Gas Station

Ragamuffin Remembering

Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Gas Station, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Winter
Chevrolet Truck - Arizona 2

Chevrolet Truck – Arizona 2

Chevrolet Truck - Arizona 1

Chevrolet Truck – Arizona 1

It’s Sunday, and it’s a colder kind of Sunday in early November. I’m downstairs with the computer, editing summer photos – our travels through Utah. I show my wife the following image of an early 30’s Chevrolet truck. It sits alongside the highway within a Navajo reservation. For my wife, the vehicle has personality, the kind you’d find personified in the Disney movie, ‘Cars.’ I’m liking its colour, shape and integrity. Paint peels from its fenders and body. Rust in its colour seems very close to the colour of the rocks within the landscape.

The age of the vehicle also holds my attention. As a marker of time, the vehicle would have been around in world war II, it would have been around when that war ended, it would have been witness to all that Jack Kerouac’s novel, ‘On the Road,’ would have been about. And, as I think about it, the truck would also have been around when Rich Mullins made his treks out to this Navajo reservation to minister to children and youth with his music. In music ministry, ‘Awesome God,’ is the song Rich Mullins is most recognized for writing, along with many songs recorded by Amy Grant.

This past fall, over a couple of days, I went through a DVD drama called ‘Ragamuffin’ which is an inspired chronicle of Rich Mullins’ life in which the viewer witnesses Rich’s transformation (struggles, consequences and transformation) from successful Christian musician to a life lived more and more honestly by the tenets of God set out in the Bible. 78 Eatonwood Green is a place where Rich and the Ragamuffin Band were staying in Ireland and 78 Eatonwood Green is title to another song worth the hearing, an instrumental with a dulcimer featuring within the song.

Listening to – Rich Mullins’ ‘78 Eatonwood Green’ from ‘A Liturgy, a Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band.’

Quote to Consider – ‘Photography, though not an art form in itself, has the peculiar capacity to turn all its subjects into works of art.’ – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Route 66 – Restoration Reminiscence

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Gas Station, Journaling, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Service Station, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration
Fairlane 500 and Thunderbird - Grand Canyon Arizona

Fairlane 500 and Thunderbird – Grand Canyon Arizona

Fairlane 500 - Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

Fairlane 500 – Grand Canyon, Arizona

Fairlane 500 - Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

Fairlane 500 – Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1949 Chevrolet Fleetline - Grand Canyon, Arizona 3

1949 Chevrolet Fleetline – Grand Canyon, Arizona 3

1949 Chevrolet Fleetline - Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

1949 Chevrolet Fleetline – Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

1949 Chevrolet Fleetline - Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1949 Chevrolet Fleetline – Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1931 Ford Sedan and Pickup - Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

1931 Ford Sedan and Pickup – Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

1931 Ford Sedan and Pickup - Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1931 Ford Sedan and Pickup – Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1931 Ford Sedan - Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

1931 Ford Sedan – Grand Canyon, Arizona 2

1931 Ford Sedan - Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1931 Ford Sedan – Grand Canyon, Arizona 1

1957 Chevrolet Belair - Grand Canyon 1

1957 Chevrolet Belair – Grand Canyon 1

1957 Chevrolet Belair - Grand Canyon 2

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’

The Road Home – Images

Barn, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Farm, Farmhouse, Gas Station, Home, Homestead, Journaling, Photoblog Intention, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Summer, Vehicle Restoration
1938 Ford One Ton Tow Truck

1938 Ford One Ton Tow Truck

Farm - Nampa, Alberta

Farm – Nampa, Alberta

Manning Grain Truck 1

Manning Grain Truck 1

Manning Grain Truck 2

Manning Grain Truck 2

McLure Tow Truck 1

McLure Tow Truck 1

McLure Tow Truck 2

McLure Tow Truck 3

McLure Tow Truck 3

McLure Tow Truck 4

McLure Tow Truck 4

Saw Mill - Whitecourt 1

Saw Mill – Whitecourt 1

Train Tracks - Kamloops, British Columbia

Train Tracks – Kamloops, British Columbia

Good travel from a photographic perspective is something allowing the photographer to look out to the world and to engage visually with the narrative of situation and locale. What is out there? What is happening or has happened? What pulls your eye towards it? What colour is there? What shadow is there? What is the visual impression? The challenge is that travel is often expeditious – you need to arrive at your destination at a certain time or to return home because you have goals on the other end of your travel. The trick is to plan for the opportunity to stop and photograph starting out early enough that you give yourself abundance of time with your camera … and the world. For the same nine hour drive we make between High Level and Edmonton, Alberta, an artist we worked with, Chris Short, observed that there is enough visual information of interest to make it necessary to break the same trip into three days to allow her to sketch, draw and paint … along the way. The photos presented here are those on the return journey home last week. Not knowing the times or vicinities well and with the press of my family and me returning to other goals, my photography was more happenstance than planned or found.

Listening to – The B-52s with the Wild Crowd performing ‘Private Idaho,’ ‘Ultraviolet,’ ‘Roam,’ and ‘Cosmic Thing’.

Quote to Inspire – “Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly is.” – Anonymous

At the Ready

Backlight, Barn, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, Gas Station, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Winter
Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 1

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 1

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 11

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 11

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 10

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 10

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 9

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 9

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 8

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 8

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 7

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 7

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 6

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 6

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 5

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 5

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 4

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 4

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 3

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 3

Ford One Ton Tow Truck - McLure BC 2

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 2

A 1938 Ford one-ton tow truck sits, seemingly at the ready, gazing out to the highway. Yet, at the ready, looks a lot like ready to sell.

Static, the Ford’s paint flakes away and metal beneath oxidizes into rust, colourfully. Curves are the thing, in the shape and detail of the cab, in each window, throughout the length and nose of the hood, in the catch-all of the fenders and in the perfect circles of the lights; straight lines add contrast to these curves with the verticals and horizontals of the running boards, bumper and grill; and then there are the diagonals associated with the structure for leverage, towing and pulling other vehicles. There’s remarkable engineering, here, both in the original build of the Ford and in the impromptu innovation of the towing structure … someone has the knack for towing vehicles. The whole vehicle is architecture, engineering, shape and detail from a former time, a time that preceded me, a time that was my father’s – all pull my interest to this Ford. And, there’s anticipation of how it would drive and how it would ride … the finding of gears, the getting it to move and remain moving … there’d be the unique bounce and shift of weight as the truck moves over terrain … there’d be the rhythm of engine combustion idling and working, pacing out each mile … and there’d be the view from within while piloting this vehicle – all intrigue me.

Automobiles that have left the road have been set back on the road surface by this Ford. Remnants of collisions – damaged vehicles, damaged people and damaged egos, their aftermath has needed transfer to homes, autobody shops and junk yards, something this Ford has provided regularly. In extreme and extraordinary winter weather this Ford has been one to venture out on uncertain roads and perhaps there would be no safer place than in an outfitted Ford one-ton tow truck with a rested driver who understands people, the road and his machine. This Ford one-ton tow truck is for sale down around McLure, British Columbia; the first person with $2000 or so dollars takes it.

Listening to – Tom Cochrane’s ‘Big League’.

Quote to Inspire – “Buy a good pair of comfortable shoes, have a camera around your neck at all times, keep your elbows in, be patient, optimistic and don’t forget to smile.” – Matt Stuart

A Slippery, Melting World

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Gas Station, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, School, Service Station, Still Life, Weather, Winter

A busy week has me posting photographs almost a week beyond date of image capture. Last Friday’s photowalk took us through High Level’s southern side, a slippery, melting world, a world of water splashing and flowing and soaking through. Photographers captured freeze-frame splashing, the results of big chunks of ice being thrown into puddles.  Others’ photographs were more about water’s ripple and reflection, water moving and water that’s settled.  Beyond this, water misted in the spray generated by vehicles traveling among wet, wet High Level roads.

