Midnight Sun – Mists

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Highway Mists – Twin Lakes, Alberta 1

Highway Mists – Twin Lakes, Alberta 2

I asked my son to stop our truck, here, at Twin Lakes just where you begin a five kilometre descent, a significant change in altitude often accompanied by an equally significant change in weather. Twin Lakes was our first safe opportunity to pull off the road and to use the camera to capture what we’d been seeing. Not quite, London’s pea-soup fog, but fog thick enough for you to hear a vehicle approaching before you would see it. And, northern Alberta is the land of the midnight sun; at 10:30 p.m. the sun has still not quite crossed the horizon to the West (left). There were perhaps ten other, perhaps more dramatic shots before this point in the road that I would have taken, but stopping in misty conditions could have caused an accident. Better to be safe and take shots without peril.

Listening to – ‘On Being with Krista Tippett’ and her 2011 interview with Vincent Harding who recently passed away; Vincent has connection to the Mennonites and wrote some of Martin Luther King’s speeches.

Quote to Inspire – “Imperfect technique has come to be appreciated precisely because it breaks the sedate equation of Nature and Beauty.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

For the Summer

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1949 Chevrolet – Peace River

From High Level to Peace River, I made the drive, three hours, right after work. I was on my way to Edmonton to gather my son and his belongings after a year of University and to bring him home for the summer. I booked into a hotel room, brought my gear into the room and returned to my truck to search for a meal. Before I got into my truck I looked across the way to this red 1949 Chevrolet, half-tonne. As a former auto detailer (in a former life), I walked over and then spent ten minutes looking it over. The owner came out and provided the truck’s story – where it came from, how he had restored the vehicle and that he still took it out for a ride occasionally. It had a straight six engine – clean, restored, still capable. The owner, an older fellow, initially thought I wanted to buy the vehicle.

I told him that I was more bent on photographing vehicles than anything else.

He took me into his garage and showed me a 1959 Edsel Corsair – red with white trim and top; again a restored vehicle. The windshield and back window curved around in places where present-day cars have posts to support the roof. I was amazed at the size of the trunk – in area and depth it might actually have held as much as a half-tonne truck box. The car was also about Chrome – chrome bumpers, chrome trim; shine was definitely part of what made this car something. It had old paint, the kind that if it faded you could bring back with polish and glaze. And, I suppose it reminded me of the polishing gleam, the alluring results of those first cars I polished as a young driver and as a lot attendant at Waterloo Mercury.

The evening passed with more talk and the owner knew many of the people I’ve known through the years in High Level and La Crete, Alberta. I think he’d seen me take my L’Arrivee guitar into the hotel because he invited me into the house to play for him and his wife on his Taylor 615 a cherry-wood sunburst with heavier strings. I fretted Rickie Lee Jones’ ‘Starsailor,’ Dar Williams ‘The Beauty of the Rain,’ and Lifehouse’s ‘Me and You.’ I got him to play a few tunes – some country tunes that are becoming difficult with arthritic fingers. By the end of the evening, I had his permission to photograph his red 1949 Chevrolet half-tonne; not a bad evening. I clicked this picture the next morning.

Listening to – Ray LaMontagne’s ‘For the Summer.’

Quote to Inspire – “One of the central characteristics of photography is that process by which original uses are modified, eventually supplanted by subsequent uses ….”

Buttertown Church – Revisited

Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Homestead, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life

St Louis Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 1

St Louis Mission – Buttertown, Alberta 2

We are well into spring and time has been moving quickly as we move, speeding on, toward June and summer. Two weeks have already passed since I took in a photography workshop with Dave Brosha, a photographer from Yellowknife, NWT. What was extraordinary is that Dave had made the return journey to Fort Vermilion, Alberta, his childhood home to offer a workshop on portraiture and landscape photography. The day before the workshop, at the end of a longer workday I got out to Buttertown’s St. Louis Catholic Mission and photographed the Church that is more than one hundred years old. Two days later, during the landscape portion of the workshop I was able to take Dave and our photography group out to this same site. Dave recalled that his father, a former teacher with the Fort Vermilion School Division, had taken Dave to this same site as a child – a memory from childhood. Dave’s father passed away this year.

Listening to: Jose Gonzales’ ‘Stay Alive,’ David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ (featuring Kristen Wiig) and Rogue Valley’s ‘The Wolves and Ravens’ – all music from the ‘Mitty’ soundtrack, a movie that all photographers should check out.

Quote to Inspire – “In addition to romanticism (extreme or not) about the past, photography offers instant romanticism about the present. In America, the photographer is thus not simply the person who records the past but one who invents it.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Crazy Love

Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring

Tizate Manhole Cover – Tizate, Guatemala

A creative manhole cover in Tizate, Guatemala; liking the colour, shapes and texture within the image. The image reminds of U2’s ‘Love Comes to Town’ with BB King.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography inevitably entails a certain patronizing of reality. From being ‘out there’ the world comes ‘inside’ photographs.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Listening to – Switchfoot’s ‘Ba55’.

