Journaling

Fire and Heart

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon Lens, Farm, Farmhouse, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Podcast, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Shuttertime with Sid and Mac, Still Life, Winter
Homestead - High Level, Alberta

Homestead - High Level, Alberta

Images and narrative speaking to the heart of Life – this homestead served a family for a time, a family living from the land.  The home building, the cabin was certainly heated through the cold of winter and night by wood in a wood stove. This morning, I’ve returned for a look at response to my photoblog to find that Regina (Gina) Arnold writer/author/photographer of The Regina Chronicles has nominated me/my blog for The Heart of Fire Award. The photographs and stories connecting to them find meaning in several lives including that of Gina.  And, Gina as fellow-blogger has been one to engage in the dialogue that responds and moves thinking forward in my photography. She encourages in such dialogue and does so again with this award … and I am grateful.  Thank you Gina.

The award also is meant to inform others about the recipient highlighting seven (7) things about the blogger/photographer/writer. A husband, a father, an educator, a photographer, a writer, a brother, a son – all are roles I engage in daily. Beyond these roles, other areas of Life are significant – here are seven things among many.

  1. The Writing Life – Married within my last year of University, I was deposited at term-end up north to rejoin my wife in a bedroom community serving Fort McMurray, Alberta fifty kilometres away on the southern side of Gregoire Lake in Anzac, Alberta where my wife taught a grade 1-2 split class.  I’m indebted to her fellow teacher for his down-to-earth grounding on what the teaching life is actually about and for his connecting me to Ira Progoff’s Intensive Journal Writing Method through Joe Couture. Through the years I’ve found myself reconnecting with the writing life in these weekend workshops – Convent Station – New Jersey, University of British Columbia – Vancouver, British Columbia and again at another convent in St. Paul, Minnesota.
  2. Fingerstyle Guitar – a piano and guitar have accompanied me through most times in my Life.  In University Ma Fletcher introduced me to tablature, fingerstyle guitar and playing with others.  The second guitar I bought was a Daion 12 string, a choice influenced by Dave Mason’s 12 string work (have a listen to Sad and Deep As You).  My interest in guitar was rekindled after reading Presbyterian Minister, Steve Stockman’s book Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 and finding him broadcasting across the internet from BBC Radio Ulster a show entitled Rhythm and Soul (8:00 p.m. Ulster – 1:00 p.m. Alberta). With a pawn shop Yamaha guitar I began working through Johnny Cash, Willard Grant Conspiracy and Martyn Joseph; because you could re-listen to the show you could play along to many of the songs.  From there it’s been a 1989 Takamine EF 325 src guitar and L’Arrivee L-03 and a Taylor 355CE and finally a Martin Backpacker guitar.
  3. Story, Narrative and Novels – curiously, I learned more about the mechanics of novel writing through Bill Beard’s narrative film course at the University of Alberta.  W.O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen the Wind was perhaps the first novel holding meaning for me as a young adult, more because the Life experiences being considered were so similar to my own – growing up on the Canadian prairie.  I am both a novel reader and audiobook listener.  In university, when I’d have finished my day or evening’s readings/studies, I’d have audiobooks going that were stories referred to tangentially by my professors – it was a great way to fall asleep. Audiobooks were handy for walking, summer cycling and taking buses around town.  I eventually adapted my love for listening into a means of study and enjoyed a full semester with marks at the top of all classes taken that term.  In terms of story and stories, Emily Bronte’s discussion of soul mates in Catherine and Heathcliff still ranks high for me – Wuthering Heights.  Hamlet, perhaps because of the investment of work in understanding the totality of it ranks high for me.  John Le Carre’s stories about George Smiley and the circus still hold my attention as does the recent release of the seventies depiction of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  For a time, A Perfect Spy held my attention.  And, I’ve understood through the years, that my like for spy stories has to do with their observations and insights about organizational behaviour.  Beyond this, I like the concept of vertigo as found in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being; and I like the orientation to humility that occurs within this story – there are truths, here.
  4. Chuck Me in the Shallow Water – My orientation to Life is somewhat primal and seeks the pragmatic. Down to earth exploration of what Life is about is perhaps a primary goal for us all.  You’ll find me advocating the movie Venus with Peter O’Toole as one film exploring the wisdom associated with Life reality. You’ll also find me digging in to John O’Donohue’s work for his ideas on beauty, on Life and contributing to Life. And, for as much as I seem to understand Life, I’m aware of the ‘much’ that I’ve yet to understand … here, Edie Brickell & New Bohemians’ song ‘What I Am,’ especially the lyric ‘Chuck me in the shallow water before I get too deep,’ poignantly point out that haunting aspect that there’s more that I don’t know, there’s a bigger picture that I and perhaps none of will ever be able to completely fathom. Humility is there in the recognition that all that Life is can never totally be figured out.  But, we go forward and make the best of the day that confronts us.
  5. Next steps photography-wise – in addition to continuing on with all things photographic, I’m thinking that my next move will be macro photography;  I’ve seen some excellent macro photography on these photoblogs; one photographer who’s caught my attention because she sends me macro images is Kasia Sokulska – an Edmonton-based photographer.  I’m thinking that my father would have loved digital macro photography for his images of flowers in and around the house on 58th Street in Edmonton.  I want a good macro lens that will provide good depth of field work.  So, it will be a Canon macro lens, for my Canon EOS 60D and 30D.
  6. Music – “There’s good music and music that’s good for something,” – so says Woody Guthrie. Music figures as an anchor in my Life. I note that in those times when Life seems stale or cold, there has usually been an absence of music in my Life – that which I’ve played, that which I’ve listened to and that which supports other activities.  In creating Animoto slideshows the critical feature after inputting good photos is that of choosing music that suits the photos … it’s the emotional engagement portion of the slideshow.  With music, I do have a goal of making it to the Greenbelt Music Festival in Cheltenham, UK one day; the weekend of music and lecture always seems to conflict with school start up.  And, music has been something I’ve enjoyed my son’s part in as a member of the University of Alberta Mixed Choir – he’s on tour as I write. The top seven songs that I’ve played through time according to my iTunes library include The Verve’s Lucky Man (83), Radiohead’s All I Need (74), The Police’s Walking on the Moon (71), Radiohead’s High and Dry (71), U2’s Get On Your Boots (Fish Out Of Water Mix) (69), Depeche Mode’s Policy of Truth (60) and Snow Patrol’s Lifeboats (51).  My son has also been listening to these tunes; so the statistics may be skewed.
  7. Podcast Listener – I bought my first iPod as one of the next steps taken when BBC Radio Ulster cancelled Steve Stockman’s weekly Rhythm and Soul broadcast. I had no idea what an iPod could do and no idea about how to use iTunes. That was back in 2006. In terms of podcasts that I can recommend the following rank highly – Scott Smith’s Motivation to Move (listening since October 2006), A Prairie Home Companion, The Chillcast with Anje Bee (listening since 2007), The Naked Photo by Riaan de Beer, The Nikonians Podcasts, Shuttertime with Sid and Mac, CBC Radio’s Tapestry with Mary Hynes, CBC Radio’s Vinyl Café Stories and BBC Radio’s World Book Club.  Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac is good as is the Greenbelt podcast.

