Land’s Next Use

Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Fall, Farm, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Homestead, Journaling, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, The Candid Frame, Weather, Winter

Strewn Timber – Rocky Lane, Alberta – Canada iv

Strewn Timber – Rocky Lane, Alberta – Canada ii

Strewn Timber – Rocky Lane, Alberta – Canada iii

Strewn Timber – Rocky Lane, Alberta – Canada i

Timber, pushed down, lies strewn throughout a farmer’s field, a first step in clearing the land. Timber has also fallen across the structure of a homestead house yet has not crushed it. The house and a water-filled dugout suggest that a previous owner, another farmer, had initiated and abandoned a similar project in an earlier era. For now, timber will be gathered for burning; a winter or spring burn will reduce these trees and this homestead house to ashes, the land becoming ready for another use.

Quote to Consider – “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” – Diane Arbus

Listening to – Ibarionex Perello’s ‘The Candid Frame’ – episode 238, an interview with Sara Jane Boyers, Jesse Cook’s ‘Ocean Blue,’ Shadowfax’s ‘Move the Clouds,’ Agnes Obel’s ‘Fivefold,’ U2’s ‘Song for Someone’ and Sigur Ros’ ‘Glosoli.’

The Place Where We Are Right
by Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the Spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plough.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

Rainbow Re-edit

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Smoke, Summer, Weather

Wind Turbines and Rainbow – Oahu 1

Plantation Fire – Haleiwa, Oahu

Wind Turbines and Rainbow – Oahu 5

Wind Turbines and Rainbow – Oahu 4

Wind Turbines and Rainbow – Oahu 3

Two summers ago, my wife, daughter and I enjoyed two weeks on Oahu. We rented a car, a Ford Fusion, for the time and used it to take us on day trips exploring Oahu. In the second week we returned for perhaps the fourth time to Haleiwa, part of Oahu’s North Shore. Exploring, shopping and photo gathering were elements of that day. We’d each finished an ice cream cone and were buying t-shirts for my son when sirens of fire engines moved through town – one, then, five minutes later another.

To the north, a plantation, perhaps a mile away was burning and dark black smoke was billowing in the air.

When traffic had returned to its steady flow we got into the car with the intention of returning to Honolulu for the evening. Traffic had slowed, returning to an ambling pace. As we headed away from Haleiwa the idea to see the site of the fire attracted my curiosity. I took a right from the main road and followed a one-lane backroad toward the fire. I thought better of it; the backroad to the plantation was narrow and blocking traffic would be a problem.

I stopped our vehicle, got out and looked back over my right shoulder to see these wind turbines with a rainbow coming down in the midst of them – an opportunity for a photograph had presented itself. I attached my 70-200mm lens to my Canon 60D, zoomed in and captured these images. I posted the image on this blog maybe eighteen months ago, an image edited on my laptop while waiting for clothes to dry in the laundry room of the Marriott Hotel in Honolulu. The original posted is the third image above. Yesterday, I explored this sequence of images and found a few others to share. My thanks to Mark Kurtz for drawing my attention back to these images.

Listening to – Parov Stelar’s ‘Room Service,’ Nitin Sawhney’s ‘Firmament,’ the Gotan Project’s ‘Santa Maria (Del Buen Ayre)’ and Quantic & Tempo’s ‘Sabor.’

Quote to Consider – “In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.” – August Sander

Reflecting, Road Thought Work

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, Flora, Fog, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Sunset, Weather

Homestead – La Glace, Alberta, Canada

Stop Ahead Turnoff – NW Alberta

Sunset – Warrensville, Alberta Canada 1

Sunset – Warrensville, Alberta Canada 2

Sunset – Warrensville, Alberta Canada 3

Sunset – Warrensville, Alberta Canada 4

Sunset – Warrensville, Alberta Canada 5

“We never see another person’s experience; all we see is their behaviour (R.D. Lang).”

I have had some alone time travelling in the past few weeks and been able to engage in uninterrupted thought work – some intersecting of ideas has occurred. I’ve listened to a 2007 John O’Donohue lecture on the creative force of the imagination and key ideas as starting points about our inner lives – in his words, “I always think that behind every face there is a secret life and that humanoids are the strangest creatures that you’d ever meet because so much is contained within the human body. A human face is one of the most unusual things in the world. On such a small canvas such a variety of presence can appear. And, behind every face there is a secret, hidden inner life … if friendship means anything it means in the presence of the other you begin to see who you are in how they reflect you back to you.”

Within this same time frame I took in a photography workshop offered by Joe McNally – ‘The Moment It Clicks.’ As I listened and watched Joe work to produce different portraits there was recognition that the photographer does what John O’Donohue proposes; ultimately, the photographer reflects the subject back to him- or herself. I have wondered, though, if portrait photography is really a dance of interrogation; I have wondered if shared vulnerabilities result in trust and a richer portrait. And, is it the photographer’s leading interrogation about the subject’s narrative that produces the best photograph? Or, is it something more mutual that does so? I am wondering if the good portrait photographer leads the subject in the relationship that produces the portrait? It is possible that subject and photographer would share a context of silence in portrait making.

