Russet Rain

Backlight, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Summer, Sunset, Weather

Russet Rain – Valleyview, Alberta 1

Russet Rain – Valleyview, Alberta 2

Labour Day weekend, that point in the year when parents of college- and university-aged children make the drive taking students to cities far away, returning them to another year of campus Life. Travel toward school held anticipation for my son. For me, there was the chance meeting of a teaching friend while refueling our vehicles in Valleyview; both of us were taking our kids to University. We chatted, exchanged e-mails and committed to staying in touch via e-mail. In Edmonton, my son and I shopped and got him squared away in terms of his belongings and his first set of groceries. We said our good-byes and I left him to connect with his friends and settle into his University term. Five hours away on my return journey, a rain shower, off in the distance near Valleyview became a focal point to explore with my camera – an immense set of clouds beginning to release rain at sunset. I’m liking the endpoint of this expressive, moody edit.

Listening to – U2’s ‘Raised by Wolves’ intrigues with different possible trajectories – the feral child (raised by wolves), trial-by-fire and being taken advantage of steering towards better, wiser paths and the duality of wolf and lamb that needs to be discerned in terms of people you encounter and deal with.

Quote to Consider – “Nothing is more acceptable today than the photographic recycling of reality, acceptable as an everyday activity and as a branch of high art.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Psalm-like, Dylan

Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Summer

Church – Buttertown, Ft Vermilion, Alberta 1

Church – Buttertown, Ft Vermilion, Alberta 2

I have just had a listen to Bob Dylan’s ‘Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie (Live)’ and am struck by a quality in the monologue that is almost psalm-like, the average woman and man’s take on the business of living, almost the concerns they’d express in prayer, concerns that would consider the gap between what Life ought to hold and Life that needs to be fought for, a Life requiring help. Likely that’s the point – Woody Guthrie articulated such concerns for the average man and woman in song that is psalm, song that’s poetic, song that infuses hope by way a compassionate ear. Woody Guthrie’s words are psalms for Lives in a country emerging from the depression and war and surfacing into the fifties.

The images above are two more edits of the clapper-board church at the St. Louis Roman Catholic mission in Fort Vermilion’s north settlement – Buttertown.

Listening to – Bob Dylan’s ‘Dignity’ and John Mayer’s ‘Queen of California.’

Quote to Consider – “Some photographers set up as scientists, others as moralists. The scientists make an inventory of the world; the moralists concentrate on hard cases.” – Susan Sontag – ‘On Photography’

Highlight & Shroud

Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Summer, Sunrise

rtown, Fort Vemilion, Alberta

Before the day’s meeting and before arriving at our meeting’s destination a colleague and I detoured to a way point with our cameras – his Nikon and my Canon. An hour later our cameras held images gathered from the St. Louis Roman Catholic mission in Fort Vermilion’s north settlement – Buttertown. During that hour, the groundwork for this high dynamic range shot was sparked by the cloud work highlights above and the darker light below enveloping the mission storehouse and surrounding foliage, shrouding texture and low-lying colour … three shots (-2, 0 and +2) a good harvest with which to begin a bigger day of work – my gratitude goes out to my fellow camera shooter and colleague, for investing an earlier hour with me, image-making. Good on you!

Photography, this week – this past seven days has been extraordinary in terms of encountering students, colleagues, friends and former students who have engaged in dialogue about photography, gear and software, each a photographer in the making. My gratitude goes out to each of you for your solid discussion and trajectory as photographers – good schtuff!

Listening to – the morning has held Casting Crown’s ‘Follow Me,’ Bruce Springsteen’s ‘One Step Up,’ and two tonally heavy tunes from Chris Whitley – ‘Big Sky Country’ and ‘Dust Radio;’ musically, U2’s ‘Vertigo Tour’ has been the concert to watch via DVD this week.

Quote to Inspire – “The photographer is always trying to colonize new experiences or find new ways to look at familiar subjects – to fight against boredom. For boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Penned Deere

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Summer

John Deere 620 2 – Utah

John Deere 620 1 – Utah

The family archive of photos taken in the years my brothers and I grew up holds memorable photos of us steering a John Deere 4010 tractor under the watchful eye of cousins. Over the years there would be many rides on swathers, on tractors pulling hay racks, balers and bale stackers; there would be time in a grain truck and times when barlage would be collected and stored. There would be two Harvestore silos, towering high in the air and my cousin’s counter-weight innovation that allowed for the ride to the top of the tower and the descent back to the ground. The awareness and understanding that there were tractors that preceded the John Deere 4010 by decades is something I’ve come to understand more in later years. Here, is a John Deere 620 – along a highway in southeastern Utah, penned and perhaps ready for auction … or perhaps there and waiting for the would-be buyer.

Listening to – much of the soundtrack to ‘Good Will Hunting’ – Jeb Loy Nichols’ ‘As the Rain,’ Elliot Smith’s ‘Angeles’ and The Dandy Warhols’ ‘Boys Better.’

