Getting Out The Door – Summer’s Launch

Best Practices - Photography, Journaling, Leica, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, School, Summer, Vehicle Restoration

Wheels and Deals – High Level, Alberta – 1

Wheels and Deals – High Level, Alberta – 2

Wheels and Deals – High Level, Alberta – 3

Wheels and Deals – High Level, Alberta – 4

Summer is here.

In the first week of summer break, school’s work has lessened—the last report, comprehensive as it was, has been written and submitted. Students’ award photos have been edited and uploaded, and the division’s long-service award images have been edited and delivered by thumb drive to the appropriate person. Next year, I will use Dropbox to move big images over the Internet. That done, I am able to launch into summer’s rest, time to myself with my thoughts, and begin letting go of the year that has been our school year and bridling down my watch for the next necessary thing needing done. It is time to release all that and take-up my own Life, once again. Movies are being watched – older ones, older favorite’s, and ones linked to novels read. An old pattern is there – movie marathon nights help dissociate me from the year that has been, one part of unlocking the door to summer.

The other day, it was a good thing to wake up, gather my wife from her university work and into our truck, and get out for a drive. It set the tone for a summer’s day. That essential premise – get out the door – was lived out. I got out that door again yesterday, recalling with some strength that there should be a ‘Wheels and Deals’ event at the Mirage Hotel in High Level, Alberta, a ‘Show and Shine’ kind of gathering of favored vehicles with the added opportunity of a swap meet – ‘wouldn’t that be something for me to find a late sixties Pontiac, like the one I used to drive during high school?’ I took my Leica M8 with Zeiss ZM Biogon 28mm lens and went to have a look. I had my Fujifilm GFX 50r and Ricoh GR iii as cameras I might use as well.

I shot for the first hour with the M8, focusing with the rangefinder’s viewfinder and focus patch. I moved through the area as people set up. Cars, trucks and motorcycles arrived and were arranged in the hotel’s parking lot. I could move around, talk with vehicle owners, and photograph vehicles. I could shoot according to what I saw compositionally. I could take my time with the M8. Good.

The black-and-white image presented here highlights some elements of visual composition—the Pontiac and the Buick Super Eight cluster in terms of visual weight in the image, and the black-and-white gradient of tone reveals shape, reflection, and vehicle lines (and an era of automobile design). A sense of depth is there as the eye moves from the Buick, past the Pontiac, to the Mercury truck and the hotel’s entryway. While the image was shot and edited primarily in colour, using Silver Efex from the NiK Collection provided an extraordinary, eye-captivating, black-and-white image – an image captured yesterday, in the summer of 2024, that, in terms of variety and proximity among vehicles, black-and-white toning, visual weight, and proportion, could easily have been an image captured in black-and-white during the fifties when these vehicles were first manufactured. In that sense, the image becomes nostalgic. It relates to a time preceding me … just. Other colour images are presented for reference.

Listening to: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Open All Night,’ ‘Highway Patrolman,’ from the ‘Nebraska’ Album, JD McPherson’s ‘Let the Good Times Roll,’ and most of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Tunnel of Love’ album, starting with ‘Walk Like a Man.’

Quotes to Consider – Re: Photography …

‘Date your cameras, marry your lenses.’ This quote is new to me, yet highlights a key idea for photographers – that investing in glass (good lenses) is essential while the cameras used over time will change.

‘Innovation comes from people who take joy in their work (W. Edwards Deming).’ The quote was offered in a YouTube video offered by ‘Three Blind Men and An Elephant’ in their video, ‘Leica D-Lux 8 Defies Expectations, Including My Own, (2 July 2024)’ to recognize that Leica, as a company already producing stellar cameras, is one whose employees enjoy innovation and improvement that can be made to their cameras and lenses. On the Adizes’ Curve, Leica has embraced a key dynamic that allows them to remain in the ‘prime’ of organizational/corporate lifecycles.

