Away from the City

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1 Former Farm Buildings – Guy, Alberta 1

2 Chevrolet and GMC

3 Former Farm Buildings – Guy, Alberta 2

5 Former Vehicles of the Road

6 Former Farm Buildings – Guy, Alberta 3

7 Former Vehicles of the Highway

Away from its cities, out in Alberta’s hinterland Alberta’s land is a great, huge space, with landscapes and regions that vary substantially in terrain and vegetation from North to South and from West to East. Its strength – strength of economy, strength of resource and solid quality of Life – seem most apparent in and around its cities. As you move through Alberta’s distances, you discover those places where people have made a living with very little; they got their start, weathered the years and gathered strength, resources and capital. Often my photography celebrates these first places trying to understand intent for how the place was used and how and why it was left. The photographs memorialize former first Alberta days, reminders of the youth-filled strength and initiative to make a go of it in a sometimes unyielding land.

Listening to – Penguin Café Orchestra’s Volume 2 – ‘Air a Danser,’ ‘Yodel 1,’ ‘Telephone and Rubber Band,’ ‘Cutting Branches For a Temporary Shelter,’ ‘Pythagoras’s Trousers,’ ‘Numbers 1-4,’ ‘Yodel 2,’ ‘Salty Bean Fumble,’ ‘Paul’s Dance,’ ‘The Ecstacy of Dancing Fleas,’ ‘Walk Don’t Run,’ ‘Flux,’ ‘Simon’s Dream,’ ‘Harmonic Necklace,’ and ‘Steady State.’

Quote to Inspire – “During the work, you have to be sure that you haven’t left any holes, that you’ve captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

Dusk Rescued

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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

Exercises Editing

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Homestead – Peace River, Alberta

Homestead I

Homestead II

Homestead III

Sedan – Sunrise Beach, Alberta

In learning piano, here in Canada, students will often learn and be taught how to play using music that is leveled within music books. At year-end you can challenge an examination to receive recognition of your level of skill. The daily practice along the way is what I recall. Each Toronto Royal Conservatory music book contained pieces – composed entities of music with beginning, middle and end, music with variation, music having specific direction, everything from phrasing, to control of loud and soft volume, intention for pace and emotion … all to be interpreted in presentation. Each music book also contained exercises or studies meant to develop skills for use within pieces, a matter of reading intention from the page and translating that intention accurately into sound. The exercise of returning to images and editing again and again is similar to these music studies and is something closer to the creative portion of writing music. The exercise of editing allows you to explore what the image contains and what can be brought out in an image; regular exercise builds the skill. Moving toward a pleasing outcome – what does and does not work – in editing is where much of photography’s creative act lies.

The photos presented are exercises in editing, seeing what they can become – Homesteads and Sedan.

Listening to – My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Sometimes,’ Phoenix’s ‘Too Young,’ Kevin Shields’ ‘Are You Awake’ and ‘City Girl,’ Brian Reitzell & Roger J. Manning Jr.’s ‘On the Subway,’ and The Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Just Like Honey.’

Quote to Inspire – “Once you learn to care, you can record images with your mind or on film. There is no difference between the two.” – Anonymous

Not Always …

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Home, Homestead, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Winter

Former Farm 1

Former Farm 6

Former Farm 5

Former Farm 4

Former Farm 3

Former Farm 2

Not always pretty, or organized, the shot you take. Yet something in your mind recognizes beauty’s potential – something can be drawn from this image. Some part of your mind recognizes this scene or subject ought to be recorded and kept – something’s here to understand … front of the process stuff, this first part of making a photograph. You see, you capture and you edit. You exercise photographic skill(s) finding the strongest way of seeing this image … end of process stuff, recognizing presentation choices and choosing. The image reveals itself as much as you present it.

Former farms and homesteads are subject in the images of this morning’s post.

Listening to – Bob Dylan’s ‘Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie,’ from the Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3 (Rare& Unreleased) 1961-1991.

Quote to Inspire – “Looking and seeing are two different things. What matters is the relationship with the subject.” – Christophe Agou

Don’t Explain … Show

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Cobra 2 Seater – Edmonton, Alberta 1

Cobra 2 Seater – Edmonton, Alberta 2

A candy-apple red, two-seater Ford Shelby Cobra sits, ready, waiting and unused, eye candy within a car dealership’s maintenance department.

