Cheltenham Badlands

I think the Cheltenham Badlands [ flickr ] are the new Whitby Mental Hospital [ flickr ] for Toronto area photobloggers this year. By that I mean they are this years previously undiscovered photographic treasure.
Like many such locals, I found out about this one from my semi-daily perusal of daily dose of imagery back in July. My jealousy of Sam runs long and deep and if you haven't checked out his site you're really missing something.

If you look at the satellite image on Google Maps you might think it's pretty small. In it's own way it is small but so worth it. It's hard to believe something like this exists in a place like Ontario, except Ontario is just so freakin' huge. The up and the downside of the sites popularity is that this type of shale seems to be quite fragile and the back of my head wonders how long its natural beauty can last. When you see families with small children and those big three wheeled strollers running around it makes you wonder.

My own pics of the Badlands can be found either from the photo gallery here (dig for it) or on flickr. Something about the shale reacts very differently to various light conditions which is why the red is inconsistent between frames.

Posted at 12:01 AM to Personal By: John Fairley