In terms of follow-through and to pay it forward, there are blogs I wish to recommend from a point of exploration and because they explore the arena of the ‘heart’ in different ways – thus, the Heart of Fire award extends forward to them.  Their blogs are worth a regular perusal and they open-out in different ways much of what Life is about.

http://href.li/?http://teklanikaphotography.wordpress.com

http://href.li/?http://marsblackvintage.wordpress.com

http://href.li/?http://leannecole.wordpress.com

http://href.li/?http://rubicorno.com

http://href.li/?http://skymunki.wordpress.com

Paying it forward – have a go at sharing seven things about yourself and share with others blogs that capture something of heart.  Please note – don’t feel bad if you don’t have the time to go through the procedure for this award.  Just know that I think highly of your blogs.

Listening to – Tom Cochrane and Red Rider’s Good Times and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils’ If You Want to Get to Heaven.

Quote to Inspire – “Nothing happens when you sit at home.  I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times … I just shoot at what interests me at the moment.” – Elliott Erwitt

325 – 152nd Street East, Tacoma, Washington

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

One of the bigger treats for me in visiting Seattle, Washington this Easter was something my wife and daughter allowed me to do on the Thursday before we returned to Canada, something that they joined me in. That Thursday morning, we drove from Seattle an hour south to Tacoma and using our TomTom GPS were able to navigate to 325 – 152nd Street East to arrive at the LeMay Car Collection/Museum at Marymount.

Imagine a former convent/school resurrected to become storage and showing site for the LeMay collection of cars and trucks, vehicles of the last one hundred years. At the museum, a docent will lead you through each collecting point on the Marymount property. Not only do rusting relics inhabit these spaces, but you also find that the majority of vehicles within these confines will have received restoration or would have been kept in their original pristine condition throughout their years. Beyond this, imagine that your docent has heart and understands well your connection to cars and knows each car’s history intimately. He’s able to tell you all that you didn’t know about each car. Our docent, Mr. Pierce, led us, this way and that, through the maze of cars parked end to end in each of three buildings, a means to house them all. He was introducing each car to us – what the car was about practically, what had been each automaker’s intentions for the vehicle conceptually and how the car came to reside within the LeMay collection.

