Rainbow Re-edit

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Wind Turbines and Rainbow – Oahu 1

Plantation Fire – Haleiwa, Oahu

Wind Turbines and Rainbow – Oahu 5

Wind Turbines and Rainbow – Oahu 4

Wind Turbines and Rainbow – Oahu 3

Two summers ago, my wife, daughter and I enjoyed two weeks on Oahu. We rented a car, a Ford Fusion, for the time and used it to take us on day trips exploring Oahu. In the second week we returned for perhaps the fourth time to Haleiwa, part of Oahu’s North Shore. Exploring, shopping and photo gathering were elements of that day. We’d each finished an ice cream cone and were buying t-shirts for my son when sirens of fire engines moved through town – one, then, five minutes later another.

To the north, a plantation, perhaps a mile away was burning and dark black smoke was billowing in the air.

When traffic had returned to its steady flow we got into the car with the intention of returning to Honolulu for the evening. Traffic had slowed, returning to an ambling pace. As we headed away from Haleiwa the idea to see the site of the fire attracted my curiosity. I took a right from the main road and followed a one-lane backroad toward the fire. I thought better of it; the backroad to the plantation was narrow and blocking traffic would be a problem.

I stopped our vehicle, got out and looked back over my right shoulder to see these wind turbines with a rainbow coming down in the midst of them – an opportunity for a photograph had presented itself. I attached my 70-200mm lens to my Canon 60D, zoomed in and captured these images. I posted the image on this blog maybe eighteen months ago, an image edited on my laptop while waiting for clothes to dry in the laundry room of the Marriott Hotel in Honolulu. The original posted is the third image above. Yesterday, I explored this sequence of images and found a few others to share. My thanks to Mark Kurtz for drawing my attention back to these images.

Listening to – Parov Stelar’s ‘Room Service,’ Nitin Sawhney’s ‘Firmament,’ the Gotan Project’s ‘Santa Maria (Del Buen Ayre)’ and Quantic & Tempo’s ‘Sabor.’

Quote to Consider – “In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.” – August Sander

A Finer Clarity

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Sangudo Trucks-Edit-2-Edit-Edit

Sangudo Trucks-Edit-3

Sangudo Trucks-Edit-Edit

Adobe Photoshop CS6 has been platform for creating, or perhaps better stated, re-creating High Dynamic Range (HDR) images from RAW files that had been used with NiK Software’s HDR Efex Pro. The process is new with a different sequence of steps – using Adobe Bridge to identify and find photos is one step changing things. And, then, the image result has less halo surrounding subjects within the photograph. The image created this morning is from the Alaska Highway Construction Museum in Sangudo, Alberta from a year or two ago. The clarity and detail is substantially finer using the Adobe Photoshop CS6 process to create the HDR – edges have greater fidelity to what was observed.

Quote to Consider – “In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.” – August Sander (sounds like an HDR image making kind of quote)

Listening to – Zoe Keating’s Album, ‘Into the Trees;’ ‘Optimist,’ ‘Don’t Worry,’ and ‘Escape Artist.’

P.S. – It has finally happened; that photo-a-day that should have resulted in 365 posts in one year – intended from 2011 to 2012 – has only just been achieved within this photo-blog post … 365 posts with many, many photos … the milestone, intended, has arrived and it’s only taken from 2011 to 2015. Thank you, to all who have been a part of encouraging this endeavor. Good schtuff! 😉

Route 66 – Restoration Reminiscence

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Fairlane 500 and Thunderbird – Grand Canyon Arizona

Fairlane 500 – Grand Canyon, Arizona

Fairlane 500 – Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1949 Chevrolet Fleetline – Grand Canyon, Arizona 3

1949 Chevrolet Fleetline – Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

1949 Chevrolet Fleetline – Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1931 Ford Sedan and Pickup – Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

1931 Ford Sedan and Pickup – Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1931 Ford Sedan – Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

1931 Ford Sedan – Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1957 Chevrolet Belair – Grand Canyon 1

1957 Chevrolet Belair – Grand Canyon 2

It’s colder today, snow is on the ground and a four-day, November break provides welcome opportunity for rest from pushing hard in these first three months of the school year. A quick drive southward and back home last weekend recalled the following images needing an edit from July.

