Skyline – Edmonton, Alberta
Of all reasons to take up photography, the most significant and most poignant is to draw together memory of home. Edmonton’s Skyline from the southeast, from Strathearn Drive is the strongest memory I have of Edmonton. My grandparents’ last Edmonton home was on Strathearn Drive and my grandfather always had my brother’s and I out for a hike before a Sunday dinner with family, through this river valley, walking within this valley being a primary form of transportation for him and his (my mother’s) family, something more economical and much healthier than riding a bus or taking the family car down town. Perhaps one of my grandfather’s influences in my Life is one of appreciating the value of exercise and the achievement of exercise. Never a day would go by without my granddad getting out for a minimum of an hour’s walk wherever he was in the world. For me, Edmonton’s skyline recalls all the cycling I had done in Edmonton’s river valley through each summer listening to audiobooks and to music on a Sony Walkman.
This Edmonton skyline image recalls family history – our return to Edmonton via CN Rail and the CN Tower from Montreal in 1964, our first returned days at the Hotel MacDonald, the adventures with Scouts hiking through this valley and excursions to the top of the AGT Tower (now Telus Tower), Canada Place on the right is where we got our passports and on the left I had an Edmonton Journal paper route on 111 Avenue running from the Westbury Apartment to the Grandin Apartments. This image of Edmonton recalls the cool, fresh, wet weather of June. The photo is taken at the western most end of Strathearn drive that overlooks that part of Connor’s hill where the Edmonton Folk Festival is staged each August.
Listening to – Schubert’s Rondo in A for Violin and String, D. 438.
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
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
This looks like a painting
Good day, good day …
I agree. The editing can take me places that sometimes have interesting arrival points … there’s a few recent images that I’ve yet to load that have a painterly quality – some of photography’s fun, I’d say. 😉
Sure is 🙂
Lovely photo and I enjoy the quotation you’ve chosen also. I enjoy all of your work.
Hey there … I’ve enjoyed looking through your images too. The quotation is perhaps what photography should be about in examining our world.
Take care, … 😉
Beautiful picture and thoughts, they blend in so well. “Value and achievement of exercise” is also something precious my grand-father taught me. I liked the music and the quote you chose, transforming ordinary objects by looking at them differently. Thanks.
Hello Isa:
Music was another of my grandfather’s influences. A member of the Edmonton Welsh Men’s Choir he enjoyed choral music. Part of Sunday dinners with he and my grandmother would involve watching choral performances before supper. He was also responsible for my mother’s growth as a gifted pianist. Throughout our household while growing up, Rachmaninoff, Handel, Grieg, Chopin and many others were to be heard in the actual present moment, my mother articulating their intention on our Heintzman grand piano in vertical form. One of the absences in my Life is hearing music that other’s care about. But, my daughter is picking it up and beyond this my wife has really taken a shine to ‘Glee’ on television.
The quote seems to extrapolate somewhat from “Life being what you make of it;” it’s the same with photography. Once you edit, adjust, revise and present a photograph, it is something created, something considered art – a photo is what we make of it and usually it does transform reality.
Thanks for looking in. 😉
Many thanks for your wonderful answer to my comment. Amazing all those correspondances between people. Your grandfather influenced you in music, mine did in reading. The first image I always have of him is when he sat in his ancient armchair, a book in his hands, big thick glasses on his nose and reading, reading with great concentration. Stopping sometimes to share with me some lines or thoughts.
I like your view about “creating” photography. Merci.
Nice thoughts, I am in my family home town at the moment. Staying with my Dad, old memories all around. So a very apposite piece for me.
Jim
Hey there, Jim:
I had thought to ask when you wrote about GPS … the map you posted was of Wales; is Wales home for you?
Enjoy all that is ‘home.’ Take good care of your good self.
🙂
I live just across the water from Wales, so go walking there a lot. The image of a 50 year old maps was one my wife got me for Christmas, I am a closet map geek!
Jim
Hey there, Jim:
My grandfather comes from Shropshire and introduced me to Houseman’s Shropshire Lad. I’ve had a good school principal/headmaster from Wales … a solid people developer. And, then, there’s Martyn Joseph’s music and words that seem to hit home for us over here through the years. 1976 was the last time I was in the U.K., a relative youngster in age … enjoying the Lake District, York, Newcastle, Durham and London.
We’ve fundraised a few times to send our students on European field trips; last summer it was Spain and France.
Thought I’d check …. 🙂