Windshield Meditation

Canon Camera, Farm, Farmhouse, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Weather

Barn – Rycroft, Ab – Canada

Barn and Quonset – Fairview, Ab – Canada 1

Barn and Quonset – Fairview, Ab – Canada 2

Spring’s Rolling Hills – Near Rycroft, Alberta – Canada 1

Spring’s Rolling Hills – Near Rycroft, Alberta – Canada 2

A prairie thaw, sky filling through the afternoon with cloud – a long drive southward into more and more of spring and sunlight provides ample opportunity for the meditation that becomes photography and each photograph – a photo walk with wheels so to speak, travel traversing a third of our province in a five-hour trek. Quiet, without news, story or music, the drive becomes a photographer’s dream – unending windshield time. That afternoon’s thought remnants are found in these images.

Listening to – Radiohead’s ‘Pyramid Song,’ Sigur Ros’ ‘Glosoli,’ Snow Patrol’s ‘Garden Rules,’ Bryan Ferry’s ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,’ U2’s ‘California’ and Tom Waits’ ‘Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis.

Quote to Consider – “The eye should learn to listen before it looks.” – Robert Frank

Buttertown Snow

Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Combine (Farming), Farm, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Vehicle, Weather

Buttertown New Holland Combine – Fort Vermilion, Alberta – Canada

Buttertown Truck Cab – Fort Vermilion , Alberta – Canada

Buttertown snow melts, revealing different finds among Fort Vermilion’s north settlement trees on a Saturday, one of the last grey few before the intensity of spring light warms and colours the world anew. Here, blurring elements in each image to explore the result.

Quote to Consider – “Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.” – Don McCullin

Listening to – Agnes Obel’s ‘Fivefold’ and Junip’s ‘Don’t Let It Pass.’

Window Pragmatics

Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Still Life, Weather

Homestead on a Hill – near Sexsmith, Alberta – Canada

Ten minutes north from Sexsmith, Alberta this homestead is one previously photographed in mid-winter, the land smoothed under a snow blanket, the homestead roof likewise blanketed, but windswept with snow blown into curvilinear shape. Here, in early spring, the homestead’s greying outline pulls my eye, then it is its placement on the rise in this field, then the weather drama of its backdrop clouding and finally it’s the immensity of the homestead windows, each – one on each side – four feet tall by one and a half feet in breadth; much can be seen from this homestead. A South African farming friend points out that being able to see in each direction – north, east, south and west – requires that the farming home be placed at best vantage point to allow observation and consideration of happenings on the farm property. Pragmatics is what has been highlighted – all should be seen from the farm home and limit the need to be on the land to check on things.

Listening to – John O’Donohue’s ‘Longing and Belonging.’

Quote to Consider – “Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how,’ while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why.’ Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.” – Man Ray

La Glace – Bounty

Backlight, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Fauna, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Sunset

La Glace Homestead II – La Glace, Alberta – Canada 1

La Glace Homestead II – La Glace, Alberta – Canada 2

La Glace Homestead II – La Glace, Alberta – Canada 3

La Glace Homestead II – La Glace, Alberta – Canada 4

Saturday’s bounty, a week ago, was found at sundown near La Glace – this homestead image; it followed six shots in which a moose and its calf trotted behind this homestead, a speedy blur of movement from left to right in my viewfinder, all amid this static landscape and sunset.

Listening to – Coldplay’s ‘Magic,’ U2’s ‘Every Breaking Wave,’ One Republic’s ‘I Lived,’ Of Monsters and Men’s ‘King and Lionheart (live),’ John Mayer’s ‘Age of Worry,’ Maroon 5’s ‘Lucky Strike,’ Snow Patrol’s ‘Crack the Shutters,’ Coldplay’s ‘Us Against the World,’ U2’s ‘Song for Someone,’ Ed Sheeran’s ‘Little Bird,’ and John Mayer’s ‘Queen of California.’

Quote to Consider – “To me, photography is an art of observations. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place … I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliott Erwitt, 1928

Walkabout Homestead

Backlight, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Weather

La Glace Homestead on a Hill 1

La Glace Homestead on a Hill 2

La Glace Homestead on a Hill 3

On my own, away from home and family, four hours into a walkabout drive with my camera on a sunny, spring Saturday, a right turn takes me west, heading toward La Glace – new ground. Nearly sunset, the miles long straight road climbs and curves around a foothill allowing this scene to find me – a homestead on the westward rise, against the big Alberta sky.

Listening to – Chris Whitley’s ‘Big Sky Country’ and ‘Dust Radio.’

Quote to Consider – “Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” – Berenice Abbott

Rusting Relics – Narratives of Habit

Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Winter

Farm Trucks – Manning, Alberta 1

Farm Trucks – Manning, Alberta 2

Farm Trucks – Manning, Alberta 3

In the past few days I’ve wondered if the attracting element to vehicle photography is the coherence of a vehicle’s design, functionality and comfort. Beyond this, is it the style and form of the vehicle that attracts the eye and the impulse to drive the vehicle? Perhaps it is our ability to imagine both how someone will look driving the vehicle or merely the anticipation of how it will handle that attracts the photographer to a vehicle.

For drivers, habit leads us in our vehicle use, our driving. We tend not to consider the system or systems of steps that allow us to drive a vehicle. Unlocking the door, opening the door, sitting in the seat, putting the key into the ignition, starting the car with or without throttle use, shifting from park to reverse and then to drive, steering, adjusting speed with throttle (gas pedal) – these steps get the car moving and rolling. A system of steps ensures safety of self and others, a system of steps allows us not only to propel the vehicle forward, but to navigate while doing so and a system of steps allows us to park and leave the vehicle. For the driver such a system of steps is more habit than an individually considered set of actions that takes driver and passengers from point of origin to destination and back again.

So, is it design, function, form, colour or comfort that attracts the photographer’s eye to a vehicle? Or is it the photographer’s ability to imagine, see and confirm the narrative of habit associated with a vehicle that pulls the eye – the future narrative of a new vehicle; or, the past narrative of a vehicle from another era? Perhaps these questions are starting points for vehicle advertisers. Still I like looking at each dent, chip and window crack in old, rusting relics; vehicle interiors convey much about driver and passengers – much narrative of habit is found in these vehicles. Here, rusting relics are set out in a farmer’s field near Manning, Alberta. In my drive past the site last weekend it was a surprise to see the old La Crete, REO Speedwagon cab and chassis gone; hopefully it’s found a good home and has had the good fortune to become a project for rehabilitation.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography is for me simply a creative passion, the ability to use light and form to capture in a single image – what I see in my own imagination….” – Tim Wallace, car photographer in interview with Topaz Labs.

Listening to – Jesse Cook’s ‘The Blue Guitar Sessions;’ one song standing out is ‘Ocean Blue.’