Along Route 66, nearing the Grand Canyon, restored cars are roadside attraction, the cars of former, American glory days, vehicles that you’d find reconstructed from other donor cars on reality television shows like ‘Counting Cars.’ That person, who in middle-age, is starting to find a surplus of funds in their bank account is the kind of person these cars belong to. For them and you, someone in the family owned one – Dad and Mom maybe, your grandparents, perhaps or maybe your cousin had one; and, if you were lucky that vehicle was the one you learned to drive in, was perhaps the vehicle that became yours (you bought it from another member in your family) and was the car that got you started in Life. In presentation, these Grand Canyon cars are arranged almost as they would be in a Show and Shine; the difference is that their owners are not hovering around them – the vehicles draw potential customers to the service station and to the hotel, a pit-stop and stopping point. Among the vehicles were a 1957 Mercury Thunderbird, a 1958 Ford Fairlane 500, a 1949 Chevrolet Fleetline Deluxe four-door (Police Car), what may be a 1931 Ford Sedan and a 1931 Ford Pickup truck and a 1957 Chevrolet 2-door coupe.

The 1949 Chevrolet Fleetline has me thinking back to Rimbey, Alberta and my uncle’s farm in the late sixties and early seventies. For many years, a mid-forties (1946-48) Chevrolet four-door fastback (blue/black with white roof) sat next to the farm shop. The intention had been to swap pistons from a second donor car and to add a second vehicle economically to a growing family that was becoming more and more on the move. Unfortunately, the pistons were of different sizes and the car did not move again. As kids on visits, my cousins, my brothers and I would pretend to drive to and from different places in this grounded car. A big, big steering wheel, a windshield that may have been two pieces in design, a springy and dusty bench seat and doors that creaked on ungreased hinges were setting to the play of the drive with family. In coming years, the Chevrolet fastback sedan was towed behind the farm’s barley silage silo.

A good, good reminiscence of former times, these.

Listening to – Over the Rhine’s ‘Born,’ ‘Bluer,’ ‘Spark,’ ‘Lookin’ Forward’ and ‘Who Will Guard the Door’ – November kind of music.

Quote to Consider – “Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality, and of realism.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Summer Colour & Warmth

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Field Green – Near Greencourt, Alberta

Our Boxing Day is overcast. Snow falls (four inches worth), family sleeps late – the television has had its share of use and all have been able to settle and rest. Coffee and tea warm us. Outside is winter’s cold, an entity that almost requires a northern household to have a fire place to throw off a dry, substantial heat (one day, perhaps) or in-floor heating, at least. Our day is quiet, moving me to recall summer’s colour and warmth, a time when it is easier for an object in motion to stay in motion – a very different time of year. Loreena McKennitt has an album for a day such as this, ‘Music to Drive the Cold Winter Away,’ a Christmas gift from my brother several years back.

Listening to – Ed Sheeran’s ‘The a Team;’ my daughter received sheet music to this song; I’ve had a go at fretting chords and then doing so with the actual song, finding nuance in how it’s played.

“Photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Storehouse Timbers

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Storehouse – St Louis Catholic Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 1

Storehouse – St Louis Catholic Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 2

Storehouse – St Louis Catholic Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 3

Storehouse – St Louis Catholic Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 4

A spring thaw in the early nineteen-hundreds saw several Fort Vermilion area farms flooded. In one instance a farm building washed out, the movement of the water weakening its foundation enough to topple the structure. Timber for that building floated downstream on the Boyer River becoming snagged at a turn in the river as it passed the St. Louis Catholic Mission in Buttertown. Those timbers were pulled from the river and after a time were used to build this storehouse for the mission. The photo was created in May, 2013. Last Saturday night, the image became editing focal point as I showed my son how Lightroom 5 and NiK Software can be used – four versions were produced, some following his eye’s lead.