Seeing It, Naming It – There

Homestead, Journaling, Podcast, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Summer, The Candid Frame, Vehicle

Dunvegan 1

Dunvegan 2

Dunvegan 3

Dunvegan 4

Dunvegan 5

Dunvegan 6

Dunvegan 7

Dunvegan 8

Dunvegan 9

Dunvegan 10

Dunvegan 11

Dunvegan 12

Dunvegan 13

Dunvegan Bridge

In Alberta’s northwest my family and I have lived in Fox Lake, Garden River, La Crete and High Level. The roads are long and distances travelled influence our cost of living. It can be cost effective to travel south for supplies if you are buying in bulk and stocking up. Yet, buying local permits piecemeal buying as needed and supports local business. We buy groceries here at home. And, I will travel south in the year.

Dunvegan – it is a place I travel through on my way south to Grande Prairie; with the suspension bridge crossing the Peace River, it is a place I know by sight; it became a place I would investigate. Fifteen years would pass before indigenous Art, Alberta history and site use would coalesce with it being a fixed name in my mind – Dunvegan. Like other points along the Peace River you descend into this river valley. A road cuts a long two-kilometre gradient into each valley wall, north and south, to ease the braking efforts of heavy-laden transport trucks. At the lowest point, you cross the kilometre-wide Peace River on a yellow and brown suspension bridge. Then you accelerate moving up and out of the river valley – south towards Rycroft, north towards Fairview. Dunvegan is the name given to the plateau area under and surrounding the north side of the bridge.

Seeing Dunvegan – I would see Dunvegan in indigenous paintings at Grande Prairie Art galleries. The contour of the land folding down from a high river bank to plateau holds the eye. With skilled use of colour and light, the painter could draw attention to sacred place and practices. Longing for old ways was found in such Art. Still though, I was not recognizing these paintings as the area I travelled through a couple of times a year.

Dunvegan took hold in my classroom with my students. Each day, along with our school, students and staff read for 15 minutes. ‘Drop Everything And Read’ (DEAR) saw my students return to one book for regular reading, ‘Alberta Ghost Stories.’ One tale in the book told of a ghost sighting in an upper room in one of the old Dunvegan historical buildings. From what I recall, as with most ghost stories, light dwindles well past dusk. A living and breathing mortal is walking outside the house. He feels compelled to look up and sees someone or something looking at him. There is surprise, impact and connection in seeing and in being seen. The tale’s impact is greater finding out that the house has been shut-up for decades with no way in. Readers in my class always discussed what they thought was going on … offering speculation. The story became real to them. Like me, my students and their parents traveled through Dunvegan on their way to Grande Prairie. Often, they would stop at Dunvegan for lunch or a smoke break. The Dunvegan story held their imagination and during a travel break they would investigate as far as they dared. My students’ stories of being in Dunvegan would return with them to class every few months.

Still, haste in my travels got the better of me. I was not yet stopping at Dunvegan in my travels southward. And, it was only a few years ago that I first stopped in at Dunvegan. My wife had spoken about a nursery for spring bedding plants that she and a friend would go to hours south from High Level. She had been talking about Dunvegan Gardens, one of the best nurseries in Alberta. You find it at/on the eastern-most section of the Dunvegan plateau. Located between Fairview and Rycroft, the Dunvegan Gardens serves residents of Grande Prairie and from as far north as High Level.

One time, as she and I came upon the Dunvegan turn-off my wife pointed out the Dunvegan Gardens to me. It was the place she and her friend had been. And, my wife got me to slow down, turn-in and stop at Dunvegan to look around. I was finally connecting the dots – this was Dunvegan. Since that time, perhaps for the last six or seven years, I have been making time to stop and look around with my camera. Good. The Dunvegan site is a beautiful and worthy landscape in all seasons. One of these times I am hoping to pass through the area in late October or early November when the Dunvegan valley is sometimes shrouded in mists.