And, Mr. Pierce allowed me a kind of grace that only a fellow gear-head would ever let you have … he allowed time to photograph the vehicles and for that I will be forever grateful. At two hours in to my tour my wife went to be with my daughter out in our rental car while I rounded off the tour with Mr. Pierce looking up close at some of the first-ever self-propelled vehicles to transport people around the Americas. In terms of next steps, I’m considering becoming a member at the LeMay museum – they may be able to make use of this old-time car jockey who used to dust and polish cars at Edmonton’s Waterloo Mercury.

Listening to – U2’s Magnificent, Coldplay’s Yes and Radiohead’s All I Need.  In terms of audiobooks, the last two morning walks have been a listen through D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover; it’s been more than a couple of year’s since I’ve been through the book and this audio-recording has a good reader –  Maxine Peake.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.” – Andre Bazin (1918-1958), French film critic.

Twin Lakes – Roadscape

Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Weather, Winter
Alberta Highway 35 near Twin Lakes, Alberta

Alberta Highway 35 near Twin Lakes, Alberta

Distances travelled within Canada’s vast landscape are huge. Travel along its roadways demands commitment to best use of drive time between point of origin and destination so you get where you are going and so you enjoy where you got yourself to. Within this travel predicament kinaesthetic awareness of the road counts as much as visual presentation in terms of road familiarity. Curves, drops, bumps and inclines inform you in your travel along the road. Artists depicting the predicament of Canadian travel often poke fun at vacations enjoyed from a car’s interior as the terrain passes by as much as it is something enjoyed at the destination’s endpoint.  A better way to see more of Canada’s landscape is accomplished looking through a camera lens; doing so requires you to stop your vehicle, stow it safely along the roadside, get out of it and interact more substantially with the environment you encounter.

An iconic rendering of Canada’s roadscape is what the image presented here is about. I’ve photographed a portion of the up-and-down incline leading up to Twin Lakes along Alberta’s Highway 35, one hundred and fifty kilometres south from High Level en route toward Edmonton. In distance, the incline covers five kilometres of road surface and rises onto a land mass noted for the temperature change that occurs from bottom of the incline to its crest. In winter a double-digit temperature change can occur and is accompanied by a marked change in weather travelled through. Ascending or descending, driving this incline is a tricky endeavor in winter, something compounded by snow. While one aspect of this image favours the artist’s tongue-in-cheek take on ‘Windshield Time’, the manner in which most Canadians see their Canada rolling past them, the image also recalls lives of former students who as new (and perhaps impatient) drivers were trekking through this bit of terrain on second- or third-ever tries; one bright future ended in a vehicle roll-over. Another life was impacted by partial paralysis.  It’s this portion of road in this image that seems to surprise drivers … even experienced ones. Last November, descending the incline in snow was an activity more akin to skiing than rolling forward in a half-ton truck.

Listening to:  Gillian Welch’s I Dream a Highway from her Time – The Revelator album, Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road from her album of the same name and High and Dry from Radiohead’s The Best of Radiohead.

Quote to Inspire: “No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” ― Ansel Adams

Capturing Experience As Fact

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Journaling, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Vehicle, Winter

Moody - Plymouth Savoy 2

At an age when wearing glasses assists me in my day, my experience of working with a camera through to editing an image often is about revisiting subject and context to see what else is there; it is actual re-view (review). The process is similar to gleaning feedback in using a personal journal. And, in journaling, one point of revelation has been sorting through the conception that memory, perception, thought and even feeling are only what they were on the day that they occurred. In that portion of experience in which they occurred they were what truth was – they became the facts in response to Life’s events for that duration of time. Without a record, the memory that is carried forward can shift, adjust and change over time … with new thoughts, feelings, perceptions and influences – memory is or becomes malleable. Just like a journaling process, creating a photograph isolates the truth of ‘what was’ for the duration of time in which it occurs. What is also valuable about a journal and photographs produced by the photographer and camera is that you can revisit subject and context to see and appreciate more of what else was there. The journal and photograph inform you and other readers/viewers about the personal narrative of the writer/photographer. The feedback of what else was there, that you now see, informs future action.