I used my Sigma 10-20 mm in two ways, first to distort line and shape of subjects close by and secondly to photograph landscape traveled through.  The subjects photographed include an RCMP three-quarter ton truck, playground equipment at Spirit of the North Community School, a bog-runner truck … in development, the curbside view of Quality Motors (our local Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge Dealer) and the Extra Foods Gas Bar (part of the Canadian Superstore chain).

Listening to the Steve Miller Band – Rock’n Me, Take the Money and Run and Mercury Blues from the Fly Like an Eagle album;  other songs have included Murray McLauchlan’s Hard Rock Town and Ryan Adam’s Chains of Love.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” – Dorothea Lange

Wisconsin Locomotive

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Gas Station, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Winter

Wisconsin Locomotive - High Level's Canadian National Railyards

High Level’s industrial area intrigues.  Within the two kilometres that comprise its service road are perhaps fifty businesses, ones that mediate between our hinterland frontier and the world at large.  The location is active.  Rarely on this section of road would ten minutes go by without some activity, a vehicle driving by, logging trucks being unloaded, rail cars being loaded, grain trucks pulling in to the Viterra elevator or larger transport trucks pulling in to Neufeld Petroleum (Petro Canada) for fuel. The area contains the Emergency Medical Services, an auto-body collision repair shop, loading bays of a trucking company and much more. And, then, something novel occurs.  A Wisconsin locomotive with Wisconsin map painted on its side arrives and idles overnight in High Level’s Canadian National (C.N.) rail yard. The engine is regal with its cab being painted maroon and yellow and sporting a Wisconsin Rail badge on either side of its cab. Later, I learn that C.N. bought out and operates Wisconsin Rail in the United States.

Listening to Run on for a Long Time by The Five Blind Boys of Alabama (Spirit of the Century) and Wisdom by David Gray (E.P.’s 92-94).

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

Saturday’s Afternoon Drive

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 75-300 mm, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Gas Station, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Winter

Wife at school, prepping; daughter at dance, dancing – this Saturday seems to be mine, a day before me to use at my discretion, and, certainly not a day to pass in front of a computer screen. A breakfast out takes me to the Flamingo Restaurant where my Photo Plus magazine becomes object of discussion between fellow Canon photographer (my cashier) and me; I point him to the Zinio iPad app as the best means to download the Photo Plus, easily, here in High Level.

Onward – my outerwear consists of several items purchased over the years from Mountain Equipment Co-op – ski pants (10 years old), Salomon winter trainers (new, this year) and a down-filled jacket with hood. Set for warmth at -22C, today, I point my GMC Sierra (without grill or driver’s side headlamp) toward Fort Vermilion and La Crete. Music is part of what this Saturday afternoon is about – Sirius Satellite Radio allows for tuning into folk music on Coffee House, news at the top of the hour from CBC and BBC, jazz music and an interview with the bass player working with Miles Davis. Comedy does not attract my attention, today. I had had thoughts of listening to Sid and Mac’s Shuttertime Podcast; but, their podcast is good to digest while out on a walk around High Level … I let the podcast wait.

In Fort Vermilion, Shirley’s Snack Shack allows for purchase of coffee and something unseen before, a Reese’s Peanut Butter chocolate bar. The truck rolls south on the Red Earth road. The first photographs are of a red, mid-sixties, FORD, three-tonne grain truck; the vehicle remains active – it has current plates and tires are full. The next photographs are of cattails, at the northeast corner of a massive field – land, newly broken and newly farmed; the wind stirs the cattails enough that Automatic Exposure Bracketing, while tried, will not allow for HDR results.

