81 Years – Today

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, Flora, Home, Homestead, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Smoke, Sunset, Winter

Fields of Home 1

Fields of Home 2

Hay Bale – Fields

The Road Home

The following blessing is something that’s opened-out and extended back recollection of my father and his shaping, steadfast hand. It’s his birthday, today … and these words – John O’Donohue’s words, ‘For a Father’ – recall him to me.

“The longer we live,
The more of your presence
We find, laid down,
Weave upon weave
Within our lives.

The quiet constancy of your gentleness
Drew no attention to itself,
Yet filled our home
With a climate of kindness
Where each mind felt free
To seek its own direction.

As the fields of distance
Opened inside childhood,
Your presence was a sheltering tree
Where our fledgling hearts could rest.

The earth seemed to trust your hands
As they tilled the soil, put in the seed,
Gathered together the lonely stones.

Something in you loved to inquire
In the neighborhood of air,
Searching its transparent rooms
For the fallen glances of God.

The warmth and wonder of your prayer
Opened our eyes to glimpse
The subtle ones who
Are eternally there.

Whenever, silently, in off moments,
The beauty of the whole thing overcame you,
You would gaze quietly out upon us,
The look from your eyes
Like a kiss alighting on skin.

There are many things
We could have said,
But words never wanted
To name them;
And perhaps a world
That is quietly sensed
Across the air
In another’s heart
Becomes the inner companion
To one’s own unknown.” (‘For a Father’ in ‘Homecomings,’ To Bless the Space Between Us, John O’Donohue)

Listening to – U2’s ‘Kite’.

Quote to Inspire – “The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.” Susan Meiselas

Grown-In, Intact

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Flora, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring

