Derelict Farm Buildings – Valleyview, Alberta
Derelict farm buildings and an unused field on the road home, near Valleyview, Alberta.
Listening to – Concrete Blonde and ‘I Don’t Need a Hero.’
Quote to Inspire – “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” – Garry Winogrand
Along the Road – Woking, Alberta
Barn – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta 1
Barn – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta 2
Canadian National Bridge – Edmonton, Alberta
Grain Shed – Manning, Alberta 1
Grain Shed – Manning, Alberta 2
Grain Shed – Manning, Alberta 3
Grain Shed – Near Figure 8 Lake, Alberta
Train Trestle – Sangudo, Alberta
Alone, along the road, driving home, structures from a former time and world that Alberta was age and erode with the seasons. Cared about structures are kept for their continued functionality, others for their memorial’s sake, to remember people and their time. Other structures, uncared for, decay and become derelict, awaiting demise. Each informs of their former time – what was then and what was on the go and what it was like being there (and then). Halt the car, grab camera and tripod, look around … repeat … all the way home. Snow melts. Spring takes hold.
Listening to – Joshua Redman’s ‘Stop this Train,’ and Sigur Ros’ ‘Svefn-G-Englar’ and ‘Glosoli.’
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
CN Caboose – Edmonton, Alberta
City of Edmonton Skyline
Cab & Chassis – Sangudo, Alberta
Barn – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta
Sometimes a fence, sometimes physical distance, sometimes a line to be respected and not crossed – in each case a barrier stands between the subject and your camera. When you cannot interact directly with your photo’s subject, you shoot from the sidelines … and can still get the shot. You see the situation for what it is and work with what ‘is’. Each of these photos were shot from the sidelines – the CN caboose, the Fort Saskatchewan barn, the city of Edmonton Skyline and the windshields of the truck cabs.
Listening to – Ben E. King’s ‘Stand by Me’ and Toby Keith’s ‘Red Solo Cup.’
Quote to Inspire – “All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.” – Elliott Erwitt
Farm – Rimbey, Alberta 2
Farm – Rimbey, Alberta
Field Entrance – Woking, Alberta
Former Farm – Notikewan, Alberta
Peace River – Dunvegan, Alberta 1
Peace River – Dunvegan, Alberta 2
Peace River – Dunvegan, Alberta 3
Peace River – Dunvegan, Alberta 4
Grain Elevator – Sexsmith, Alberta 1
Grain Elevator – Sexsmith, Alberta 2
In a spring that needs to take hold more firmly, winter drags on, a guest overstaying its welcome. Winter continues as constant in and around Alberta and features in photos – farms dusted with snow, grain elevators and Harvestor Silos providing colour against the snow, the Peace River melting through ice … covered with snow. Each are presented here.
Listening to – Francesca Battistelli’s ‘This is the Stuff’ and JJ Heller’s ‘What Love Really Means.’
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
Country Road Sunset – Mayerthorpe, Alberta
Farm Silo Silhouette – Mayerthorpe, Alberta
Wednesday’s travel took me from my Calgary, Camera Store stop northward on my return drive to High Level. Around dinner-time, between Mayerthorpe and Whitecourt the cloud-work and evolving sunset on the southwest of the highway were a spectacular sight among a huge and open northern Alberta sky, land less frequently frequented, something quite different from the frenetic congestion of people and land encountered between Edmonton and Calgary, an area still held in grey bleakness of winter. It was good to be traveling home in familiar North Country.
Listening to – Collective Soul and ‘Shine’, and, Sigur Ros and ‘E-bow.’