Listening to Neil Young’s Old Man and reminded that Lizz Wright also sings this song; there’s not so much experientially that separates us, the older and younger; it does seem to be a father-son song and the son’s revelation of greater similarity than difference.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.” — Ansel Adams

Vale Island – At the Corner of 100th St. and 102nd Ave. NW

Canon 50mm, Canon 50mm Lens, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Night, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Weather, Winter

Vale Island Boats - Hay River, NWT

On Vale Island, part of the old Hay River town site, at the wooded corner of 100th Street and 102nd Avenue, if you look into the trees of the northwest corner the sight you’ll see is that of four or five derelict wooden boats of various sizes, some small enough to have navigated the east channel alone, others with size enough to have been considered, in their day, seaworthy on the Great Slave Lake. Three of these boats are the subject of my second high dynamic range (HDR) photograph, boats well-past their prime, dragged to higher ground to rot away among the aspen willows. They will no longer be a nuisance there and they’ll need little upkeep.  In actual fact, what I’ve come across is the cemetery plot for these old boats.  While life has gone out from them, these vessels, without doubt, saw service in my life time; but, would they have been built in my life time?

The picture and this present consideration of boat-life reminds of a reader colleague and friend who pointed me toward Alice Munroe’s 2001 novel about the different ‘ships’ we sail within throughout our lives; it’s entitled Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and has now been republished with the title ‘Away From Her.’ Within each state we act and move with different intents and purposes.  But, a ship graveyard such as this found on Vale Island reminds that our journey within these collective or collected states has beginning, duration and an end, as well.  The book was a tough go reading-wise, more something exposing malaise and truth than … hope?

The boats of Vale Island while having had lives that preceded this photograph, have certainly ferried human lives living within the various ‘ships’ that Alice Munroe has proposed in and around Hay River, NWT. These boats still hold their line and shape.  Now, beyond their service, they are in demise.  And, the winds blow from the Great Slave Lake through Vale Island, among these boats and into Hay River.

Listening to Ride Forever, sung by Paul Gross as part of the Due South soundtrack, a single song referencing the Great Slave Lake, living in Alberta … and matters of growing old.

Quote to Inspire – “Where I come from the challenges are quite different.  There are no drug dealers or pimps, few thieves to bother with.  There was only the environment and surviving in the face of it is the challenge of the Inuit. A mother gives birth somewhere out on a glacier field, hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost and she knows that the odds are stacked against her son even living to see the spring with disease, lack of food or the elements.  And, even if they should survive and if he should grow to be a boy, she knows very well that all he has to do is lose his footing on the smooth surface of a glacier and that’ll be that.  In other words, she should know that if her son cannot live … why should she try?  Well I know this woman. I helped deliver her son. She was weak and undernourished. The next morning she stood up and she picked her child up into her arms and she set out again into the blinding snow.  And, I think that was one of the most courageous acts that I’ve ever seen.” ~ Paul Gross, Fraser/Inuit Soliloquy – Due South

Thank you, kindly.

Dormant – More than a Winter Season

Bicycle, Canon 50mm, Canon 50mm Lens, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Journaling, Night, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Uncategorized, Winter

As a journaling exercise I might look to today’s events or surroundings to see what, if any, forgotten life themes are lurking deep within. I’d open my attention to that thing in my day that draws attention and focus, and, I’d work backward through steppingstones to those places and times in which this thing has been a part of me. I’d work to open-out its meaning for me then and now. Life’s bad and good needs its work as part of one’s psychological hygiene – decluttering what no longer works and what no longer has meaning and working to open-out perception, thinking and those possibilities which surround me. There’s work there.  And, there’s possibility to surface, investigate and realize.

My bike.

My bike has been dormant for more than this winter. Working to capacity (and then some), a busy year has seen me reach my fiftieth year milestone.  The life tasks now seem to be about serving others and limiting the possibility of mistakes; perhaps knowing how to limit mistakes and seeing this as a goal is one attribute of being in my prime. But, still Life doesn’t seem entirely configured to suit or fit all that I’d like each of my days to contain. I’m attending to an aging parent with mid-stage Alzheimer’s Disease at the same time that my wife and I are aiming to establish my son in his year one of university. And, then, I’ve chosen to investigate and develop my photographic competencies – these practices hold their share of sitting and time.

My bike tonight has been the subject of a photograph, a work of art in still-life, a much different perspective than that of an active cyclist who is inseparable from that bike upon which he investigates the world. My bike and my desire to ride are dormant tonight.

Listening to Stolen Car by Patty Griffin from 1000 Kisses; Long Ride Home, from the Elizabethtown soundtrack is where Patty Griffin caught my ear. Later, Acoustic Guitar magazine featured an interview and tabs to one of her songs – good schtuff!

Quote to Inspire – “… to stop rushing around, to sit quietly on the grass, to switch off the world and come back to Earth, to allow the eye to see a willow, a bush, a cloud, a leaf, is an ‘unforgettable experience.’” ~ Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing  (p.s. – the battle of any photographer is to discard Life’s presses and to calm one’s spirit enough to be able to see that which is in front of us; right? I’m there, too)

Thank you all for stopping by, the likes and comments.

Take good care of your good selves!