La Crete has Quality Motors to check out, a used car lot and a new Subway restaurant. Moving southward from La Crete, Buffalo Head Prairie is next.  A chain of hills loom in the distance, a blue backdrop to this settlement and extends to another thirty kilometres away called Blue Hills. Along the way, different untried back roads are taken and they return to the Blue Hills highway.  A derelict farm house is discovered.  Doubling back, a place to park the truck off the highway is found; there, two relics from the fifties are found among old disused farming machinery (Massey Harris is the emblem on a seed drill, not Massey Ferguson). With so much left scattered around, the farm seems to be left medias res (in the middle of things); has there been a family death? There’s a story of a car that drove onto the Tompkin’s Landing ferry many years ago; its brakes failed and one or all occupants of the car drowned.

The final part of the journey involves crossing the Peace River over an ice bridge at Tompkin’s landing; signs are there to direct vehicles and to advise of a maximum speed of 10 km/h for crossing the kilometre-wide river. Another forty minutes in night’s darkness with only a passenger headlight to alert oncoming highway traffic of my presence sees me home before 7:00 p.m..  Supper is grilled cheese sandwiches.

Listening to Miles Davis from his Kind of Blue album and So What; reminds that I first seriously listened to Miles Davis within the Finding Forrester soundtrack … Bill Frisell is also there with Over the Rainbow and Under a Golden Sky.

Quote to Inspire – “While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.” — Dorothea Lange

1940 Plymouth – Deanz Garage

Canon Camera, Gas Station, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

Dean who owns Deanz Garage is a Mopar man.  Despite working on the Mercury Meteor and helping me establish interest in restoring a 1969 Pontiac Parisienne, his restorations photobook is Mopar as are most of the vehicles in his yard – his Plymouth Roadrunner, his friend’s Plymouth Valiant, the 1940 Plymouth (for sale) and a mid-sixties Fargo pickup-van cross-over (also for sale).  Meeting Dean and being able to photograph these vehicles was a treat and I appreciate the camaraderie he extends to all car buffs, including me – thank you, Sir!

With my photographs of the vehicles in his yard, here, I’m surprised I got the photos I did.  Being three days from home and family, with little good sleep during my travels I was itching to begin the journey homeward when the opportunity confronting me was that of spending time in southern Alberta working toward good photographs. My plan for the day following the workshop was more global than specific.  I knew that my next broad step would be a four-hour return drive to Edmonton. Without planning for what was possible in southern Alberta, before hand, travel toward Edmonton was the only next step I was focusing on. What I am coming to understand is that my practice needs to develop to more than having my camera with me wherever I am. The upside, though, is that I have a taste for the visual flavour of this area and know I would like to return to photograph these sights.

Listening to Shine by David Gray (an alternate tuning on my L’Arrivee L-03 guitar … a resonant and dissonant chording).

Quote to Inspire – “Landscape is the firstborn of creation. It was here hundreds of millions of years before the flowers, the animals, or the people appeared … In the human face, the anonymity of the universe becomes intimate … The hidden, secret warmth of creation comes to expression here.” ~ John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Thank you, thank you to all bloggers, thinkers, photographers and image-viewers for your encouragement, goodwill and comments.  Good, good schtuff!!

Refit & Refuel

Canon 50mm, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Gas Station, Photoblog Intention, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Service Station, Vehicle, Winter

Shell Service Station - High Level, Alberta

I’m going to study this picture.  It does capture a sense of this being an outpost and a place to refit and refuel in night’s darkest hours. The intent, however, was to capture something iconic, a gas station lighting the night … it being more of a beacon for a point of rest before continuing on, more something you’d expect listening to John Mayer sing ‘Route 66’. High Level’s Shell Service Station is open 24/7 year-round and is midpoint between Edmonton, Alberta and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. In terms of the shot taken, it may be that the 50mm prime lens limits what can happen with plane of focus and composition; more movement on my part would be needed to find the right location and composition. Still, I like the crispness of most parts of the photograph.  I may try a few shots looking more straight across to the service station one of these nights.