flag was one of several, as an Iraqi carver worked with a Canadian carver on the sculpture in the background. The sculpture depicted a Mesopotamian figure of history and legend, Gilgamesh. The green Arabic lettering drew my eye.

Jacques Cartier Park over on the Gatineau side of the Ottawa River is turned into a giant winter playground for the festival, and I posted about it back in February. A couple of oversized Muskoka chairs happened to be part of the mix. This one is a different shade, something of a green-blue tone.

Dow's Lake is a part of the Rideau Canal skateway in the Ottawa core, and a centrepiece of Winterlude. It is common at Winterlude sites to find these repurposed Christmas trees lining sites, or in this case standing between sections of the skateway.

Here we have a couple of closeups of the needles.

Further along the Rideau Canal, heading downtown, the Corktown Bridge spans the Canal between Centretown and the University of Ottawa, which is here in the background. The graceful support arch beneath is of a muted green colour. The bridge is pedestrians only. Skaters pass beneath the bridge, one of several along the full length of the 7.8 kilometres of skating surface.

Up at the top of the staircases, I photographed some of the trees planted up here. The evergreens get through winter just fine, while some deciduous trees in the background wait for spring- though that'll take until sometime in April before we start seeing buds on their branches.

Back to where I started, the ice sculptures. They're best seen at night when the lights are lit up. This one was the work of a pair of Peruvian sculptors, and depicts figures of Incan mythology. I will have these sculptures all lit up when I bring my Winterlude series to an end, and will have some extras in future theme days this year, as the colour theme goes through each month in 2019.

Vertical gardens are an occasional sight in Ottawa. This is one of them, in an office building downtown.

The Ottawa Convention Centre is downtown, along the shore of the Ottawa River. A modern building that replaced its predecessor, it is dominated on the outside by a massive curving glass wall, with promenades inside. One evening I was passing by after the building was closed for the night. There was green lighting inside, so it seemed ideal for this theme.

And I finish with this. Like many other cities, Ottawa has for the last few years been decorating their utility boxes. It's a handy way to discourage the blight of graffiti, and it brightens up what would otherwise be dull. For the most part these tend to be historical images, but downtown, in an area that is referred to as the Arts, Fashion, and Theatre District (because there are a good number of facilities and shops of that nature), these utility boxes feature brightly colourful fashion images, such as this one. I'll have more of these as the year progresses for those theme days.