Quote to Inspire – “While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see .” – Dorothea Lange
1938 Ford One Ton Tow Truck
Farm – Nampa, Alberta
Manning Grain Truck 1
Manning Grain Truck 2
McLure Tow Truck 1
McLure Tow Truck 3
McLure Tow Truck 4
Saw Mill – Whitecourt 1
Train Tracks – Kamloops, British Columbia
Good travel from a photographic perspective is something allowing the photographer to look out to the world and to engage visually with the narrative of situation and locale. What is out there? What is happening or has happened? What pulls your eye towards it? What colour is there? What shadow is there? What is the visual impression? The challenge is that travel is often expeditious – you need to arrive at your destination at a certain time or to return home because you have goals on the other end of your travel. The trick is to plan for the opportunity to stop and photograph starting out early enough that you give yourself abundance of time with your camera … and the world. For the same nine hour drive we make between High Level and Edmonton, Alberta, an artist we worked with, Chris Short, observed that there is enough visual information of interest to make it necessary to break the same trip into three days to allow her to sketch, draw and paint … along the way. The photos presented here are those on the return journey home last week. Not knowing the times or vicinities well and with the press of my family and me returning to other goals, my photography was more happenstance than planned or found.
Listening to – The B-52s with the Wild Crowd performing ‘Private Idaho,’ ‘Ultraviolet,’ ‘Roam,’ and ‘Cosmic Thing’.
Quote to Inspire – “Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly is.” – Anonymous
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 1
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 11
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 10
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 9
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 8
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 7
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 6
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 5
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 4
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 3
Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 2
A 1938 Ford one-ton tow truck sits, seemingly at the ready, gazing out to the highway. Yet, at the ready, looks a lot like ready to sell.
Static, the Ford’s paint flakes away and metal beneath oxidizes into rust, colourfully. Curves are the thing, in the shape and detail of the cab, in each window, throughout the length and nose of the hood, in the catch-all of the fenders and in the perfect circles of the lights; straight lines add contrast to these curves with the verticals and horizontals of the running boards, bumper and grill; and then there are the diagonals associated with the structure for leverage, towing and pulling other vehicles. There’s remarkable engineering, here, both in the original build of the Ford and in the impromptu innovation of the towing structure … someone has the knack for towing vehicles. The whole vehicle is architecture, engineering, shape and detail from a former time, a time that preceded me, a time that was my father’s – all pull my interest to this Ford. And, there’s anticipation of how it would drive and how it would ride … the finding of gears, the getting it to move and remain moving … there’d be the unique bounce and shift of weight as the truck moves over terrain … there’d be the rhythm of engine combustion idling and working, pacing out each mile … and there’d be the view from within while piloting this vehicle – all intrigue me.
Automobiles that have left the road have been set back on the road surface by this Ford. Remnants of collisions – damaged vehicles, damaged people and damaged egos, their aftermath has needed transfer to homes, autobody shops and junk yards, something this Ford has provided regularly. In extreme and extraordinary winter weather this Ford has been one to venture out on uncertain roads and perhaps there would be no safer place than in an outfitted Ford one-ton tow truck with a rested driver who understands people, the road and his machine. This Ford one-ton tow truck is for sale down around McLure, British Columbia; the first person with $2000 or so dollars takes it.
Listening to – Tom Cochrane’s ‘Big League’.
Quote to Inspire – “Buy a good pair of comfortable shoes, have a camera around your neck at all times, keep your elbows in, be patient, optimistic and don’t forget to smile.” – Matt Stuart
Thursday night – I’m checking the La Crete Online webpage lacreteonline.com/ for the next stock car race out on Wolf Lake Road (closer to Blumenort); there, I read and see pictures of a forest fire out on Wilson Prairie Road – south and east from La Crete, Alberta; windrows and forested land are ablaze. No one has been evacuated and only one home seems to be in the fire’s track. The Wilson Prairie area contains back roads of a Mennonite farming community, roads I used to drive when shuffling Home Education curriculum around to students – their names and faces and the faces of their parents come to mind. My hope for them is that the fire can be contained quickly and that they will not be affected. When I think through my students I’m reminded that the first home education student I met and worked with was one I had to get to by driving on Wilson Prairie Road and then finding another road – Savage Prairie Road. On Thursday evening, I drove out to the fire site staying a few hours, snapping photos and chatting with concerned residents driving by, amazed by the sight. It’s the second wildfire in the La Crete area this summer. On Thursday night, traffic tapered off around 1:00 a.m. with an occasional farmer still coming out to watch, to look and to assess.
