Nostalgia

I’m feeling a little nostalgic tonight, looking through some pictures I haven’t looked at for a while, and missing lots of people.

Like these people:

This is one of my favourite of all the photos I have taken. It is also the only photo I’ve ever take with a Real Serious Camera ™. I took this on the trip we all took to spend some time at the cottage of a pal’s stepdad.

The cottage is actually a lighthouse on an island, close to Bruce Mines in deep Northern Ontario.

Actually, here’s a Google Maps link. If you look just south of where Bruce Mines is labelled you will see a peninsula that leads to a series of two islands, joined in series by causeways. The second island is the one with the lighthouse–it’s near the visible beach area on the south-east tip of the island. It’s an incredibly tranquil place.

Anyway, back to the photo. In the photo you see, from left to right: Ian Nanton (a.k.a. “Blackie”, “Subaru Guy”), Sheila Braam, Paul Chiappetta (a.k.a “Grumpy”, “Chia The Cat”), and The Man Called Sultan. By the time I took this shot, we were all pretty relaxed from the nature, and one or two beers. Sheila made a print for all of us after the trip, and I have mine hanging in my hall upstairs.

Some of these characters show up in a lot of my photos. For example, look at this one:

Here you see my little brother, Paul again, me, Trish, Ralph’s date, Ralph “Best Man” FitzGerald, and Ian again.

After the wedding we decide to walk from the ceremony to the restaurant (owned and operated by a friend) where we were having the dinner. Along the way we stopped in front of the “Stag Shop” for this spontaneous photo. The best part was Ralph incorporating the poster into the group shot.

Of course Trish and I have lots of different photos of us “dressed up”. Here’s one from a few years before the wedding, with us and Trish’s gal pal:

I am a lucky man.

Believe it or not, that night was a bit of a bust–the Halloween party we attended turned out to be awfully tame, and we were actually looking to cause some trouble.