John O’Donohue’s words highlight some of this – “No two humans inhabit the same world, internally. We all inhabit the same world physically. But, internally, each world is completely different.” On the side of the photographer and on the side of the subject, what follows is starting point. “… No one else sees the world the way you do. No one else sees it from the perspective that you do. In no one else is the same narrative building as there is within you. And even though similar things have happened to you as with other people the context that they find in your heart and mind and narrative is different from everyone else. Your inner world is completely hidden from other humans.” So, within portrait photography interrogation has the opportunity to work on both sides co-creating a reality – that of photographer and that of subject. Relationship and moment are captured and recorded as the shutter button is pressed.

As the week rounded out, I found myself among this theme, again, being explored and brought to life in Ben Stiller’s film of James Thurber’s story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Images from the Road – a derelict church in Woking, a La Glace homestead, the road at night and sunsets.

Quote to Consider – “If you’re having difficulty finding a natural or intuitive expression in a portrait session or having trouble identifying with the person you’re photographing, look into their eyes carefully and see if you can find your own reflection there. Discover yourself looking at you. Then, ask your subject to look into your camera lens and find their own reflection, and be prepared to make the portrait.” – Shelby Lee Adams, ‘Find Your Reflection’ … seems follow-up from the aphorism, “The more I know me, the more I know thee.” – Buber-esque and good, good schtuff!

Listening to – Jose Gonzalez’ ‘Stay Alive’ and Thomas Merton’s ‘The Seven Storey Mountain.’

Cloud Cord Work

Backlight, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Sunset, Weather

La Glace Homestead – Sunset, La Glace, Alberta – Canada 1

La Glace Homestead – Sunset, La Glace, Alberta – Canada 3

Day’s end, dabbling with high dynamic range edits in Adobe Photoshop CS6, shots from a La Glace golden hour at day’s end from two Sundays back. Very near the Rocky Mountains, the curiosity is the cloud work splaying out, unwinding cords of cloud above rolling foothills – not quite cirrus clouds, but clouds that hold line and shape against darkening night sky as back drop.

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

Listening to – Jesse Cook’ ‘Ocean Blue,’ Clannad’s ‘Harry’s Game’ and Snow Patrol’s ‘This Isn’t Everything You Are’ and ‘Those Distant Bells.’

Windshield Meditation

Canon Camera, Farm, Farmhouse, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Weather

Barn – Rycroft, Ab – Canada

Barn and Quonset – Fairview, Ab – Canada 1

Barn and Quonset – Fairview, Ab – Canada 2

Spring’s Rolling Hills – Near Rycroft, Alberta – Canada 1

Spring’s Rolling Hills – Near Rycroft, Alberta – Canada 2

A prairie thaw, sky filling through the afternoon with cloud – a long drive southward into more and more of spring and sunlight provides ample opportunity for the meditation that becomes photography and each photograph – a photo walk with wheels so to speak, travel traversing a third of our province in a five-hour trek. Quiet, without news, story or music, the drive becomes a photographer’s dream – unending windshield time. That afternoon’s thought remnants are found in these images.

Listening to – Radiohead’s ‘Pyramid Song,’ Sigur Ros’ ‘Glosoli,’ Snow Patrol’s ‘Garden Rules,’ Bryan Ferry’s ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,’ U2’s ‘California’ and Tom Waits’ ‘Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis.

Quote to Consider – “The eye should learn to listen before it looks.” – Robert Frank

Buttertown Snow

Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Combine (Farming), Farm, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Vehicle, Weather

Buttertown New Holland Combine – Fort Vermilion, Alberta – Canada

Buttertown Truck Cab – Fort Vermilion , Alberta – Canada

Buttertown snow melts, revealing different finds among Fort Vermilion’s north settlement trees on a Saturday, one of the last grey few before the intensity of spring light warms and colours the world anew. Here, blurring elements in each image to explore the result.

Quote to Consider – “Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.” – Don McCullin

Listening to – Agnes Obel’s ‘Fivefold’ and Junip’s ‘Don’t Let It Pass.’

Window Pragmatics

Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Still Life, Weather

Homestead on a Hill – near Sexsmith, Alberta – Canada

Ten minutes north from Sexsmith, Alberta this homestead is one previously photographed in mid-winter, the land smoothed under a snow blanket, the homestead roof likewise blanketed, but windswept with snow blown into curvilinear shape. Here, in early spring, the homestead’s greying outline pulls my eye, then it is its placement on the rise in this field, then the weather drama of its backdrop clouding and finally it’s the immensity of the homestead windows, each – one on each side – four feet tall by one and a half feet in breadth; much can be seen from this homestead. A South African farming friend points out that being able to see in each direction – north, east, south and west – requires that the farming home be placed at best vantage point to allow observation and consideration of happenings on the farm property. Pragmatics is what has been highlighted – all should be seen from the farm home and limit the need to be on the land to check on things.