Dunvegan has been one of the prominent fur trading areas in Alberta. Fort Dunvegan was a trading post. Established by the Northwest Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company would later take over the trading post. A Factor’s house still stands. The site would evolve to hold two Churches, a Roman Catholic mission – St. Charles, and, an Anglican mission later – St. Saviour’s. Behind the Factor’s house is the plateau area upon which are four or five Tipis with poles raised waiting for hide or canvas covers. The site is older than Canadian history, the site being a meeting point or assembly area for indigenous peoples.

Quote to Consider / Inspire – “To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy (Henri Cartier-Bresson).”

Listening to – The Candid Frame: Conversations about Photography podcast and Ibarionex Perello’s time in Japan in December, 2019; being present to situation, setting, light. Good, good.

Her Garden

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Utah Flower 1

Utah Flower 2

In my life time, I have been witness to my mother’s gardens. She had three successive gardens, one in Edmonton, another in Brampton and her final garden in Qualicum Beach. Her gardens were always something to take in. Her garden would contain trees and flowers and shrubs, and, through the seasons there would be the colour of active and full Life and there would be the wither of desaturation found in dormancy. Through the year, my mother would research plants she’d like to grow and then take them on in her garden. This summer, our first scouting drive into Utah put us on the road for six hours doing a large loop of the southeastern part of the state. We found these flowers, plants very similar to some my mother had in her garden and occasionally would have in a vase on her dining room table.

Listening to – U2’s ‘California (There is No End to Love)’ … it starts out recalling the Beach Boys’ tune, ‘Barbara Ann’ … “Bar, Bar, Barbara, Santa Barbara.”

Quote to Consider – “For photographers there is, finally no difference – no greater aesthetic advantage – between the effort to embellish the world and the counter-effort to rip off its mask.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Buttertown Storehouse

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Storehouse, St. Louis Mission – Buttertown, Fort Vermilion, Ab 1

Storehouse, St. Louis Mission – Buttertown, Fort Vermilion, Ab 2

The northern lights were out this morning in my pre-dawn walk around High Level – ice crystals are in the air; with last night’s heavy billowing clouds we’re nearing our first snowfall. Here, an image contains two end-points of high dynamic range editing; curiously, I’m liking the colour (tinted) version of the old, old store house at the St. Louis Roman Catholic mission in Buttertown – Fort Vermilion, Alberta. The image has me thinking to former priest, John O’Donohue and different parts of four lectures he’s presented and a journaling exercise he has people work through. The first question to work from is to articulate the seven things that are controlling ideas/elements in your Life – premises upon which your Life is founded.

Listening to – an investigation of the ‘Primitives,’ a group recommended with the ‘iambead.com’ photoblog; ‘Crash’ is the first tune I come across. Then it’s ‘All the Way Down’ and ‘Earth Thing.’

Quote to Inspire – “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough” – Robert Capa

Deposit Point – Grain

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Grain Bin – Dixonville, Alberta 1

Grain Bin – Dixonville, Alberta 2

Grain Bin – Dixonville, Alberta 3

On the back road between Manning and Fairview old, wooden grain bins are found and are located within large fields as deposit points for grain in harvest. Well-constructed wooden grain bins still stand while those that were constructed hastily erode, leaning and falling over. Those made with plywood walls sometimes have a wall missing leaving only the frame and exposing the bin’s interior. Wood grain bins are more a thing of the past with corrugated metal grain bins made by Butler, Westeel or Roscoe now being used, bins set on cement pads, often clustered at highest dry points on a farmer’s field. This well-constructed grain bin has caught my eye regularly; caught at the time of harvest amid ready and ripe grain wood’s texture and lines appeal as does colour and context.

Listening to – Kacey Musgrave’s ‘Keep It to Yourself’ and David Gray’s ‘Flame Turns Blue.’

