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Along that Road – Repeat

Along the Road – Woking, Alberta

Barn – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta 1

Barn – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta 2

Canadian National Bridge – Edmonton, Alberta

Grain Shed – Manning, Alberta 1

Grain Shed – Manning, Alberta 2

Grain Shed – Manning, Alberta 3

Grain Shed – Near Figure 8 Lake, Alberta

Train Trestle – Sangudo, Alberta

Alone, along the road, driving home, structures from a former time and world that Alberta was age and erode with the seasons. Cared about structures are kept for their continued functionality, others for their memorial’s sake, to remember people and their time. Other structures, uncared for, decay and become derelict, awaiting demise. Each informs of their former time – what was then and what was on the go and what it was like being there (and then). Halt the car, grab camera and tripod, look around … repeat … all the way home. Snow melts. Spring takes hold.

Listening to – Joshua Redman’s ‘Stop this Train,’ and Sigur Ros’ ‘Svefn-G-Englar’ and ‘Glosoli.’

Quote to Inspire – “It’s not how a photographer looks at the world that is important. It’s their intimate relationship with it.” – Antoine D’Agata

Snow – Inches at a Time

Cattails – High Level, Alberta 1

Cattails – High Level, Alberta 2

That day – not in Church, in the first warmth of spring’s sun; snow, hip-deep … all your weight, leaning forward, shifting snow, inches at a time … to these snow-surrounded cattails. A beautiful, sunny spring Sunday with my Canon 60D.

Listening to – Alice in Chains’ ‘Heaven Beside You,’ Amiina’s ‘Rugla,’ and Angus and Julia Stone’s ‘Big Jet Plane.’

Quote to Inspire – “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” – Ansel Adams

Animate Slap

Beaver and Sunset – Dixonville, Alberta

At sunset, on a lake north from Dixonville, Alberta, on the west side of a highway’s curve, a beaver has swum towards me to determine whether or not I’m animate, part of the setting or active within its setting. When my movement becomes large and noticeable, the beaver slaps its tail on the water and dives, swimming from what had been its present location to another where line of sight on me, the potential predator, can be had.

Listening to – much of Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds’ Live at Radio City Music Hall; the songs standing out this morning have been ‘Bartender’ (as possible prayer), ‘Save Me’ (for its allusion), ‘Crash into Me’ (intimate lovers’ dialogue), ‘Sister’ (I have a sister-in-law) and ‘Lie in Our Graves’ (for its shared fun).

Quote to Inspire – “A photographer is an acrobat treading the high wire of chance, trying to capture shooting stars.” – Guy Le Querrec

Spring – Colour & Possibility

Daisy … or Daisy-Look-a-like

A daisy with its greens, whites and yellows reminds of spring’s colour and possibility … days away. Gratitude – thank you to all who have looked-in on ‘In My Back Pocket – Photography,’ today. Engaging in dialogue about each visual narrative and accentuating the narrative found within images has been a real treat.

Listening to – my daughter points me toward Ed Sheeran’s ‘The a Team,’ Jack Johnson’s ‘Sitting, Waiting, Wishing,’ and Lenka’s ‘Everything At Once.’

Quote to Inspire – “Everything shifts as you move, and different things come into focus at different points of your life, and you try to articulate that.” Chris Steele – Perkins

Sun, Wind & Weather

Former Farm – Sangudo, Alberta 1

Former Farm – Sangudo, Alberta 2

Former Farm – Sangudo, Alberta 3

Sangudo, Alberta – on a sunny day, closing in on spring, buildings from a former farming time continue to erode with wind and weather. Sun heats snow-laden earth and clouds begin to billow and move eastward over the horizon.

Listening to – Josef Myslivecek and Concertino in E Flat for two horns.

Quote to Inspire – “A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into.” – Ansel Adams

Stowed Away

Boats in Woods – Hay River 1

Boats in Woods – Hay River 2

Stowed away among the brush, the husks of two boats dragged from the water, now uncared for, left to the elements.

