1 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
2 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
3 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
4 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
5 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
6 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
7 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
8 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
Savage Prairie Road Granaries – La Crete, Alberta
Wilson Prairie Homestead – La Crete, Alberta
Wilson Prairie Wildfire – La Crete, Alberta
2 Wilson Prairie Homestead – La Crete, Alberta
3 Wilson Prairie Homestead – La Crete, Alberta
Helicopter Arrival – Slinging Water – La Crete, Alberta
2 Helicopter Arrival – Slinging Water – La Crete, Alberta
Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
2 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
3 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
4 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
5 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
6 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
Field Opposite Wilson Prairie Wildfire – La Crete, Alberta
Looking On – Wilson Prairie Wildfire – La Crete, Alberta
7 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
8 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
9 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
10 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
11 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
12 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
13 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
14 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
15 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
Keeping Dust Down – Wilson Prairie Road – La Crete, Alberta
2 Keeping Dust Down – Wilson Prairie Road – La Crete, Alberta
16 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
17 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
1 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
2 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
3 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
4 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
5 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
Day 3 of the Wilson Prairie Wildfire – Friday, July 6th, 2012. In contrast to Thursday evening in which residents were able to move freely into the fire area, Friday saw Alberta’s Ministry of Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) controlling road access so that firefighting equipment could be moved around with greater ease on Wilson Prairie Road. I arrived in the early afternoon to find access to Wilson Prairie Road being controlled. I couldn’t use my vehicle on Wilson Prairie Road. But, I could walk in, staying to the ditches when equipment was being moved through. Two-and-a-half hours walking in and out allowed me to see more of what was going on and how the blaze was being controlled. Dozers were creating breaks/cut-lines and pushing piles of brush together so they’d burn more easily/quickly. Areas of intended burn and back-burn were being created. One home was in harm’s way and helicopters were being used to sling water (from local dug-outs) to saturate the area in the case that the fire’s path changed with the winds. Air tankers had been tasked to other fires within the region; but, lead planes and Martin Mars water bombers (or the like) were being used to keep a consistent supply of water on the fire. On dust-ridden, gravel roads water trucks moved slowly dribbling water to keep dust down for vehicles moving in close proximity to one another. Later, I was able to drive around behind the fire to two other points to catch the more dramatic perspective of hot, billowing smoke moving upward into the atmosphere and the water bombers flying into fire area to release water on flames below.
Listening to – Adele’s Set Fire to the Rain, a tune played throughout last year’s forest fire that consumed Slave Lake, Alberta (spring 2011).
Quote to Inspire – “I enjoy traveling and recording far-away places and people with my camera. But I also find it wonderfully rewarding to see what I can discover outside my own window. You only need to study the scene with the eyes of a photographer.” – Alfred Eisenstadt
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.
This morning’s wee hours saw the completion of two day’s detailing our 2006 Nissan Altima, a task completed without anchored schedule and with all that time off. The task first involved trekking around the Altima with Autoglym Super Resin Polish with orbital buffer and polishing bonnet or buffer and buffing bonnet. The task next involved applying by hand Autoglym HD Wax, a paste wax, in sections and letting those sections cure for fifteen minutes at a stretch. In applying the HD paste wax I caught myself up on several podcasts.
Storing digital images was the subject of one podcast of Shuttertime with Sid and Mac; I’m in need of a new external hard drive and need to investigate back-up solutions. The podcast introduced me to Drobo and to Carbon Copy Cloning and much more. In another Shuttertime with Sid and Mac podcast the ‘why’ of the photographer – her or his motivation for shooting – was considered. A truth that surfaced is that good photography is something that serves the photographer first before her or his audience. It was noted that photographer burnout (meaning their interest or desire in photography is extinguished) occurs when the images created tend to be ‘for’ others. Ideally a photographer needs to manage the balance of work for others with work for themselves.
Two days detailing allowed for breaks when they were needed. Tuesday evening presented the opportunity of summer’s quietude along our street. Near midnight I was able to sit outdoors in the sun’s dusk, in the absence of activity and mosquitos to enjoy an evening breeze – a time to be, a time to sit still and enjoy. Within these two days I’ve been able to watch at various times most of the 2010 film of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre with Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, an allegory of spiritual development and of finding soul mates. Wax on, wax off – words from the Karate Kid, words akin to meditation, an activity slowing you down, a means to gather thoughts and loose-ends; the activity involves sight and seeing and perspective; section by section the activity moves toward the whole of an outcome completed. Perseverance is required – you and the car are better for it.
