December winter scene – homestead and trees, land that once was broken, now fenced in – protected, reminding and reminiscent of lives and the work of living. Snow blankets dormant land and caps a fence post, one among many anchoring three strands of barbed wire used to hold animals to this area of land while they graze. Horizon, sky, former home, snow and wood’s texture, softer muted colours – all hold my eye and attention.
Listening to – Madeleine Peyroux’s J’ai Deux Amours, Kenny Gamble’s Me and Mrs. Jones, Toni Sola’s Night Sounds Blues, and Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close to You, recognizable songs among others that form the From Paris With Love Soundtrack.
Quote to Inspire – “Emotion or feeling is really the only thing about pictures I find interesting. Beyond that is just a trick.” – Christopher Anderson
A December day – my brother forwards an e-mail from a family friend, someone from the old neighborhood in Edmonton’s Ottewell community, a friend we shared the neighborhood with as kids. At eighty years, his father, a good friend of my father’s, has passed – succumbing to cancer’s disease. The e-mail conveys global or summary view of his father, a statement written by a man in middle-age, a message made more striking because of its first shift to the past tense of Life – Life has been lived well; Life lived on … beyond the passing of his wife thirty years prior; and, anticipation of how the loss will be felt and recognized. Life’s patterns will change for his family without him.
My memory is of him, his wife, his three boys and his daughter in their Edmonton home on 94b Avenue during the seventies. An accountant, he drove a chocolate brown BMW sedan way back then. My Dad and he shared wit and story. Both were sharp, intelligent people – achievers with achievements; they and their wives had travelled – our families vacationed together. Dad and he were close and knew how to share time together well. Our families may even have met at Church – Ottewell United Church. As I think him through I think of starting points, places any of us began. For him, he’d been adopted in the thirties and loved and raised well – something carried on in each of his children.
Listening to – Roky Erickson’s You’re Gonna Miss Me, Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy, Elton John’s Crocodile Rock, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ Crimson and Clover, Katrina and the Waves Walking on Sunshine and Bruce Springsteen’s The River.
Quote to Inspire – “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” – Garry Winogrand
Molson signage, atop the former, now derelict Edmonton Molson brewing plant anchors Edmonton to a nostalgic, retro-feel of former days. Next door is the former Crosstown Motors’ Dodge Chrysler dealership site. Blocks away from Edmonton’s Waterloo Mercury dealership on 107th Avenue and 114th Street, the Molson Brewery site is perhaps most appropriately considered part of Edmonton’s Oliver community. Beer was made here, and through each year brewer after brewer was bought out by the larger Molson corporation, each good beer being subsumed into Molson’s menu of beer. The Molson building and brewery site is now in the process of being dismantled. It’s in the way of what now could be. There’s a great gash in the earth in front of the brewery building – what had been basement to a portion of the brewing site is being removed. The older, more aesthetically pleasing portion of the building still remains, behind chain-link fence. Architecturally, this regal, ornate building dates back to the 1920’s or thirties … perhaps the forties. Design, texture and colour all comprise what the building is about … but you do have to look around to see what is there.
I’m reminded of a summer, two years back and of combining a quality ginger beer with a dark lager, making something Dad called a Shandy for Dad and I – a couple of good, summer sips.
Listening to – You Can’t Buy Shoes in a Painting, by Jill Osier (read by Eliza Foss from poetryfoundation.org) on CKUA.
Quote to Inspire – “A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny moments in a person’s life that reveal greater truths.” – Anonymous
Saturday, we are two Saturdays before the Christmas of 2012. The Mayan calendar that had threatened to cancel all of time’s forward movement now seems unlikely to halt the movement of the moon and planets; the clock and calendar will continue to tick on, day by day.
Tonight, it’s been television with family – The Barbie Nutcracker and now Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby in White Christmas. Today, Christmas plans have been considered; how our few Christmas days will be spent with family has been hammered through. We will see my father, we will see my brothers, our kids – the cousins will gather and shop and talk; there will be Christmas games and family times … and photos. For us, way up north, most Christmas gifts have been gathered. Some discussions still need that – discussion; but, the gifting of gifts is being sorted through and understood with good understanding. A photo of a Rocky Lane homestead house, already framed upon my wall will become present for my father, a pioneering reminder/analogy for my father and his Edmonton work at Edmonton Works – the textures and highlights and colours work well together and hold the eye and interest of the viewer.
Tonight, there’s the excited buzz of cousins chatting at a distance over the telephone about the possibilities that their Christmas will hold – a holiday is being planned, places to shop are being determined and things asked for are being disclosed. There’s been a daughter/father phone call checking in on how Christmas will be spent at another location where we will not be; there’s been goodwill there and solid encouragement to spend time with that son of ours who’s been away at University these last four months. As things wind down at work, things are winding up for the Christmas we will make for our family and friends – last evening it was a joy just to sit around a kitchen table at a friend’s home, to chat and dig a little deeper into that thing we call Life … friendship’s blessing – something I’ve been able to count upon all year.
Today’s been a slower one, a day for recovery from a weeklong cold, a day to exercise and yet a day to slow down and gather energy. I fell asleep watching the Shawshank Redemption, a film that Steve Stockman (Stocki) has often recommended. I’ve been editing photographs today, older ones from within this year … a second glance, a second edit and the second-sight of understanding visual narrative within images; it’s been a time to experiment and play … a good day.