Quote to Inspire – “What I did, anybody can do.” – Weegee

HDR – Image Subjects, Revisited

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HDR – 1947 Ford One Tonne Tow Truck, McLure, British Columbia

HDR – North of 60 Bus Shelter Seats, Valleyview, Alberta

I have had a go at creating two High Dynamic Range (HDR) images in the last while. In landscape images my practice is to shoot with Automatic Exposure Bracketing (creating 3 images in succession -1, 0 & +1) and explore how the images will turn out in HDR. The images are of subjects I have shot before; but, they are not the original image shots included in previous posts. They are ‘also-ran’ images of the 1947 Ford One-tonne Tow Truck from McLure, British Columbia and the ‘would-be’ bus shelter seat, North of 60 style. In both the detail, lines and range of light are enhanced (or at least different).

Listening to – today it’s been the conclusion of Ken Follett’s ‘Pillars of the Earth’ on the long drive home from Edmonton to High Level. The narrative provides glimpse of Monarchy, Ecclesiastical ambition and all that was behind building cathedrals and parishes; the story moves from Life at the local/village level all the way to Thomas Beckett and King Henry and those who contested the throne.

Quote to Inspire – “Vision is that original spark that was ignited within you and made you pick up a camera to capture whatever it is you saw, that made you turn to shout “Did you see that!” only to find no one there–so you created an image to do the telling.” ― David duChemin, Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Firebird – Pontiac’s

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1970 Pontiac Firebird – High Level, Alberta 1

1970 Pontiac Firebird – High Level, Alberta 2

1970 Pontiac Firebird – High Level, Alberta 3

1970 Pontiac Firebird – High Level, Alberta 4

At last week’s Show and Shine, in drizzling and spitting rain, my son stuck with me as my wife and daughter left for the warmth of home and school. As I scope out my next photo, Liam nudges me – “This one here is the one I’d go with, Dad.” The car he’s pointing me towards is low key, a General Motors vehicle, best thought of as companion or cousin to the silver and green 1967 Camaro SS Sport Coupes that sit at this Show and Shine. A 1970 Pontiac Firebird nestles between the silver, 1967 Camaro SS and the newer (by fifty years) green rendering of the Chevrolet Camaro SS … Transformers edition. Brown, the styling element that distinguishes this Firebird from all others is the hood scoop meant to drive air toward the filtered air intake of a 350 ci V8 engine, the same engine my father had in our green, 1969 Canadian-built Pontiac Parisienne … I know something about this engine. Moreover, this same car was the vehicle of my neighbor’s son, Derrick, who handy with tools and engines worked the mechanical elements of a 400 ci V8 and drive train to perfection before taking his Pontiac Firebird into the paint shop to add Turquoise colour to the body. Through two years (in my middle teen years) I was able to mark the transformation of his vehicle from my parent’s living room window in Edmonton … awestruck to see the vehicle in its final rendering. Understatement and power, my son is telling me about flying under the radar … enjoyably … with a muscle car. It’s the first time he’s told me about a car he’d like to own. Good schtuff!

Listening to – John Mayer’s ‘Route 66,’ Erick Morillo & Sacha Baren Cohen’s ‘I Like to Move It,’ Sheryl Crow’s ‘Steve McQueen,’ and Jason Mraz’ ‘Sleeping to Dream.’

Quote to Inspire – “I fell in love with taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance.” Alec Soth

Persona – Challenger

Canon 50mm, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, Spring, Still Life, Vehicle, Weather

Challenger – High Level, Alberta 1

Challenger – High Level, Alberta 2

Challenger – High Level, Alberta 3

Challenger – High Level, Alberta 4

In 2006, Disney and Pixar created a movie called ‘Cars.’ Through anthropomorphization (computer imaging and human voice over), vehicles became characters. Vehicles were personified with front-end grill work that took on features of the human face and with animate vehicle bodies became expressive in gesture. What was the adult draw to the children’s film was the close attention paid to the style and design derivation linking the computer animation to original autos. For example, Doc Hudson’s character and vehicle are based on the lines and styling of the 1951 Hudson Hornet. Other characters are composite renderings of vehicles from a former time. Mater’s character is a vehicle cross reminiscent of a 1951 International Harvester ‘boom truck’ and the styling associated with a mid-fifties Chevrolet, one-ton Wrecker Tow Truck.