The photograph presented here is the first rendering of an image using the Snapseed app with my iPad – a truck that’s been used for mud-bogging.
Listening to – Over the Rhine’s Spark, Dar Williams’ Mercy of the Fallen and Radiohead’s High and Dry; the other song that’s been in my thoughts and hearing is Robbie Robertson’s Sweet Fire of Love.
Quotes to Inspire – (1) “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” – Diane Arbus; and, (2) “To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.” – Ansel Adams
Fence Posts – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Flower 2 – Northwestern Alberta
Daisy – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Daisies – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Flower – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Fence Post 3 – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Fence Posts 2 – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Cattail 3 – Northwestern Alberta
Cattail 2 – Northwestern Alberta
Cattail 1 – Northwestern Alberta
Pond – Northwestern Alberta
Fire Aftermath 2 – Northwestern Alberta
Fire Aftermath – Northwestern Alberta
Buffalo Airways DC 3 #2 – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Buffalo Airways DC 3 – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Our school year is complete. Mandated and extracurricular tasks and obligations have been seen through to good conclusion. I continue to be amazed at all the work all teachers engage in in moving students onward in their academic learning as these same students move into, through and from of the hormone jungle. Our final days at school have been about pushing through, getting what needs done, done and sharing in celebration and play with students.
Our year-end school riot, outdoors, held so much fun – a supremely significant high point to the year – water pistols, pies in the face (for staff and students), izzy-dizzy, wet/slippery tug-of-war, shin cracker, fire engine pull, music and more music and most fun was the make-shift water slide (a rubber 100’ x 50’ tarp with fire truck pumper and two fire hoses soaking students and staff in summer sun); staff and students shared laughter and smiles abundantly … what an extraordinary day! Stats on the Animoto of the event are sitting at 180+ viewings within one week – our year-end riot was a hit and definitely memorable.
Beyond the riot, the final days were about pushing through, getting year-end tasks done; then, there was a sacred congregational task to be completed last Sunday at Hutch Lake, Alberta. Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis also wrote a book about his teaching life in New York City. In his book, Teacher Man, he references the acronym ATTO, meant to mean ‘all that time off’ that non-teachers look at as the perk to teaching and as something perhaps as an ill-gotten-gain. The reality is that there really is all that time off. But, for me and any other teacher the time is something used to catch one’s breath mentally and physically. It’s a time to move the teacher’s self from back burner interest and to step out and seize hold of Life and to breathe Life into interests, intentions, goals and endeavors.
The house that needs fixing, the taxes that need submission, the mail that needs opening … all those things that have been put off so that a rich school year may be had by students – these are the things that now must get done. Yesterday, summer’s reward was there. On his Soul Surmise website, Steve Stockman (Stocki) provided the world with his top ten album picks for the first half of 2012. The reward specific – Stocki pointed me to Matthew Perryman Jones and his Land of the Living album, intelligent, well-crafted lyrics with a voice richly reminiscent of David Gray; truly manna.
The photographs presented here are ones taken on a drive northward from High Level, Alberta towards the Alexandra Falls just on the other side of the Northwest Territories border. I had freed myself for an afternoon and got into the car with my Canon 60D. Most shots are macro shots of colour amongst greenery. Two shots are photos of the aftermath of a forest fire that had raged on North of us a few weeks before.
Listening to – Matthew Perryman Jones’ Land of the Living album – The Angels Were Singing, Cancion de la Noche and I Won’t Let You Down Again; the melody from Stones From the Riverbed catches my interest.
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
18 June 2012 – 11:30 p.m.. The land of the midnight sun still lights the world in half-light in the moments before it crosses the horizon to create dusk. West – a tumultuous sky billows its clouds in heavy, obscure shapes poised to wet the earth with only a nudge. East – there’s greater interplay and drama between dark, heavy shapes and bright, bread-white clouds catching sun’s light. It’s day’s end as I gather these photographs remnants of a beautiful day. There’s a checkmark shape of lamp posts caught in parking lot puddle mirrors – too many hours being a teacher today.