Listening to – John O’Donohue’s ‘Longing and Belonging.’

Quote to Consider – “Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how,’ while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why.’ Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.” – Man Ray

Walkabout Homestead

Backlight, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Weather

La Glace Homestead on a Hill 1

La Glace Homestead on a Hill 2

La Glace Homestead on a Hill 3

On my own, away from home and family, four hours into a walkabout drive with my camera on a sunny, spring Saturday, a right turn takes me west, heading toward La Glace – new ground. Nearly sunset, the miles long straight road climbs and curves around a foothill allowing this scene to find me – a homestead on the westward rise, against the big Alberta sky.

Listening to – Chris Whitley’s ‘Big Sky Country’ and ‘Dust Radio.’

Quote to Consider – “Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” – Berenice Abbott

Rusting Relics – Narratives of Habit

Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Winter

Farm Trucks – Manning, Alberta 1

Farm Trucks – Manning, Alberta 2

Farm Trucks – Manning, Alberta 3

In the past few days I’ve wondered if the attracting element to vehicle photography is the coherence of a vehicle’s design, functionality and comfort. Beyond this, is it the style and form of the vehicle that attracts the eye and the impulse to drive the vehicle? Perhaps it is our ability to imagine both how someone will look driving the vehicle or merely the anticipation of how it will handle that attracts the photographer to a vehicle.

For drivers, habit leads us in our vehicle use, our driving. We tend not to consider the system or systems of steps that allow us to drive a vehicle. Unlocking the door, opening the door, sitting in the seat, putting the key into the ignition, starting the car with or without throttle use, shifting from park to reverse and then to drive, steering, adjusting speed with throttle (gas pedal) – these steps get the car moving and rolling. A system of steps ensures safety of self and others, a system of steps allows us not only to propel the vehicle forward, but to navigate while doing so and a system of steps allows us to park and leave the vehicle. For the driver such a system of steps is more habit than an individually considered set of actions that takes driver and passengers from point of origin to destination and back again.

So, is it design, function, form, colour or comfort that attracts the photographer’s eye to a vehicle? Or is it the photographer’s ability to imagine, see and confirm the narrative of habit associated with a vehicle that pulls the eye – the future narrative of a new vehicle; or, the past narrative of a vehicle from another era? Perhaps these questions are starting points for vehicle advertisers. Still I like looking at each dent, chip and window crack in old, rusting relics; vehicle interiors convey much about driver and passengers – much narrative of habit is found in these vehicles. Here, rusting relics are set out in a farmer’s field near Manning, Alberta. In my drive past the site last weekend it was a surprise to see the old La Crete, REO Speedwagon cab and chassis gone; hopefully it’s found a good home and has had the good fortune to become a project for rehabilitation.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography is for me simply a creative passion, the ability to use light and form to capture in a single image – what I see in my own imagination….” – Tim Wallace, car photographer in interview with Topaz Labs.

Listening to – Jesse Cook’s ‘The Blue Guitar Sessions;’ one song standing out is ‘Ocean Blue.’

Grist & Blue

Canon Camera, Farm, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Weather, Winter

Dormant Rusting Relics – Manning, Alberta 1

Dormant Rusting Relics – Manning, Alberta 2

It’s March. Two weeks ago we were at -28C, here in High Level, Alberta. Yesterday and today Spring’s warmth melts snow. Returning to High Level from Edmonton on a Saturday afternoon, two weeks ago, a Tamron telephoto lens allowed for this high dynamic range (HDR) image capture of these three dormant, rusting relics – trucks not quite ready for salvage, more grist for custom renovation, nostalgic celebration or for parts. The clarity of the Tamron lens is excellent and at 400 metres distance from the vehicles distortion is limited. I’m liking the image yielded, its blues and textures – they remind of childhood play amongst cars next to the shop at my cousins’ farm.

Quote to Inspire – “To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

Quote to Inspire – A story first heard in an interview with Rosanne Cash, last June … interesting. “I had a dream once about confronting art, personified, as a human being, and him telling me that he didn’t respect dilettantes. This dream was about eight years ago and it changed my life. I knew that I had to strengthen my concentration and really focus on what I was doing and commit to this work in a really deep way or else give it up. There’s no in-between. That presence is still with me. I want to please him. It’s off the wall, but it was really powerful.” – ‘Rosanne Cash by David Byrne,’ ‘BOMB – Artists in Conversation.’

Listening to – Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Walk like a Man,’ ‘Tunnel of Love’ and ‘Two Faces;’ then it’s ‘Radio Nowhere.’ The Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ has shown in different playlists a couple of times in the past week.