Listening to – Holly Golightly’s Wherever You Were, Tim Armstrong’s Into Action, Hawaii Five-O by the Ventures, Nazareth’s This Flight Tonight and Joy sung by Mick Jagger with Bono.
Quote to Inspire – “With photography, I like to create fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society’s natural prejudice and giving this a twist.” – Martin Parr
A common road travelled becomes common talking point, especially in terms of those travels upon that road that challenge you. Two kilometres receive representation in this photo from the photo’s bottom-most edge to the crest of the Twin Lake’s hill. On your way to Edmonton from High Level (or on your return journey) this part of the road is the tricky bit – the section of the road that requires finesse. Traveling northward, from the hill’s crest the descent (behind the camera) is some five kilometres. And, weather within the air mass covering this hill can change drastically in winter. A driver may encounter fog or several inches of snow. The long road surface can be glazed with ice and you may be driving upon it before a sanding truck is able to add surface grip. And, with the rolling hills of incline/descent it is possible to be surprised by an oncoming vehicle passing another in your lane. This Twin Lakes hill demands a driver’s alertness, calm and skill. Usually once you’re past Twin Lakes traveling north or south the drive regains steady and anticipated progress.
So, this photo may be the one, as common talking point the photo may be the one to try as a large canvas print. We’ll see.
Listening to – Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, a song played on our Heintzman piano (bright sounding piano) by my daughter – good, good schtuff.
Quote to Inspire – “Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform it by photographing it.” – Morley Baer
At day’s end, cold yet indoors, changing tack on the day’s direction – printing two or three images, ones that I might have done as canvas prints. I chatted with Image Design Pros in Grande Prairie – cost and size of the image that can be produced are both attractive elements within my decision. Shutterfly is another option, an option my wife has talked around with her colleagues.The Picture Perfect Frame and Gallery in Grande Prairie may also serve as framing point for prints. I discovered that Dan Kameka who has photographed many retrospective farming tribute photos as well as the Dunvegan bridge has been former owner of this same Picture Perfect Frame and Gallery. Upstairs the gallery contains two or three remaining prints of Dan Kameka’s – farming tribute … black and whites with selective colorization (retro greens and reds from the forties, fifties and sixties), nostalgic prints holding memories for people within and around Grande Prairie. There are artists from within the regions – Klaus Peters, Robert Guest and Frank Martel. I bought a Martel work for my son for Christmas – there’s an intensity in the use of colours that is vibrant and energizing.
In printing photos tonight I am pleased with the colour fidelity between monitor and actual print. It’s been ‘Homestead & Winter Skies,’ ‘Winter’s Wraith-like Wisps,’ ‘Rivetting – Edmonton’s High Level Bridge,’ and ‘Gorge – Englishman River Falls, British Columbia.’ The photos presented here tonight are a quartet of winter images of that Nampa grain truck, a Chevrolet three-ton from a few posts back.
Listening to – The Road Home with Bob Chelmick, CKUA streaming via the Internet … two poems by Lorna Crozier begin the show; one’s called Patience; then it’s Things to Do by Calgary’s John Rutherford.
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
Under grey, foreboding winter skies, grain stocks remain – last inhabitants of this farmer’s field. Missed by the threshing blade, iced with snow and blown by every breeze they remain, still standing, no longer tended to.
Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s Cardiff Bay, Strange Way and The Great American Novel.
Quote to Inspire – “Not everybody trusts paintings; but, people believe photographs.” – Ansel Adams
Solid, well-made, a homestead house looks southwest to winter skies at dusk. Windowless, vacant and solitary now, the building did once serve as home, refuge from one’s day, shelter during one’s night, that place to regroup, rejuvenate and revive before handling tomorrow. On the crest of a hill, a farmer’s field, wind and snow blow through this former home to farmers and their families.
Listening to – Mike Plume’s Rattle the Cage; reminds of Mindy Smith’s similar song with same title.
Quote to Inspire – “My photography is a reflection, which comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity – the suspended moment – intervenes during action, in the viewfinder.”– Abbas
B-side images, ones that haven’t made the first cut reveal in their review how often I am impressed with technology’s artistry that comprises what becomes a vehicle. A veritable used car lot, these images display resurrected lives of vehicles, being breathed into new Life through the artistry of a would-be car crafter. Winter grain stocks hold interest in their various settings.
Listening to – Aqualung’s Strange and Beautiful (I’ll Put A Spell On You), the Volkswagen Beetle tune from a few years back.
Quote to Inspire (or draw one toward reality) – “Photography cannot do much. It provides some level of information, yet it has no pretensions about changing the world.”John Vink
The back forty is a farming phrase taken to mean the untended area of a farm, land not in public view, land not regularly or productively used by its farmer. The back forty may be difficult to navigate with farm machinery. It may contain a slough or the water table may be high enough making the work of land use unprofitable. Such land, untamed, untrammeled and unused is often best used as a place for storing farming machinery that you might need for parts in future days. North from Peace River, Alberta, this Massey-Harris sits on the steeper slope of a field, an area of land that its farmer has found difficult to use, part of what might described as the back forty.
Listening to – Snow Patrol’s Those Distant Bells, Matthew Perryman Jones’ Keep It On The Inside, Murray McLaughlin’s Hard Rock Town, Liz Longley’s Unraveling and Shawn Colvin’s All Fall Down.
Quote to Inspire – “My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.” – Steve McCurry
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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