Listening to – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s In Like a Rose, The Black Keys When the Lights Go Out, Radiohead’s Go to Sleep, Ryan Adams’ Starting to Hurtand Pete Yorn’s Pass Me By.
Quote to Inspire – “Which of my photographs is my favourite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” – Imogen Cunningham
Tompkins’ Landing Ferry – Tompkins’ Landing, Alberta
Aboard the Tompkins’ Landing Ferry 2 – Tompkins’ Landing, Alberta
Aboard the Tompkins’ Landing Ferry – Tompkins’ Landing, Alberta
Sunset at Midpoint of the Peace River – Tompkins’ Landing, Alberta
Footner Lake 1, Alberta
Footner Lake 2, Alberta
Footner Lake 3, Alberta
Footner Lake 4, Alberta
Cattails 5 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Footner Lake 5, Alberta
Footner Lake 6, Alberta
Cattail 1 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Cattail 2 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Cattail 3 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Cattail 4 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelions – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelions 2 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelions 3 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelions 4 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelion – Footner Lake, Alberta
Grass & Flora – Footner Lake, Alberta
Flora – Footner Lake, Alberta
Flora 2 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Elektra Air Tankers – High Level Airport, High Level, Alberta
Flower – High Level, Alberta
Forest grows dangerously dry with summer heat. The matter of our region being a tinderbox is an expression used to describe this state in which forest can become prey to lightning strike and neglect by people working with fire. In this setting, rain becomes a welcome visitor calming and cooling our world. Photographically rain serves to reflect the world in unusual ways – doubling what is seen and placing the doubled image in unusual contexts. At night, it is the rain’s reflection of light on surfaces that draws interest.
Life is busy just now. Students in their final year of education anticipate graduation and ceremony and future departure from friends, family and that place that’s been home for them through so many years. Angst is there. Worry is there. Disillusionment about what the world holds is about to occur in more broad and more true strokes than these students have ever encountered before. And, time pushes them and us forward and through different thresholds. It’s totally interesting that the term threshold comes from the act of threshing; the threshold was the place where the act of separating husk from seed occurred. Threshold is that place where former and newer state are in close proximity – what was and what now is. Action is that other important ingredient – the lifting, colliding and splitting, all are percussive, energetic acts that in time yield the seed from the husk that’s held it. Winnowing is the other term, here – the separating and sorting of husk (the now dead, former shell) and seed (the new life holding element). The seed is ready for further use. How will it be used?
The photographs presented here are culled from the last week. There’s the green of Buffalo Head Prairie; there’s the woods between La Crete and Blue Hills. There’s the Peace River and the Tompkins’ Landing Ferry. There’s rain slicked streets of High Level and there’s images from Footner Lake. There’s even an image of a flower from a flower bed on our front lawn.
Listening to – U2’s Mysterious Ways, Coldplay’s God Put a Smile Upon Your Face, David Gray’s Babylon and Radiohead’s High and Dry.
Quote to Inspire – “I didn’t want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature.” – Wynn Bullock
A teacher’s year end contains the drift and blur of one week’s movement into another, the flex and flux within a sea of ever-changing tasks – it can be a time with little demarcation of days and weeks; there’s only more and more and more of school until that one morning when you wake up to find void in all that’s made up your previous ten months vocation. You note absence of routine, absence of schedule and absence of bells. From frenetic to calm and then to taking hold of your life – the first two weeks are hardest in this transition. It’s the initial unwind and decompression from the year you’ve lead students through, a time to settle in, settle down and a time to settle upon summer plans. But, we’re not there yet. Now, teachers count number of sleeps until school is done. Now, teachers whet their appetite for summer with barbecues and games of golf. Now, few teachers are reading books of interest. Many are marking assignments and tests late into the evening. Many are thinking through how best to help students review for finals. All are working through how to balance what has been taught against what remains to be taught within the time left. Those teachers with experience have managed time well, met all curriculum outcomes and are turning their focus to helping students conclude their year well – helping them to recognize what they’ve achieved and to anchor this self-knowledge within their self-esteem.