Iximche – Colour, Architecture and Cloudwork

Backlight, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Weather

Iximche, Guatemala 1

Iximche, Guatemala 14

Iximche, Guatemala 13

Iximche, Guatemala 12

Iximche, Guatemala 11

Iximche, Guatemala 10

Iximche, Guatemala 9

Iximche, Guatemala 8

Iximche, Guatemala 7

Iximche, Guatemala 6

Iximche, Guatemala 4

Iximche, Guatemala 3

Iximche, Guatemala 2

I have been working through images associated with Guatemala in the past few days. The ruins at Iximche have caught my eye both in terms of the architecture and in terms of the cloud work.

Quote to Inspire – “To photograph is to confer importance …. No moment is more important than any other moment; no person more interesting than any other person.” Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Listening to – Need to Breathe and ‘Garden,’ Maroon 5’s ‘Lucky Strike’ and Ozark Mountain Daredevils’ ‘If You Wanna Get To Heaven.’

Sun Streams, Mist & Pure Seeing

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Mists – El Tizate, Guatemala 1

Mists – El Tizate, Guatemala 2

Sun streams down over a mountain through morning’s mist – condensation and wood smoke – into the community of El Tizate. It is morning, perhaps the last day of our time in El Tizate – we wait for our tour bus; I look out at the world through my camera and lens – rewarded with this extraordinary scene to my foreigner’s eye.

Listening to – three songs from Casting Crowns: ‘Just Be Held,’ ‘Broken Together’ and ‘Follow Me.’

Quote to Inspire – “Poetry’s commitment to concreteness … parallels photography’s commitment to pure seeing. Both imply discontinuity, disarticulated forms and compensatory unity – wrenching things from their context …, bringing things together elliptically….” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Outsourcing a Photo Walk

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1 Farm Road – Beaverlodge, Alberta

2 Farm Road – Beaverlodge, Alberta

3 Farm Mailbox – Beaverlodge, Alberta

Those of you, who have read Timothy Harris’ book, ‘The Four Hour Work Week,’ have likely contended with the possibility that it may be possible to generate an income from only four hours per week. While that may be the premise for this guide to entrepreneurialism in the twenty-first century, the book also presents many novel concepts for earning a living. Within a project-based earning environment, another idea would be to follow a pattern of working for two months and then taking a month off – the focus would be to manage one’s resilience and project tenacity using the principle of contact and withdrawal as it is applied to work. Cool stuff! Beyond this, the book presents many resources available for the entrepreneur who needs help with part of a project – that project piece can be outsourced to others who can earn a living helping you out. What occurred to me within the last few days was to outline a project – a photo walk – to be organized and configured according to parameters that I set. Then, I would outsource my project idea and have others potential photo walk leaders (perhaps other photographers) bid on the opportunity to lead the photo walk and from there refine terms toward what would work for the project leader and me and others who might participate in the photo walk. The eLance website would be the forum in which I would farm-out and tender the project to others. Hmmh? Have you ever thought of doing something like this?

I did have all these thoughts. But, the weekend that could be used for this endeavor crept up rather quickly. I did not configure the project. I did not submit my project for tender in elance. I was not at the start or finish of a photo walk. Rather, at the end of my work week at school, having been encouraged to get away for some photography by my wife and others at school, I gathered my photo gear and bags, got into our Ford F-150 and headed south. I aimed at Edmonton and intended to see my father who’s in a retirement home, there. But, at four hours in to the journey the weather changed – winter rain began to fall and it seemed unwise to travel the remaining distance on treacherous roads. No hotels could be found in Valleyview. I changed my course and phoned ahead to Grande Prairie’s Stanford Inn – they had a room for me.

Saturday in Grande Prairie was overcast. It was not a day for outdoor photography.

Saturday became more an opportunity to explore what was new in familiar stores, to see a movie and to gather and replace clothes damaged in our recent Guatemala trip. At Long and McQuade Music I stopped in and tried out a couple of L’Arrivee guitars; I taught one of the sales persons a song – Rickie Lee Jones’ ‘Sailor Song,’ a song my mother heard me play when she was alive. It was a high point in the day to be able to jam with another guitar player.

Sunday, on the other hand, swept in with substantial spring muster. To the west from Grande Prairie clouds billowed as they crossed the final strip of the Canadian Rockies before meeting foothills and prairie. The photos presented here are ones gathered along a westward trek from Grande Prairie towards the Rockies – an interesting area in terms of landscape and it being a bright spring day. The subject is a paved farm road near Beaverlodge, Alberta – something extraordinary for me as most farm roads I have known have been gravelled ones. Here, the reflection of the sky colours the road blue.

Listening to – Rickie Lee Jones’ ‘Sailor Song.’

Quote to Inspire – “But when viewed in their new context, the museum, or gallery, photographs cease to be ‘about’ their subjects in the same direct or primary way; they become studies in the possibilities of photography.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’.