Listening to – Coldplay’s ‘Yellow,’ a song I worked through after all had gone to bed last night; the piano work is more difficult than the fretwork; the resonance and dissonance found in the chords and alternate tuning are captivating.

Quote to Consider – “Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Soul Searchers

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Christmas Heart – High Level, Alberta

Homestead – Rycroft, Alberta

Wagon Wheels – Beaverlodge, Alberta

Crosses – Bezanson, Alberta

At Christmas, Love amplifies, powerful and lifting, scrabbling through the dark mess of tangle. Care and pardon affirm, anchoring you, there, in other Hearts – disgrace yields, grace overcomes. Love finds its way. At Christmas, the first steps within the incarnation are taken; a betrothed groom and fiancée making the best of things, travel within a colonized Israel to add their names within a census, a decision perhaps that may have to do with the practicality in it being safer to identify as a family with what will follow from the census; the fiancée is pregnant, a surprise to the groom and his betrothed. Are the two young? Is Joseph older and knowing something of how to live a Life within this colonized world? Is he prepared for this night? A makeshift moment allows the two to shelter among animals in a barn or cave. Mary moves into labour, a baby is born, a new Life that becomes central to a grand narrative we all are participating in. The name Joseph is first used with Jacob’s wife Rachel, when she conceives and bears a son after many years barren; Joseph literally means ‘he who takes my shame away.’

All this and more become the Christmas story. A few songs tell the story well; but, the one that might best fit today’s times and needs could be that provided by Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds in ‘Christmas Song.’ I like the conceptualization of any of us as ‘soul-searchers.’ The blood of the children reference is, while scary, accurate within this song – blood covers sins; Christ’s blood was shed for all to overcome their/our sin-state and thereby becomes the blood of the children referred to within the song.

The incarnation is an inconceivable event, something that needs more acceptance than figuring. You need to involve your imagination in such reckoning as precursor to such an event in preparation to be able to recognize when and if such an event does happen, has happened or will happen. You’d have to consider how involving God here on earth might play out.

The song that brought this kind of precursor imagining about best was a Joan Osborne, grunge-rock tune, that I heard most helpfully sung by Martyn Joseph on Radio Ulster’s ‘Rhythm and Soul’; thank you to Presbyterian Pastor, Steve Stockman for bringing all of that about. Here’s Martyn’s version.

Here’s the Joan Osborne version of ‘One of Us.’

Quote to Consider – “The camera doesn’t make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to SEE.” – Ernest Haas

Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s ‘Beyond Us, ‘Not a Good Time for God’ and Martyn’s take on Bruce Springsteen’s ‘If I Should Fall Behind’ and ‘One Step Up.’ Also, taking a listen to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Highway Patrolman.’

There’s a lot of grace encountered in ‘Highway Patrolman;’ Springsteen goes on to tell that it deals with family, responsibility and duty when those things conflict. The lyrics are good dealing with brothers sharing good times as much as the morality involved in dealing with a brother who is straying – lyrics catching my attention follow ….

“Well if it was any other man, I’d put him straight away
But when it’s your brother sometimes you look the other way.”

“Me and Frankie laughin’ and drinkin’
Nothin’ feels better than blood on blood
Takin’ turns dancin’ with Maria
As the band played “Night of the Johnstown Flood”
I catch him when he’s strayin’, teach him how to walk that line
Man turns his back on his family he ain’t no friend of mine.”

May you find Grace this Christmas – my gratitude goes out to each of you who have been part of each step and evolution of this photoblog. Thank you – take good care of your good selves.

Shape Sense – Light & Shadow

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Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 1

Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 2

Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 3

Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 4

Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 5

It’s cold this morning. At -26C, the conundrum is how to deal with my camera (battery-life) and tripod (breakable at colder temperatures). Warmly cloaked, as I trek round my morning’s 6km circuit, I’m resigned to using the walk to scout out pictures. Throughout, I’m listening to conversations – interviews, podcasted on my iPod. But, cold-weather photo-making is not as easy an endeavor as capturing an image within that moment when I find its promise. I turn my initiative to what I can do indoors – editing of previous photos, investigating shots that I haven’t yet worked with and finding new results. This morning is follow-up to other images in the series following the Autumn Gold image from a few days back. Versions of the photo are non-HDR, HDR Black and White and HDR Colour – some fun. The realization is that the HDR images provide better gradation of light and shadow creating better sense of shape as contrasted with non-HDR images. Have a look.