Within a few weeks, staff will cluster at year-end dinners and barbecues; they too will be looking at all their year has held – the successes and the challenges; and they’ll work to put issues to bed and leave them behind in the year that was. Already, we’ve held an awards night, a night celebrating staff’s years of service to students as well as recognizing notable within jurisdiction school achievements. Of all the times in the school year, this time, this month of June highlights the busyness of planning and of culmination; we’re heading toward threshold. Student behaviour is at its most extreme in June, something more significant than the student behaviour we see in December’s anticipation of Christmas. Warmer weather, extended hours of sunlight and the approaching end of what’s been normal for students through ten months, all can serve to escalate things in the worst of ways for students – fighting, skipping, withdrawal from school. It’s June. It’s that critical month in teaching when it’s so important to hold fast to your goals that lead students to their year end and yours. And, it is about each student. June is the month that contains the final moments in a year of transformation for adolescents. In June, the cocoon rattles and shakes, eventually bursting upon the threshold of that moment in which a school year and grade concludes and students are set free into their summer and their next year’s endeavor. It’s a birthing process.
Photography – the images presented here are ones in which I’m investigating what can be done with macro photography. The initial set of images are those taken in and around farming equipment on display at the High Level Museum. The others come from locations in Fort Vermilion, Alberta – an old building (to be demolished), grave markers at the Anglican cemetery and dandelions outside the cemetery.
Curious Quotes – (1) “Nothing isolates one person from another person as the species of their perception.” – Boris Pasternak; (2) “Stress is a perverted relationship to time.” – John O’Donohue
Quotes to Inspire – (1) “I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.” – Ruth Bernhard (2) “It pleases me to take amateur photographs of my garden, and it pleases my garden to make my photographs look professional.” – Robert Brault
Listening to – Can’t You Hear Me Knocking (Rolling Stones), California Sun (The Rivieras), Let It All Hang Out (The Hombres), Louie Louie (The Kingsmen), Pink Cadillac (Bruce Springsteen), Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits) and Back in the Saddle (Aerosmith).
Interchangeable, Early Sixties GMC Half Tons – Fairview, Alberta
Dunvegan River Bank – Dunvegan, Alberta
Older Barn – Fairview, Alberta
Canada Geese Feeding at Sundown – Fairview, Alberta
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
Saturday – new horizons await a friend, a colleague and a mentor as he moves on from our school. He is the person who hired me into our school division. And, he’s someone who in action, thought and approach is a character developing leader worthy of Goethe’s quote (below) because he’s able to encourage and bring forth the best contribution people have to offer among our team. He lives this out in practice, “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. And, his farewell party – a remembrance and celebration of the impact he’s had on people’s lives – is something I’ve had to miss being a Dad who has needed to bring home his son and his son’s gear from University. My contribution to my colleague’s farewell was an Animoto slideshow, a collection of images taken from various points in his thirty-year career – memorable, memorable times (like the fun we had skidooing and coming upon a saucy lynx that wouldn’t be bothered about getting out of our way). My wife went in my stead with our friends to the farewell celebration.
That was Saturday night, a night memorable also because I wasn’t there yet was thinking about all its goings-on. The photographs, here, are taken roughly at the same time of night that this colleague’s farewell celebration would have been in full swing. I stopped in my drive to look around with my camera lens because I know my friend and mentor would want me to. This week has been about offering photography as a contribution to the school’s dinner theater. The Northern Actors’ Guild, our school theater troupe, is presenting the musical, Grease. It’s been fun working with students and staff to create a visual record of rehearsals and headshot portraits for foyer display. Students in high school are at the tail-end of adolescence still metamorphosing into adult form – photography, here, along with the actor’s costumes acknowledges state of change, a step closer to or perhaps into adulthood. It shocks and surprises – the new state does not always assimilate easily in terms of understanding one’s identity.
Perhaps that is something else that photography is – a record of threshold moments.
Listening to – Over the Rhine’s Spark, Patty Griffin’s Tomorrow Night, Mindy Smith’s Train Song and Dar Williams’ Mercy of the Fallen. I-Nine performs Same in Any Language and Ryan Adams, his She Wants to Play Hearts. Then there’s Bruce Cockburn’s Pacing the Cage and David Gray’s Tidal Wave which rounds out into Over the Rhine’s Born.
Quote to Inspire – “If your photos aren’t good enough, then you’re not close enough.” – Robert Capa
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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