Open-Air, Sacramentality & Echoes

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Antigua – Central Square

Echo Chamber Entrance – Antigua Convent

Convent Wash Basins – Antigua

Convent Corridors – Antigua

Convent Atrium Arches – Antigua

Convent Architecture – Antigua

Convent Architecture – Antigua 2

Antigua Cathedral – 5

Antigua Cathedral – 4

Antigua Cathedral – 3

Antigua Cathedral – 2

Antigua Cathedral – 1

Our group of twenty-four walked through Antigua’s open-air market in the morning of one of two market days in the week, the market an active, crowded, buzzing place in which we bumped and jostled our way forward trying not to lose sight of each other as we wound our way from the market entrance on the market’s one side to city streets of central Antigua on the other. Colour was to be taken in, dark and bright, subdued in shadows, vibrantly woven into fabrics, glowing at times when lit by sunlight streaming through breaks in the market canopy. Faces, those of adults and children moved around us and past us traveling in the opposite direction through corridors created between vendor tables. Women balanced baskets on heads, a hand lightly steadying the basket and their purchases. Stay moving, keep moving, keep up with the group.

We gathered together near a fountain in Antigua’s central square, surrounded on two sides by what appeared to be hotels, shops on another and a Cathedral on the final side. We moved in and through this Cathedral which connects to another much older one, one that had suffered the devastation of earthquakes dismantling and bringing down huge pieces of architecture. The immensity of this older Cathedral is substantial, a place commanding reverence and sacramentality in size and depths and shape and ornamentation. The Cathedral had not one, but two crypts that could be entered, places where bodies of saints had rested.

From the Cathedral we traveled three blocks further and entered what would have been a convent; here, there was more an architectural sense of context than something yielding narrative of how its inhabitants used the building. The convent held an echo chamber, a round room below ground level that in shape mirrored that of an onion. In trying out the sound qualities, there was an aspect to the room where you needed to catch the resonance of sound produced in order to contribute to it – adding one’s voice to others, here, was and would have been an extraordinary experience. And, then there were the cells of nuns – all shaped in and out of stone.

Listening to – Cat Stevens’ ‘The Wind,’ ‘Rubylove,’ ‘If I Laugh’ and ‘Changes IV.’

Quotes to Inspire – (1) “The justification is still the same, that picture-taking serves a high purpose – uncovering a hidden truth, conserving a vanishing past.” (2) “The photographer both loots and preserves, denounces and consecrates … [the camera is] a way of taking possession of the places they (tourists) visited.” (3) “Life is not about significant details, illuminated (in) a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography.’

Sunlight & Mountain Cloud Work

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Volcano Weather – Guatemala City 2

Volcano Weather – Guatemala City 3

Volcano Weather – Guatemala City 4

Volcano Weather – Guatemala City 5

Two weeks ago, students, parents and staff travelled to Guatemala to engage in a service learning project with another school. Leaving Canada’s frigid boreal temperatures we made our way south into ever warmer temperatures. The endeavor saw our students working with local students and their community on a variety of projects. And, we had the opportunity to learn Spanish, understand some culture, travel and see the locale with our Canadian eyes. On our third day out, on horseback or by foot, we had the opportunity to climb high above Guatemala City to the summit of a volcano, a volcano that had last been active in 2011. The images here are looking out from the volcano and our catching glimpses of sunlight within/among mountain cloud work.

Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s ‘Kiss the World Beautiful’ and ‘Sing to My Soul.’

Quote to Consider/Inspire – “… Photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.” – Susan Sontag

Jasper Avenue Apartment

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Jasper Avenue Apartment – Edmonton, Alberta 1

Jasper Avenue Apartment – Edmonton, Alberta 2

Jasper Avenue Apartment – Edmonton, Alberta 3

An Edmonton apartment overlooks the North Saskatchewan River. It is a building that has been around since the thirties or forties and is architecture of my mother’s time, a time when walking was the way through Edmonton and vehicle use was limited. The apartment is one I associate to Canadian literature as backdrop or setting to scene, a building that could feature in Mordecai Richler’s ‘The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz’ or within Robertson Davies’ ‘Fifth Business.’

The apartment draws me to recall Morley Callaghan’s ‘Such is My Beloved.’ The novel looks at a priest in the Great Depression making sense of God’s Love and the encounter of his reaching out with Christian care to two prostitutes, an encounter in which his efforts are taken advantage of and as I now recall, a situation repeated for real much more recently and narrated more accurately in Nadia Bolz-Weber’s memoir, ‘Pastrix.’ In ‘Such is My Beloved,’ the cocoon of Church, Church-Life and Church politics, all, cloud the words of the great commission being lived out and because they are not current or used readily by the congregation their exploration by Father Dowling is an innocent and naïve endeavor, one done on the sly without others knowing, a first, sustained attempt that’s taken too far with aims of turning recipients’ Lives around.

The story functions as a morality play, unfortunately tragic in structure and is more cautionary about not living out the Great Commission. In actuality, the Great Commission is likely more of ‘do-what-you-can-with-what-you’re-presented-with;’ when lives begin to turn around the Church can mobilize with many resources.

Listening to – The Blind Boys of Alabama and ‘Run On for a Long Time,’ ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘Soldier’ and ‘Way Down the Hole.’

Quote to Inspire/Consider – “The camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed …. You are not intervening in their lives, only visiting them.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’