Listening to – Krista Tippett’s interview with Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche; interesting concepts include the necessity of becoming vulnerable in order to be able to love another and the vulnerability of God in Loving us. Another captivating idea is the path from soul to reality … the curious extrapolation is how this path is distorted, twisted or perhaps even strangled; the last thought has be prodded from a friend’s newly found cynicism – a lot can stand in our way, obscuring our vision and awareness of others.

Quote to Consider – “Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty. Except for those situations in which the camera is used to document, or to mark social rites, what moves people to take photographs is finding something beautiful.” – Susan Sontag, On Photography

To A Photograph

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McNaught Homestead Wheels – Beaverlodge, Alberta

Wagon Wheels – McNaught Homestead 3

Wagon Wheels – McNaught Homestead 2

Gardner Hamilton’s quote, “a [photographer] is someone who does not necessarily go out with a mission, but someone who is [or becomes] mentally aware of when they have walked into a photograph” sticks with me. The quote comes against the question of what influences the photographer’s perception and readiness as he or she comes to a photograph. As we come to the moment of opening the shutter, preoccupations, Life events (digested and undigested) and distractions shape how we are vulnerable to the scene and what becomes the image.

There is duality in how any photograph is arrived at. In one instance, it is Life’s clutter that promotes the withdrawal and escape that produces a photograph – the need to see and experience visually, the new, something other. In another instance, it is the decluttering in dealing with one’s psychological hygiene that creates the readiness, openness and choices that result in the photograph. Beyond this, one’s personal baggage and one’s habits as a photographer can serve as ballast shaping what the photograph becomes or directing the photographer to the photograph, connecting him/her to the image created – that ballast becomes one’s style.

Within past weeks, I have witnessed a convergence of ideas that promote dealing with one’s psychological hygiene in prayer, meditation and journaling. Blog posts of Creatives chronicle the experience of possessing a solid foundation built on healthy psychological hygiene as launching pad for Creative pursuit. The clutter of your ‘stuff’ – your events, your history, the stuff you need to own – needs to be dealt with so you can move on and make creative choices. Krista Tippett has interviewed Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman, pioneers in bringing Buddhism to America in her ‘On Being’ podcast entitled Embracing Our Enemies and Our Suffering, a Buddhist take on many things and engaging reality; psychological hygiene is an endpoint, here, too. The convergence has led me all the way back to Ira Progoff and his ‘At a Journal Workshop – Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability.’ I opened this book this morning. We’ll see what happens.

Images – a sunny, snow winter’s day serves to light and sculpt wagon wheels at the McNaught homestead near Beaverlodge, Alberta.

Listening to – ‘Take California’ by the Propellerheads, The Beatles’ 2009 remastered take of ‘Across the Universe,’ U2’s ‘In a Little While,’ Katy Perry’s ‘Unconditionally (Johnson Somerset Remix), Lady Gaga’s ‘Born this Way’ (The Country Road version) and The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be.’

Quote to Inspire / Consider – “Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Each still photograph is a privileged moment turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Homestead Music

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Buttertown Homestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta

My wife points us to music tonight. At day’s end she’s responding to both of us, each a vortex of thoughts, moving, tumbling, clustering, dot-to-dot, aiming toward productive, tangible result – saturated with the day, not here, not in the now, needing to release the grip of endeavor, to withdraw and to settle. Time away from the pursued pace is needed, time that interrupts the cycle of ‘home-work-and-back-again,’ that kind of quality time that permits fresh aspect and new grasp on perspective, a good thing. Music is our choice tonight for plying away our adhesion, breaking contact with the day that’s been. The music we turn to is longstanding legacy from BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday show at 8:00 p.m., ‘Rhythm and Soul’ hosted by Steve Stockman; it’s music that’s been on my wife’s iPod this week in and around her classroom. David Gray’s Hammersmith concert, ‘Live, In Slow Motion,’ is the concert video my wife chooses and with our daughter away at dance class we sit down to supper, downstairs, in front of our television and engage this concert, slowing ourselves, listening to a cellist, two guitarists, a bass player, a drummer and David Gray bring music to Life. Allowing ourselves to become vulnerable to lyric, melody, rhythm, sound and silence, we are drawn to familiar songs, songs I’ve fretted in former days – ‘Sail Away,’ ‘Shine,’ ‘My Oh My,’ ‘Silver Lining.’ These songs draw us out to that part of our Lives beyond endeavor. They open-out memory and memories. We move into and travel along new melodies. Engaging with these songs orients us in terms of presence and our present – where we are needing and aiming to be, a reset of sorts.

Homestead – this October exposure is one of a handful of images taken within the golden hour near Fort Vermilion in a pre-winter sunset, winter-ready clouds billowing in regular, heavy patterns across the sky. The linear clarity of homestead lines mingles with the subtle bend in its roof and the regular, yet unique line of each board. It’s old, yet it’s solid and well-preserved. Coloration and luminance chosen in editing work best with the available light and draw me to this photo, again and again.

I am definitely wanting to be out and about with my camera, perhaps with others seeing other ways of viewing the world. My Canon 60D has developed a hiccough, though – three years wear and tear has made the spring ejection of the SD card difficult; it’s also become difficult to set the card back in. Sending the camera for repair is likely to cost one-third to one-half the cost of replacing the camera with another 60D body or its next generation body the 70D. And, then I wonder if I should move to a pro-sumer camera the Canon 7D, 6D or 5D.

T h a n k y o u ‘ s

– My gratitude goes out to all who are a part of this blog, those of you who add your comments and engage in the dialogue about photos, photography and music.

Listening to – Tyler Bates’ ‘Ventura,’ one of those captivating songs from Emilio Estevez’ film, ‘The Way.’ The post reminds me of several Martyn Joseph songs – ‘The Good in Me is Dead’ from the ‘Don’t Talk About Love’ album and talking with Martyn at the Alexandra Community Hall in Edmonton, Alberta on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Other songs come to mind – ‘Wake Me Up,’ ‘Strange Kind of Friend,’ ‘Walk Down the Mountain’ and ‘Just Like the Man Said.’

Quote to Inspire: “Still images can be moving and moving images can be still. Both meet within soundscapes.” Chien-Chi Chang

Blessing – For the Traveler

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Along the Meikle River – Manning, Alberta 1

Along the Meikle River – Manning, Alberta 2

Along the Meikle River – Manning, Alberta 3

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little a your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along.
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of your heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening a conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

A Threshold Blessing, ‘To Bless the Space Between,’ John O’Donohue

Today, this blessing/prayer for a friend and friends who begin extraordinary travel – that they remain safe throughout the journey and that they are open to what will enrich them.

Images – along the Meikle river, just north of Manning, Alberta.

Listening to: Wayne Watson’s ‘Everything Can Change So Fast’ and Bob Bennett’s ‘Hand of Kindness.’

Quote to Inspire – “A photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes – just sometimes – one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness. Much depends upon the viewer; in some, photographs can summon enough emotion to be a catalyst to thought.” – W. Eugene Smith

Hey there, Frank. Thank you, for the encouragement. :)

Wonderful photo series. I especially like the B&Ws. :-)

Thank you Rajiv - yes, bare and beautiful in winter's cold.

That looks bare and beautiful

Good day, Kristiina - yes, please use the “Edmonton Skyline – Edmonton, Alberta Canada 1” in the PPT presentation you…

In My Back Pocket – Photography

'It is not what you look at that matters. It's what you see.' – Henry David Thoreau

Canon 60D