Last February, my wife’s aunt was struggling with cancer at the Grande Prairie hospital. She went in during the Christmas break and remained there until May when she succumbed to the disease. In February, when this photograph was taken I was making time to be away from the hospital to see what was happening in the world. I got out toward Beaverlodge, Alberta. This photograph impressed me as one landmarking a period of time in which the intensity of light grows greater, day-by-day as we move forward from winter into spring – there’s something of ‘hope’ in it. Again, its subject is another grain bin; but, it sits upon a field that soon will grow black as snow melts into earth and then will grow green with as it’s planted and left to respond to the sun.
Again, listening to Liz Longley sing her song, Unraveling about her grandmother from her album Hot Loose Wire.
The chorus:
I’m the only daughter of her oldest son
I knew well before her spirit was gone
And her life is a thread woven into every part of me
She is unraveling, she is unraveling.
Quote to Inspire: “A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.” — Eudora Welty
Tomorrow, after a day of school between 4:00-5:00 p.m., a salvage company will come to my house and tow away my 2000 GMC Sierra half-ton pick-up truck. Today, I checked with my wife and she agreed to my signing off the vehicle to my insurance company – the truck has been written off. The truck, a former Cargill elevator truck, has an ever-running small Vortec V8 engine and has had nothing but synthetic oil and regular maintenance through its 286,000 km history. The transmission has been upgraded to allow for the hauling of a motor boat during summers by its previous owner. While not a top of the line truck, it has been a presentable vehicle in terms of shape, chrome and gleam – at twelve years of age there is little rust.
I liked that.
The truck has required some mastery to drive. A two-wheel rear drive unit, without a load in the box, the light back end on icy winter roads takes a while to get to cruising speed. All season passenger tires on the front have made the steering a bit sloppy, as well. Coming down the three kilometre hill from Twin Lakes, Alberta toward High Level in heavy snowfall has been more of a skiing event than rolling forward with steering, brakes and engine. I’ve mastered much of that; but, obviously not enough to avoid last week’s buck.
With photography, I’ve appreciated having windows on all sides of me in the cab and the immediacy of light which well allowed me to sense direction, colour and intensity in considering possible photographs. Tonight, I have looked back through the past two years for photos of my 2000 GMC Sierra and found these four.
Quote to Inspire – “When I think of why I make pictures, the [only] reason that I can come up with just seems that I’ve been making my way here. It seems right now that all I’ve ever done in my life is making my way here to you.” – so says Robert Kincaid, in the movie and novel, The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller; notable to me, not as romantic, but as photographer and GMC truck owner is that Robert Kincaid, a National Geographic photographer enters and leaves Madison County in a forest green 65 GMC pickup. Good schtuff!
Listening to Lucinda Williams from her album World Without Tears – Righteously, Ventura and Bleeding Fingers; reminded that Sarah McLachlan adores Lucinda William’s album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
With this image, I’m beyond camera in post-processing toward this colorful result. The Plymouth Savoy plays its own part in longer term decay among this still life. I like it.
Listening still to www.ckua.org and Hole in the Wall by the Bobby Blue Band from their album Year of Tears.
Quote to Inspire – “Light glorifies everything. It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects. The object is nothing, light is everything.” — Leonard Missone
With photography, there’s a subtle contemplative side which must be settled into and found; then, ‘click’ you’re in … amid revelations of colour, texture and visual treasure, all sitting there, before you. Right?
I’m looking back through my McNaught Homestead photos again this evening – this image surfaced in terms of colour, form and texture … and thoughts about what I’d do with it, anew.
Quote to Inspire – “I see something special and show it to the camera. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.” — Sam Abell
Listening to www.ckua.org ; it’s Friday night and Liz Mandeville belts out Corner Bar Blues from her Red Top album.
At an age when wearing glasses assists me in my day, my experience of working with a camera through to editing an image often is about revisiting subject and context to see what else is there; it is actual re-view (review). The process is similar to gleaning feedback in using a personal journal. And, in journaling, one point of revelation has been sorting through the conception that memory, perception, thought and even feeling are only what they were on the day that they occurred. In that portion of experience in which they occurred they were what truth was – they became the facts in response to Life’s events for that duration of time. Without a record, the memory that is carried forward can shift, adjust and change over time … with new thoughts, feelings, perceptions and influences – memory is or becomes malleable. Just like a journaling process, creating a photograph isolates the truth of ‘what was’ for the duration of time in which it occurs. What is also valuable about a journal and photographs produced by the photographer and camera is that you can revisit subject and context to see and appreciate more of what else was there. The journal and photograph inform you and other readers/viewers about the personal narrative of the writer/photographer. The feedback of what else was there, that you now see, informs future action.
Listening to Neil Young’s Old Man and reminded that Lizz Wright also sings this song; there’s not so much experientially that separates us, the older and younger; it does seem to be a father-son song and the son’s revelation of greater similarity than difference.
