Gull Lake Homestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 1
Gull Lake Homestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 2
Gull Lake Homestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 3
A first photo from the field (with permission) of this one-hundred year old homestead home that I have photographed from the road through various seasons.
Listening to – Tenth Avenue North’s ‘You Are More.’
Quote to Inspire – “Photography is normally an omnipotent viewing from a distance.”
Crosses – Ft Vermilion North Settlement 1
Crosses – Ft Vermilion North Settlement 2
Crosses – Ft Vermilion North Settlement 3
Crosses – Ft Vermilion North Settlement 4
Crosses – Ft Vermilion North Settlement 5
Crosses – Ft Vermilion North Settlement 6
Crosses and headstones dating back to the middle eighteen hundreds cluster, serving as grave markers in the St. Louis Roman Catholic Mission cemetery in Fort Vermilion’s North Settlement (the north side of the Peace River, a settlement that has become known as Butter town). In the center of the cemetery a full-length cross leans against a tree. Not only does this cross provide visual reminder and echo of Christ’s words, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me (Luke 9:23-24),” but it serves as reminder that at Life’s end the cross will be put down and put away.
Parker Palmer has a poem about that part of Life, ‘When Death Comes.’
When Death Comes – Parker Palmer
When death comes
Like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world.
Quote to Inspire – “Moralists who love photographs always hope that words will save the picture. … In fact, words do speak louder than pictures. Captions do tend to override the evidence of our eyes; but no caption can permanently restrict or secure a picture’s meaning. What the moralists are demanding from a photograph is that it do what no photograph can ever do – speak.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’
Listening to – Sigur Ros’ ‘Glosoli’.
1949 Chevrolet – Peace River
From High Level to Peace River, I made the drive, three hours, right after work. I was on my way to Edmonton to gather my son and his belongings after a year of University and to bring him home for the summer. I booked into a hotel room, brought my gear into the room and returned to my truck to search for a meal. Before I got into my truck I looked across the way to this red 1949 Chevrolet, half-tonne. As a former auto detailer (in a former life), I walked over and then spent ten minutes looking it over. The owner came out and provided the truck’s story – where it came from, how he had restored the vehicle and that he still took it out for a ride occasionally. It had a straight six engine – clean, restored, still capable. The owner, an older fellow, initially thought I wanted to buy the vehicle.
I told him that I was more bent on photographing vehicles than anything else.
He took me into his garage and showed me a 1959 Edsel Corsair – red with white trim and top; again a restored vehicle. The windshield and back window curved around in places where present-day cars have posts to support the roof. I was amazed at the size of the trunk – in area and depth it might actually have held as much as a half-tonne truck box. The car was also about Chrome – chrome bumpers, chrome trim; shine was definitely part of what made this car something. It had old paint, the kind that if it faded you could bring back with polish and glaze. And, I suppose it reminded me of the polishing gleam, the alluring results of those first cars I polished as a young driver and as a lot attendant at Waterloo Mercury.
The evening passed with more talk and the owner knew many of the people I’ve known through the years in High Level and La Crete, Alberta. I think he’d seen me take my L’Arrivee guitar into the hotel because he invited me into the house to play for him and his wife on his Taylor 615 a cherry-wood sunburst with heavier strings. I fretted Rickie Lee Jones’ ‘Starsailor,’ Dar Williams ‘The Beauty of the Rain,’ and Lifehouse’s ‘Me and You.’ I got him to play a few tunes – some country tunes that are becoming difficult with arthritic fingers. By the end of the evening, I had his permission to photograph his red 1949 Chevrolet half-tonne; not a bad evening. I clicked this picture the next morning.
Listening to – Ray LaMontagne’s ‘For the Summer.’
Quote to Inspire – “One of the central characteristics of photography is that process by which original uses are modified, eventually supplanted by subsequent uses ….”
St Louis Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 1
St Louis Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 2
We are well into spring and time has been moving quickly as we move, speeding on, toward June and summer. Two weeks have already passed since I took in a photography workshop with Dave Brosha, a photographer from Yellowknife, NWT. What was extraordinary is that Dave had made the return journey to Fort Vermilion, Alberta, his childhood home to offer a workshop on portraiture and landscape photography. The day before the workshop, at the end of a longer workday I got out to Buttertown’s St. Louis Catholic Mission and photographed the Church that is more than one hundred years old. Two days later, during the landscape portion of the workshop I was able to take Dave and our photography group out to this same site. Dave recalled that his father, a former teacher with the Fort Vermilion School Division, had taken Dave to this same site as a child – a memory from childhood. Dave’s father passed away this year.
Listening to: Jose Gonzales’ ‘Stay Alive,’ David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ (featuring Kristen Wiig) and Rogue Valley’s ‘The Wolves and Ravens’ – all music from the ‘Mitty’ soundtrack, a movie that all photographers should check out.
Quote to Inspire – “In addition to romanticism (extreme or not) about the past, photography offers instant romanticism about the present. In America, the photographer is thus not simply the person who records the past but one who invents it.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala 1
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala 2
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala 3
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala 4
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala 5
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala 6
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala 7
Lake Atitlan, Guatemala 8
Images from Lake Atitlan in Guatemala; the lake is surrounded by three volcanos on its southern flank and is 340 metres deep.
Listening to – Radiohead’s ‘Optimistic’ and the Verve’s ‘Lucky Man.’
Quote to Inspire – “…[Photographs] alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.”
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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