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Land, cloud, light and colour – in juxtaposition they caress and collide yielding immensity in southern Alberta prairie and among foothills and mountains.

Quote to Consider/Inspire – ‘To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy (Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers).’

Listening to: Bob Dylan’s ‘False Prophet,’ ‘My Own Version of You’ and ‘I’ve made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You’ from his ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ album.

Immensities – southern Alberta prairie that stretches out unending, wind and cloud moving in the sky above and these four-story tall wind turbines. Each immensity is a necessary component of what are termed ‘wind-farms,’ an alternate means of creating electricity that does not require coal or the damming of a river system.  Again, these are images from February’s road trip between Lethbridge and Waterton Lake National park.

Quote to Inspire –  ‘The Earth is Art, the photographer is only a witness (Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Earth from Above).’

Listening to: Bob Dylan’s ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways.’

The Azure grain elevator has been an intended, return-to location for my camera and me.  The last time I shot this grain elevator, I did so in the early afternoon and was looking into the sun. Doing so, produced more of a silhouette and the harsh light did not yield colour well. These images are taken more than a kilometre from the elevator. The telephoto lens does well compressing distance between tractor, grain elevator and mountains – all seem quite close to each other when, in fact, a sizable distances separate them.

Quote to Inspire – ‘Photography takes an instant out of time, altering Life by holding it still (Dorothea Lange).’

Listening to: ‘Blue Moon,’ ‘Unforgiven,’ ‘Wave’ and ‘Don’t Let It Go’ from Beck’s ‘Morning Phase’ album.

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Gratitude – an evening’s opportunity to be out with cameras behind Nanton, westward into foothills at summer’s end.

Quote to Inspire – ‘All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth (Richard Avedon).’

Listening to: ‘Cycle,’ ‘Morning,’ ‘Heart is a Drum’ and ‘Say Goodbye’ from Beck’s album, ‘Morning Phase.’

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A few Nanton, Alberta moments, perhaps an hour’s worth of stop and start in collecting these grain elevator images with an older rangefinder camera, the camera slowing me down … allowing me to think through exposure settings, the gather of composition, the finding of what works and the back and forth zoom only accomplished by foot.

Quote to Inspire: ‘I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph (Leon Levinstein).’

Listening to: ‘Naima,’ ‘Libra,’ ‘Capella,’ and ‘Ad Te Levavi’ from Tommy Smith’s ‘Into Silence.’

A two-tonne grain truck sits on the north side of the highway connecting Lethbridge with Fort MacLeod.  The truck and the landscape it sits within intrigue. On the southern side of the highway are coulees and then further south is the Blood Reserve.

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

Listening to: Tommy Smith’s 2002 Jazz album, ‘Into the Silence.’