Quote to Inspire – “Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.” — Ansel Adams
I’m sifting photographs on my computer, tonight, aiming to locate photographs taken of the road among mountains between Grande Prairie and Banff, Alberta, a trip taken this fall in early October. To refer to them will allow future planning of High Dynamic Range (HDR) shots; but, photographs have been shifted between my C: drive and L: drive within the past three months and am having no luck, tonight. Sifting at a later date will yield them.
A photograph has caught my eye, a reward for my look-back – a photo of an early fifties Plymouth Savoy dragged into the woods behind the McNaught homestead, home to Alberta artist, Euphemia McNaught. She’s had some intention in dragging the vehicle to where it sits among Aspen willows spaced with what appears to be regular rhythm as you look across the car from front to back and diagonally from driver’s side to passenger rear. This back drop changes in colour with the seasons – whites and blacks in winter, greens in summer and the reds of leaves in fall.
Those who discover and view the vehicle orient themselves to still life juxtaposition, a car oxidizes among the regular cycle of life and death of plants and greenery; the scene is a treasure in terms of colour, shape, context, season, light and themes of still life. The day amidst its drizzle did get cold but not before two hours had gone by looking through my camera lens at the car, its situation and the play of light.
Listening to U2’s One, tonight from the U218 Singles album.
Quote to Inspire – “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” ~ Ansel Adams.
Within a photograph appreciation for proportion is found by relating a known object to something recognizable in the photograph – scale is established within such comparison. Here, the summer photograph of the Alexandra Falls contains a person standing on top of the west edge of the falls. In comparison with yesterday’s ice-filled Alexandra Falls, the person in the summer photograph provides a basis from which to consider the actual size of the ice pile collecting below the falls, in the gorge.
Listening to Rondo-Allegro, a Mozart Clarinet and Oboe Quartet (music that organizes and shapes the mind – one of my father’s contributions to our growing up).
Quote to Inspire – “Sometimes you need to take a little holiday away from yourself – negativity; and call off the Rottweiler’s of analysis and accusation and give yourself a free space; and say for the next week I will give myself a free break and do nothing against myself until my old sense of myself builds up – be courteous to yourself.” ~ John O’Donohue, Divine Beauty – The Invisible Embrace, a Greenbelt lecture
Summer - Alexandra Falls (proportion by comparison to known object ... the person)
One year ago today my intention for photography in coming to Edmonton over Christmas was to capture sense of place. In any visit I had previously made to Edmonton through the years, I spent time on Whyte Avenue looking through Art shops for images of Edmonton – drawings, paintings and photographs. These shops would contain images of the High Level bridge, the train station on 103rd Street, many images of Old Strathcona (Whyte Avenue) and its various happenings, the Hotel MacDonald, the Alberta Legislature and the Edmonton Skyline – all representing a home I’d grown up in, all representing memory and a desire to revisit former times. In late afternoon on December 28, 2010, I parked my vehicle close to the Low Level Bridge and got down onto the ice of the North Saskatchewan River with tripod and Canon 30D and began clicking away using my Sigma 10-20mm lens.
In an hour and a half I had rounded up forty-nine images of my own, new photographic memories of Edmonton – the Low Level Bridge, the Hotel MacDonald, the Edmonton Skyline. I’d also encountered a disciplined martial artist training against trees, the welcoming smile of a female long distance runner and two University students who thought I’d fall through the ice along the river’s edge … go figure.
Listening to – Beggars & Buskers, by Eric Angus Whyte on the Luddite Sons album (thanks to Stocki for this recommendation on his Soul Surmise blog).
Quote to Inspire – “The key to seeing the world’s soul, and in the process wakening one’s own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination an illusion. It is the other way around.” ~ Thomas Moore ‘Original Self’
Colourful Road – Between Fort Vermilion and La Crete, Alberta
Backroads – Between Fort Vermilion and La Crete, Alberta
Sawmill – La Crete, Alberta
Sawmill – La Crete, Alberta
Sawmill – La Crete, Alberta
Sunset – La Crete, Alberta
Round Bale – La Crete, Alberta
Round Bale – La Crete, Alberta
Christmas Lights – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Christmas Lights – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Homesteads – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Homesteads – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Shack – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Shack – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Fort Vermilion School Division – Central Office
Fort Vermilion School Division – Central Office
Looking on to the Flamingo Inn – High Level, Alberta
Colourful Christmas Tree – High Level, Alberta
Main Street High Level – Another View
Main Street High Level – Christmas Decor
A few years ago I had a job requiring travel among the back roads of Alberta’s MacKenzie Municipal District No. 23, a region that would encompass three smaller European countries. It was a job in which I could pay attention to the region’s movement through the seasons in terms of weather, light and darkness. One year ago today, I took my camera and tripod out and away from High Level to revisit these same backroads, though for an afternoon and evening I remained oriented to the rural landscape between La Crete and Fort Vermilion, Alberta. I began taking photos in the mid-afternoon working my way from La Crete toward Fort Vermilion and then rounded out the evening with photos of main street High Level and its Christmas decor. Here’s a look back to photographs taken a year ago today.
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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