Listening to – Bill Mallonee & the Vigilantes of Love and ‘She Walks On Roses,’ ‘Resplendent,’ and ‘Goes Without Saying.’

Quote to Inspire – “The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things in words.” – Elliott Erwitt

Spring – Colour & Possibility

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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

Photos’ Blog & Writing

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Fargo Grain Truck – Nampa, Alberta 1

Fargo Grain Truck – Nampa, Alberta 2

Fargo Grain Truck – Nampa, Alberta 3

Fargo Grain Truck – Nampa, Alberta 4

Fargo Grain Truck – Nampa, Alberta 5

Fargo Grain Truck – Nampa, Alberta 6

Fargo Grain Truck – Nampa, Alberta 7

Fargo Grain Truck – Nampa, Alberta 8

Turning through pages of tablature, a songwriter’s guide in Martyn Joseph’s ‘Notes on Words,’ surfaces (after years) and has had me consider what I might assert as truth in how writing about photographs ought to work within any of our photo blogs. What would I say? Would I promote one way of going about presenting and responding to photos? Some core ideas seem key.

Photo Blog Writing Guide …

1. Within each photograph, reveal the subject in ways never before seen.
2. Get a moleskin and record image ideas within this idea journal.
3. Pay attention to how you feel at moments before, during and following image capture.
4. Pay attention to how the image resonates with each new edit of a photograph … edit and edit again.
5. Add words to your photographs, sparingly – get to the core response to your photograph.
6. Be honest about this image and you; posers present others’ sentiment ….
7. Dialogue with others about your images and theirs; provide likes and comments – find what’s key.
8. Photograph with others occasionally; they and their lens will reveal the world in ways new to you.
9. Snap the photo while you’re there – stop the car, halt your walk, stop your chat; take out your camera and photograph that subtle, subtle thing that your mind and eyes have recognized and wish to amplify.
10. Return to subjects again and again, photographing subjects from how you now know them each subsequent time.
11. Pay attention to good photographers – talk with them, listen to them; pay attention to visual narrative and image work in movies, in art, in photographs and the visual narrative you encounter in daily life.
12. “… Capture those special moments when life is amplified above the norm for a few seconds (Martyn Joseph – Notes On Words, 2003).”
13. “Go to locations that inspire – places from your past, places that will challenge you, [… take you camera and moleskin with you] (Martyn Joseph – Notes On Words, 2003).”
14. “If it doesn’t excite you it probably won’t do much for anyone else (Martyn Joseph – Notes On Words, 2003).”

Perhaps the other essential thing is the matter of being grateful for each photo found and discovered, for what you learn along the way and from who and for process – all that stuff that comes together in creating each new photograph. Beyond this photo discussion thanks, here, goes out to Martyn Joseph for each of the following – ‘One of Us,’ ‘Don’t Talk about Love and all that was that Edmonton concert at the Queen Alexandra Community Hall.

The road home last weekend finally provided opportunity to photograph this grain truck near Nampa, Alberta, the sides of its grain box now sandwich board, advertising (or perhaps better said as raising awareness with regard to) a social issue the world needs to know about. For me, the photograph is more about setting or context as well as that of articulating the shape of a vehicle from a former time; it has been something to see how far I could extend edits in shaping the image in terms of mood and tone beyond the factual/literal rendering of the image.

Listening to – Son Houses’ ‘Death Letter,’ Snow Patrol’s ‘Run,’ The Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again,’ Steve Miller’s ‘Mercury Blues,’ Ross Copperman’s ‘Holding On and Letting Go,’ The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Snow [Hey Oh],’ and Joe Bonamassa’s ‘Long Distance Blues.’

Quote to Inspire – “The photograph is completely abstracted from life, yet it looks like life. That is what has always excited me about photography.” – Richard Kalvar

That Sedan & Professor Keating

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Sedan Along Path – Valleyview, Alberta 1

Sedan Along Path – Valleyview, Alberta 2

Sedan Among Trees – Valleyview, Alberta 1

Sedan Among Trees – Valleyview, Alberta 2

Away from home, tasks requiring completion fly me southward to Edmonton, Alberta, Friday, one week ago today. My Sunday is a day-long, northward return trek home with my Canon 60D.