The film draws upon an underlying theme characteristic of North American society that of the car we drive representing significant attributes in our character … our auto becomes ‘how we represent’ and contains ‘our colours.’ Beyond actual clothing, an automobile is the next way we clothe ourselves in strength, colour and speed. And, that vehicle and how it’s driven embodies our habits, mannerisms, attitude and even outlook. People know us by how we drive. Anthromorphization in reverse – three 2013 Dodge Challengers were present at last week’s Show and Shine and what was noteworthy and perhaps the attracting feature of the Challenger’s design was the configuration of headlights in relation to the front of the hood and to the grill work. For anyone standing looking down to the front of the car from eye-level places the headlights under a long ark of the hood, a styling that conveys something similar to eyes looking up and out from under someone’s brow – an attribute and styling that likely makes these Dodge Challengers ‘mean machines,’ contenders on the road … or at least something fun to drive as it becomes persona for its driver.

Listening to – Sheryl Crow’s ‘Steve McQueen’ and ‘Real Gone,’ John Mayer’s ‘Route 66’ and Rascal Flatts singing a Tom Cochrane tune, ‘Life is a Highway.’

Quote to Inspire – “A photographer is an acrobat treading the high wire of chance, trying to capture shooting stars.” – Guy Le Querrec

Prop, Actor & Old School

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, Spring, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Weather

Camaro Transformed – High Level, Alberta

Camaro (Old School) – High Level, Alberta

585 brake horsepower in a Chevrolet, a car with less weight than a half-ton truck, a car engineered to hold the road at high speed and while cornering creatively, a car Chevrolet distinguishes with notoriety by allowing it to become prop and actor within a movie – The Transformers. This year-old Camaro SS takes a spot on Northstar Chrysler’s lot two vehicles down from its old school predecessor, the original Camaro SS from almost fifty years ago, Chevrolet’s second sports car after the Corvette, a vehicle powered by a 350 ci V8, a car my son and I have ridden in, a car my cousin has owned.

Listening to – Robbie Robertson’s ‘Shine Your Light,’ The Perisher’s ‘Trouble Sleeping,’ and U2’s ‘Crumbs from Your Table.’

Quote to Inspire – “A photograph is the pause button on life.” – Ty Holland

Hopping Mesh – Forward

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 50mm, Canon 50mm Lens, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

1969-73 GMC Camper Special – High Level, Alberta 2

69-73 GMC Camper Special – High Level, Alberta

This blue GMC (1969-73) recalls a grey, overcast November winter weekend in Rimbey, Alberta and an orange GMC plain Jane half-ton, farm work truck of similar age. Starting in a pasture and working our way onto farm roads, my cousin taught me to drive in his orange GMC, a truck with a three-in-the-tree standard transmission having to be understood and engaged, letting out the clutch, adding gas and listening to and feeling where gears meshed, my cousin coaching in a truck that hopped forward occasionally as we set it in motion, movement becoming smoother in each drive between my cousin and uncle’s farms. I was twelve and away from home – good memories recalled to Life by this blue, GMC Camper Special,; it’s likely that this vehicle could have had a two-tone paint job in a previous Life (perhaps forest green and white). With the even beading of water droplets on the entire truck, it is evident that its owner knows how to detail a vehicle; it’s well preserved.

Listening to – Ray Lamontagne’s ‘Trouble’ and ‘All the Wild Horses,’ Radiohead’s ‘All I Need’ and Arcade Fire’s ‘Wake Up.’

Quote to Inspire – “Which of my photographs is my favourite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” – Imogen Cunningham