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Taking Photography A Next Step

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Buttertown Homestead - Fort Vermilion, Alberta

Buttertown Homestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta

Sunset Above the Peace River - Fort Vermilion, Alberta

Sunset Above the Peace River – Fort Vermilion, Alberta

Store Shed - St. Louis Catholic Church - Fort Vermilion, Alberta

Store Shed – St. Louis Catholic Church – Fort Vermilion, Alberta

Derelict Vehicle - A Former Time - Buttertown, Fort Vermilion, Alberta

Derelict Vehicle – A Former Time – Buttertown, Fort Vermilion, Alberta

A weeklong endeavor involving our junior high students saw Alberta’s Trickster Theater group work with them to create and perform a handful of short dramas dealing with human rights around the world. Students engaged in this learning by doing, many came out from shells they’d been cloistered into through our long, long winter; all enjoyed the fun of team performance. My role was to collect images for presentation within an Animoto slideshow. In pre-screening the slideshow the phrase photo manipulation was used favourably to refer to presenting an image in new and interesting ways to draw the viewer to the action or happening within the image or to draw the viewer into the image’s feeling, mood or atmosphere. Saturation and desaturation, focus, detail and blur, tinting, vignette and cropping – all are manipulations of the photograph allowing amplification of image narrative or feeling, mood and atmosphere. The images presented here have each received photo manipulation, the editing that follows image capture and moves them to rendering.

Listening to – Tyler Bates’ ‘Pamplona’ and ‘Ventura,’ Tyrone Wells’ ‘Time of Our Lives,’ and Rascal Flatts’ ‘My Wish.’

Quote to Inspire – “A photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes – just sometimes – one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness. Much depends upon the viewer; in some, photographs can summon enough emotion to be a catalyst to thought.” – W. Eugene Smith

Peace River Sunset - Fort Vermilion, Alberta 1

Peace River Sunset – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 1

Peace River Sunset - Fort Vermilion, Alberta 2

Peace River Sunset – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 2

Sunday evening, on my own, at Fort Vermilion’s boat launch I witnessed the sun drop below the horizon and the dusky, rich colours and lengthening shadows produced – day’s end in the land of the Midnight Sun. The event recalls (and was perhaps inspired by) redjim99’s poem, his 200th, on his ‘notyethere’ wordpress blog, ‘The Road at Sunset’ and his discussion of the illusion of horizon; accurate and cleanly worked – it is worth checking out.

http://notyethere.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/200-posts-on-notyethere-the-road-at-sunset/

Listening to – ‘Thank U’ by Alanis Morissette and David Gray’s ‘My Oh My.’

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

Sunset - Whitecourt to Valleyview, Alberta

Sunset – Whitecourt to Valleyview, Alberta

Poet and fellow photo blogger, Jim from ‘notyethere’ blog highlights the truism that there will be other sunsets – found, seen, discovered and relished. In this instance, I chose to pull the car off the road between Whitecourt and Valleyview, Alberta and capture the sunset. Check out http://notyethere.wordpress.com/ .

Listening to – ‘Across the River’ by Peter Gabriel.

Quote to Inspire – “I guess I’ve shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like.” – Harry Callahan

Edmonton - from Mill Creek

Edmonton – from Mill Creek

Edmonton - from the River Valley

Edmonton – from the River Valley

Edmonton - Looking Southeast 2

Edmonton – Looking Southeast 2

Edmonton - Looking Southeast

Edmonton – Looking Southeast

The past week presented the opportunity to move around Edmonton and to look at skylines from different vantage points.

Listening to – Mozart’s ‘Requiem, K. 626’ performed by La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Dominique Visse, Choeur Regional Nord-Pas-De-Calais, Odile Bailleux, Martin Hill, Colette Alliot-Lugaz & Gregory Reihart.

Quote to Inspire – “I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.” – Trent Parke

Sunset - Dusk - Peace River, Alberta

Sunset – Dusk – Peace River, Alberta

For a second time, a Peace River, Alberta sunset arrests my attention. This photo is an image exposed incorrectly, but one that has been shot as a RAW file; editing is able to rescue the image returning it to Life and intention – a sunset shot. Earlier this fall on a day when we (my family and me) had been to Peace River for a day’s outing, the day’s return journey began at sunset; we in our vehicle making the long five kilometre climb westward out of the Peace valley and enjoying an array, scatter and stir of cloud work – hues deepening, then diminishing. A sight to have caught as a photo, this sunset … but just as easily enjoyed by each of us for what it was; there will be other sunsets (we do live in Alberta). As an entity, the immediate follow-up to sunset is dusk, light that softens as it leaves, light that colours as it diminishes – in photographic terms it de-saturates (withdraws colour). As an entity, dusk is intermediary between the stark, factual reality of daylight and that part of Life that occurs in the unseen. As an entity, dusk seems to be a visual reminder of transience – at sunrise dusk is a part of how we enter the day; at sunset dusk moves us from our day into night. The day’s movement is a part of our forward Life movement reminding us of our impermanence.

Listening to – Snow Patrol’s ‘Please Just Take These Photos,’ The Eagles’ ‘Seven Bridges Road,’ Don Henley’s ‘Sunset Grill,’ The Cars’ ‘Good Times Roll,’ Cheap Trick’s ‘Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace,’ The Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony,’ and U2’s ‘Crumbs From Your Table.’