Listening to – Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ and ‘Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes’ (only now realizing that these were recorded in South Africa at a time when Artists Against Apartheid were sanctioning the Arts, there … in addition to all other sanction; a bold, bold move on Paul Simon’s part).

Quote to Inspire – “I am not an artist. I am an image maker.” – Thomas Hoepker

81 Years – Today

Fields of Home 1

Fields of Home 2

Hay Bale – Fields

The Road Home

The following blessing is something that’s opened-out and extended back recollection of my father and his shaping, steadfast hand. It’s his birthday, today … and these words – John O’Donohue’s words, ‘For a Father’ – recall him to me.

“The longer we live,
The more of your presence
We find, laid down,
Weave upon weave
Within our lives.

The quiet constancy of your gentleness
Drew no attention to itself,
Yet filled our home
With a climate of kindness
Where each mind felt free
To seek its own direction.

As the fields of distance
Opened inside childhood,
Your presence was a sheltering tree
Where our fledgling hearts could rest.

The earth seemed to trust your hands
As they tilled the soil, put in the seed,
Gathered together the lonely stones.

Something in you loved to inquire
In the neighborhood of air,
Searching its transparent rooms
For the fallen glances of God.

The warmth and wonder of your prayer
Opened our eyes to glimpse
The subtle ones who
Are eternally there.

Whenever, silently, in off moments,
The beauty of the whole thing overcame you,
You would gaze quietly out upon us,
The look from your eyes
Like a kiss alighting on skin.

There are many things
We could have said,
But words never wanted
To name them;
And perhaps a world
That is quietly sensed
Across the air
In another’s heart
Becomes the inner companion
To one’s own unknown.” (‘For a Father’ in ‘Homecomings,’ To Bless the Space Between Us, John O’Donohue)

Listening to – U2’s ‘Kite’.

Quote to Inspire – “The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.” Susan Meiselas

Grown-In, Intact

Cattail 1

Cattail 2

Summer – cattail shapes feature as photographic interest alone and in clusters. More an architectural entity, the cattails found seemed always to have their skins split and fuzzy cotton interior bursting forth. Not until August were full cylindrical (hot dog) shapes to be found, grown-in, intact, new.

Listening to – ‘Soft Place in My Heart’ by Buddy Holly & Bob Montgomery (1955, Wichitaw Falls, Texas).

Quote to Inspire – “A roll of film costs $6.00 – a roll of history is priceless.” – Anonymous

Blessing Become

Canola Homestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta

Elektra Water Bomber 1

Elektra Water Bomber 2

Winter Snow 1

Winter Snow 2

At -39C steam hangs in the air almost failing to dissipate, resolving into a fog residue – vehicle exhaust, factory steam, breath from your own mouth. Cold cranking car batteries fail and must be boosted. January into February, in the North we’re rounding the cold portion of the orbital arc, pulling January’s cold with us into February. To look back, to rework and to resurrect in new ways – former photographs become blessing. Blown, compacted, heated and crusted snow is the subject of two images. Summer images include a homestead house within a field of canola as well as the Elektra water bomber from July.

Listening to – Stompin’ Tom Connors’ ‘Sudbury Saturday Night,’ Ray Wylie Hubbard’s ‘Mother Blues,’ Gurf Morlix’s ‘Gasoline’ and Buddy Miller’s ‘Does My Ring Burn Your Finger.’

Quote to Inspire – “I have to shoot three cassettes of film a day, even when not ‘photographing’, in order to keep the eye in practice.” – Josef Koudelka

Cattails – Eastern lakeshore

Eastern Lakeshore – Cattails

A day or two after Christmas 2012, my brother and I got our families outside snowshoeing at Chickahoo Lake. In fresh air, our group got themselves tromping around the lake; I did so with my camera finding these cattails along the eastern lakeshore.

Listening to much of Jack Johnson this morning – Banana Pancakes, Sleep Through the Static, Bubble Toes and Staple It Together.

Quote to Inspire – “A photograph has picked up a fact of life, and that fact will live forever.” Raghu Rai

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