Quote to Consider – “Every page of On Photography raises important and exciting questions about its subject and raises them in the best way.” —The New York Times Book Review

Composition – Edit Toward Mindfulness

Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Journaling, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 1

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 2

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 3

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 4

Elements of composition were the subject of discussion a day ago. Eight different ideas about composing a photograph were considered – pattern, symmetry, depth of field, lines and leading lines, framing, perspective, balance and colour. We ended at the point of composition being about finding the best way of seeing … the subject. The discussion stayed with me as I edited images later that evening – we also find the best way of seeing the subject in editing as we try out variation in exposure, consider the blur and detail of clarity and consider the depth or wash of contrasts. With each of these considerations as the image is edited we see more and more of what the image holds – things not fully seen or recognized when the right moment to capture the image was recognized. For me, composition and editing toward best composition are about discovering the narrative of the photograph; each edit or potential edit considered increases mindfulness of what’s going on or has happened within the photograph. These images do that.

Again, we are at one of the first stops in our scouting look at southeastern Utah. The foundations of a derelict building are tattooed and tagged with graffiti, foundation walls becoming canvas to expression. What are you mindful of in looking at this canvas (or perhaps an actor’s stage to extend and cross-pollinate metaphors)? What can be extrapolated?

Listening to – some of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Time Out’ and remembering my father and early years at home, sophisticated, challenging music; yet now also with a strong, strong element of home. This morning’s tunes have also included U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ – the curious phrase, probably for their young adult children is ‘young, not dumb.’ The morning has also held Coldplay – ‘Always in My Head,’ ‘Midnight’ and ‘Oceans’ among others.

Quote to Consider – “Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality … or they enlarge reality that is felt to be shrunk. One can’t possess reality, one can possess images – one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Curious, Unique

Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Journaling, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer

Utah Landscape

Having read Jack Kerouac’s novel, ‘On The Road,’ this image of American landscape holds interest; the building within this landscape was perhaps intact and used at the time the novel was written, the end of the forties. I’m liking the resulting edit, expressive in terms of colour and compositionally pulling my curiosity toward this former building.

Listening to – U2’s ‘Sleep Like a Baby Tonight,’ ‘Cedarwood Road’ and ‘Raised by Wolves.’

Quote to Inspire – “For photography to compete with painting means invoking originality as an important standard for appraising a photographer’s work, originality being equated with the stamp of a unique, forceful sensibility.” Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Her Garden

Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Flora, Journaling, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Summer

Utah Flower 1

Utah Flower 2

In my life time, I have been witness to my mother’s gardens. She had three successive gardens, one in Edmonton, another in Brampton and her final garden in Qualicum Beach. Her gardens were always something to take in. Her garden would contain trees and flowers and shrubs, and, through the seasons there would be the colour of active and full Life and there would be the wither of desaturation found in dormancy. Through the year, my mother would research plants she’d like to grow and then take them on in her garden. This summer, our first scouting drive into Utah put us on the road for six hours doing a large loop of the southeastern part of the state. We found these flowers, plants very similar to some my mother had in her garden and occasionally would have in a vase on her dining room table.

Listening to – U2’s ‘California (There is No End to Love)’ … it starts out recalling the Beach Boys’ tune, ‘Barbara Ann’ … “Bar, Bar, Barbara, Santa Barbara.”

Quote to Consider – “For photographers there is, finally no difference – no greater aesthetic advantage – between the effort to embellish the world and the counter-effort to rip off its mask.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Sundays and Trains

Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Rail Yard, Summer

Union Pacific Engine – Ogden, Utah

Burned Out Box Car – Ogden, Utah 1

Burned Out Box Car – Ogden, Utah 2

Cargill Engine – Ogden, Utah

Rail Abstraction – Ogden, Utah

Rail Car – Ogden Utah

Red Cross Hospital Car – Ogden, Utah

Train Snow Plow – Ogden, Utah

Train Engine – Ogden, Utah

Union Pacific Box Car – Ogden, Utah

A Sunday – day’s end; we had enjoyed family’s camaraderie and been among cousins at our cousins farm, an hour away from our Edmonton home. On what is now known as the Queen Elizabeth II highway between Calgary and Edmonton we traveled home Dad at the wheel of our green 69 Pontiac Parisienne. Often on our right travelling northward with us would be a train – three or four engines together pulling a string of cars, box cars, black tankers, different hopper cars etc.. As we finally entered the city of Edmonton and made our right turn from Calgary trail onto 51st avenue at the intersection holding Koch Mercury and the Van Winkle hotel, we would encounter the train we had traveled with at the rail crossing behind Koch Mercury. And, as you sat in your car waiting for the train to pass you could sometimes signal the engineer to sound the train’s horn by putting your fist in the air and pulling down in same fashion that the engineer would with his hand on the cable line that would release the bellow of the train’s horn. More often than not, the train’s engineer would oblige, the horn would release and the sound could be heard for miles.

It’s been a generation or two since Dad and Mom took my two brothers and I to my cousin’s farm. I have had my own time working with trains during summers in University, often as rail car spotter. My own son is now entering his fourth year of University and there’s even been a good long while since he and I would read of Sir Topham Hat, Gordon, Percy, Thomas et al in Reverend W. Awdry’s ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ books.

And, my own interest in trains has not waned. The following photos are a number of first edits from Ogden and engines for viewing at the the Union Pacific railway station, there.

Listening to: ‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone’) and ‘Every Breaking Wave’ from U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ – flip, you don’t have to buy the album, it’s free in iTunes; also the morning has been about Springsteen’s music and musicares celebration of his achievement.

Quote to Inspire – “… Photographs are evidence of not only what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Recommended book encouraging literacy in children – ‘The Read Aloud Handbook,’ by Jim Trelease