In my first years as a teacher, an elder’s coaching presented the predicament of moving through or around brush as analogy for the challenge of dealing with Life’s obstacles. If moving through brush resulted in injury, the better judgment call was that of moving around the obstacle. The key was seeing the situation for what it was. The elder was promoting the path already carved out, the natural path; for him, the established easier route ought to be the path to take. Along the road home, east from Valleyview, Alberta a fifties’ four-door sedan sits, resting and rusting, its rear window absent. It’s placement in a farmer’s field positions it along a natural path that will take it forward through trees. No longer having power to move itself, though, this sedan sits along a path that could have been.

M. Scott Peck, Robert Frost and even the Dead Poets Society’s professor Keating would all promote the road less travelled as the path to take. Perhaps the elder talking to me all those years ago was establishing reality’s balance to such assertion – the road less travelled overcomes obstacles that no one else or, at least, few have encountered. Finding one’s own way throughout one’s Life, personal navigation, is the thing in either case – avoiding the obstacles or seeking the uncommon, unique yet obstacle-laden path. It’s interesting to be referencing the Dead Poets Society again within this photoblog while associating to photos of this vehicle.

Listening to – CKUA Online and the Friday Night Blues Party, Curtis Salgado’s ‘She Didn’t Cut Me Loose’ and Andy T and Nick Nixon Band’s ‘Drink Drank Drunk.’

Quote to Inspire – “I really don’t have any idea about photography, but I take pictures.” – Alex Majoli

Sun, Wind & Weather

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, Flora, Home, Homestead, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Still Life, Weather, Winter

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

Ocean-going, Lake-bound – What’s Next?

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Derelict Vessel – Hay River, NWT – 1

Derelict Vessel – Hay River, NWT – 2

Derelict Vessel – Hay River, NWT – 3

A summer’s day in early July finds my son, newly graduated from high school, awaiting word of acceptance to the University of Alberta and the possessor of a day off from his job cooking in a local restaurant. My son and I travel north from High Level to Hay River, Northwest Territories and the Great Slave Lake. My son needs the practice of driving for his driver’s test. He’s at the wheel. For my son, the challenge is not only the technical aspects of driving; for him, the challenge is also that of overcoming learned travelling behaviour – on long drives sleep has become a means to shorten travel’s distance. The float and glide of our 2000 GMC half ton cushions driving’s dips and rises comfortably along our three-hundred kilometre route northward. My son nearly falls asleep at the wheel and I prompt him to direct his attention to his driving.

The journey takes us to Alexandra falls and onward into Hay River’s Great Slave Lake – both become excellent photo-taking opportunities; my son is quite daring in the photography he attempts looking out from 100 foot cliffs. In Hay River, we encounter the boat within this image dragged more than a kilometre from the Great Slave Lake; its location is at that point in Hay River’s municipal jurisdiction where the industrial area ends and its housing development begins – a somewhat quirky location at first glance. This boat is no more than 500 feet from the nearest Hay River home.

Thinking this image through I’m left with several questions.

Ocean-going vessels that become marine salvage are vessels that are taken to locations in the world where they can be retired, places where the vessel can be scuttled while leaving them accessible to teams of people who are able to dismantle the vessel – cutting it apart and finding new uses for each part that had been component of the formerly floating structure that had been moving through water.

Here, in Hay River, on the world’s largest lake what happens? This boat has been pulled from the water and seemingly kept, but for what reason. Does the former sea-worthy vessel have use for parts or perhaps for training? Or is it, that the ‘what-next’ for the vessel needs a good, reasonable next step or perhaps a next step that generates revenue? And, is the vessel towed so far so that it simply resides on company-owned real estate? Questions …. Nonetheless, a full ocean-going, lake-bound vessel among trees does become an interesting image.

Listening to – Peter Gabriel’s ‘Come Talk to Me,’ ‘Steam,’ ‘Across the River,’ ‘Shaking the Tree’ and ‘Blood of Eden.’

Quote to Inspire – “Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.” – Bruno Barbey