Listening to – Matthew Perryman Jones’ Stones from the Riverbed. Other songs of the day are Sarah Masen’s Hope, Over the Rhine’s Spark, and Rumble by Link Wray and the Wraymen.
Quote to Inspire – “The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust.
Tonight has been an evening of yardio – yard-work and cardio effort. Our lawn is now dethatched, the old grass bagged (and ready for garbage day) and our lawn is fertilized and being watered as I write. For the first time this spring I have sudsed-up our Nissan Altima – I’ve washed it by hand, with brushes and sprayer, first with Palmolive soap to take the dirt off and then with Mother’s Vehicle soap. The Altima is clean. But, its six-year old exterior is in need of detailing – a good go-round with a good glazing polish, buffer and various amounts of elbow grease. If I’d had some Autoglym Bodywork Shampoo the wash would have produced a glossy sheen. My cabinet in the garage holds two things that will brighten this vehicle – Autoglym Super Resin polish and Autoglym High Definition paste wax. Not only will the paint gleam but the relief in the vehicle’s shape will be enhanced optically, in some cases to a degree of optical illusion. The waxing will have to wait until summer break and the chore will become a way to settle towards summer’s calm following a hectic school year. The chore, the time invested and the dazzling outcome are things I look forward to as summer projects.
Most photographs presented here are ones taken in the final hour of sunlight last Saturday night; it’s about half past ten heading to eleven o’clock. The river bank at Dunvegan features shadow play with shadows lengthening and darkening to enhance the rolling mounds of hillage above the Peace River. In two photos rusting relics are stored in public view. The three early sixties GMC half-tons seem ready to share parts in order to cluster into one working whole. The ready interchangeability of parts between the three trucks points to a need to gather them all rather than only one. Canada Geese move actively at sunset in a farmer’s field feeding. And, a disused barn catches the light of sunset … a dusky day’s end in Alberta’s late spring.
Listening to – J J Heller’s Your Hands, Missy Higgins’ Warm Whispers, Coldplay’s See You Soon, David Gray’s Kathleen, Jem singing Maybe I’m Amazed, Ray LaMontagne’s I Still Care for You and all the way through to John Denver’s Thank God I’m a Country Boy. The playlist rounds out to the Counting Crows’ Raining in Baltimore and David Gray’s Jackdaw.
Quote to Inspire – “Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.” – Matt Hardy
Ray LaMontagne’s song ‘Beg, Steal or Borrow’ plays, a tune I’m drawn to lyrically and melodiously. It’s a tune that says as much about the creation of a song – “you beg, you steal, you borrow” – as it does about the act of settling into Life and working through disillusionments, “Are you gonna step into line like your daddy done, punchin the time and climbin life’s long ladder?” It’s a tune that looks at the cost of pursuing individuality (or greatness) versus conforming to Life’s norms (mediocrity). It seems also to be the tune of the man further along the road looking toward a younger one, perhaps hoping to help him avoid Life’s misteps, perhaps gauging the outcomes of the younger man’s choices and responses to Life events. In this, there’s the sideline vicarious living out of life through the actions of another, a younger man who aims to make his stand and put his footprint on the world. The song’s really about that twofold look at oneself – the you that pursues passions coming against that wiser part of self that looks critically at actions, outcomes and costs. There’s wrestling with truth and wrestling towards truth. In content the lyrics associate well to much of what Tom Cochrane sings about (e.g. Boy Inside the Man) … more good tunes.
Photos – out and away on a Saturday morning that extends longways through most of the day returning me home in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Old-time farm buildings and homes feature in these photos amongst Alberta spring weather, a mixture of moisture laden air rising as the sun heats the earth, the air rippling in mirage fashion in convection’s warmth. Clouds billow and stack throughout the day becoming backdrop to earthly structures – land, trees, buildings and roads.
Listening to – David Gray’s Fugitive, Ray LaMontagne’s I Still Care For You and Ryan Adams’ Oh My Sweet Carolina.
Quote to Inspire – “For me the printing process is part of the magic of photography. It’s that magic that can be exciting, disappointing, rewarding and frustrating all in the same few moments in the darkroom.” – John Sexton
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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