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

Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 1

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 1

Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 2

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 2

Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 3

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 3

Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 4

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 4

Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 5

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 5

I’m not sure. But, this image’s perspective looking towards this 1953 Ford F-100 is that which likely is the perspective previous owners would have walking to it, something seen regularly through the Ford’s years of service. The image orients the eye to the driver’s door becoming the glimpse the owner/driver would take as he or she thinks through next actions and destination walking to this F-100. You could almost step into the image, open the driver’s door, start the engine and drive away.

Listening to – Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah,’ played on our Heintzman Grand Piano in vertical form by my daughter.

Quote to Inspire – “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” – Oscar Wilde

Hay River, NWT - Boats 1

Hay River, NWT – Boats 1

Hay River, NWT - Boats 2

Hay River, NWT – Boats 2

Hay River, NWT - Boats 3

Hay River, NWT – Boats 3

Hay River, NWT - Boats 4

Hay River, NWT – Boats 4

Hay River, NWT - Boats 5

Hay River, NWT – Boats 5

In January’s winter, huge, huge boats – complex structures, rigged out with all kinds of equipment to make them self-reliant and useful upon the water – have been dragged to ground from the world’s largest lake – the Great Slave Lake; the boats wait, unused, boarded-up and dormant within acres and acres of Hay River’s boat yard. Canada’s Great Slave Lake is large enough to make transport of materials more efficient, faster and more direct when these boats are used than when moving materials around the perimeter of the lake by transport truck. These boats have names – Jock McNiven, Lister, Horn River, and Radium Empress – and in being named do stir curiosity about the origin of such reminiscence in each boat’s appellation. Snowy and overcast, the day yields -26C at 5:00 p.m. on a January winter day in Canada’s Hay River, Northwest Territories; overnight it will get colder. It’s the kind of day when a Hay River resident keeps an eye out for the potential of a stranded motorist, a neighbor, needing a tow from the snow bank or a boost of their car/truck’s battery. People living in Hay River know how to live in Hay River.

Listening to – Enrique Iglesias – ‘When I Fall in Love,’ with words on You Tube, a song our school’s custodian frets at this day’s end upon a Yamaha guitar … good, good schtuff!

Quote to Inspire – “I have the great privilege of being both witness and storyteller. Intimacy, trust and intuition guide my work.” – Jim Goldberg

Henday S-Curve - Edmonton, Alberta 1

Henday S-Curve – Edmonton, Alberta 1

Henday S-Curve - Edmonton, Alberta 2

Henday S-Curve – Edmonton, Alberta 2

Henday S-Curve - Edmonton, Alberta 3

Henday S-Curve – Edmonton, Alberta 3

A Sunday evening, alone – wife and daughter at fellowship within our Church care group. And, me … I’m dealing with the sore reality of a yet to be diagnosed stomach ailment, something beyond the jungle tummy that’s been making its way round the globe. My wife has brought me a DVD to watch tonight and I’ve found it to be something powerful, something to recommend and something I’m sure I will own – ‘Being Flynn’ with Robert Deniro and Paul Dano. The movie grapples well and quite realistically with open-your-eyes-wide issues of broken families, homelessness, what lives amount to in their totality and moving on with Life despite the muddles encountered. ‘Being Flynn’ is a narrative of making that quantum leap to put the mess behind you and about getting to that strong and compassionate state that underscores the ‘why’ in contributing to make a better world for coming generations. The film is personal commentary about family and families for each of us as much as it is social commentary about something more than societal malaise … it chronicles the downward spiral of human life discarded and disposed of, Gehenna’s trash heap, before one encounters death; Lives are lost while the world looks beyond the down and out. ‘Being Flynn’ is essay as much as it is narrative film.

The image presented here is an array of street lights that light Anthony Henday Drive in Edmonton – the S – Curve attracts my attention as does some of the roadway architecture as Gateway Boulevard meets Anthony Henday on Edmonton’s South side near Ellerslie Road.

Listening to – ‘Know My Mind’ by Bo Weitz, ‘It’s What I’m Thinking’ by Badly Drawn Boy and ‘Mother in Law,’ by Allen Toussaint.

Quote to Inspire – “What I did, anybody can do.” – Weegee

Derelict Farmhouse 2 - Lamont, Alberta 1

Derelict Farmhouse 2 – Lamont, Alberta 1

Derelict Farmhouse - Lamont, Alberta 2

Derelict Farmhouse – Lamont, Alberta 2

Derelict Farmhouse - Lamont, Alberta 3

Derelict Farmhouse – Lamont, Alberta 3

The front face or façade of a derelict farmhouse precedes a wooden grain shed and newer, state of the art grain silos. The image contrasts new, old and older. The house sits on a ridge overlooking a storage yard for people’s equipment, a collecting point or nexus for anything unused and nearly disposed of … old mobile homes, vehicles, farming implements and machinery. This house, on the other hand, has structure and form and context – it has beauty; it had purpose in a former time. What would this house have been like in its day, when people were proud of the land’s first fruits? Is this a homestead house built following World War I or World War II? Would the farmers who farmed here have come to Canada or would they have been a generation or two arrived. In terms of today, why has the building not been torn down? What memorial does this house provide and to whom? Who does this house continue to serve?

Listening to – Radiohead’s ‘Little by Little’ from the King of Limbs album (Live from the Basement).

Quote to Inspire – “Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform it by photographing it.” – Morley Baer

Scotford Refinery - Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta

Scotford Refinery – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta

An image of the Scotford Refinery near Fort Saskatchewan, one of the last day-lit images shot at dusk looking east towards Edmonton after a good day of looking for and finding images.

Listening to – Simple Minds’ ‘Alive and Kicking.’

Quote to Inspire – “The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.” – Robert Doisneau

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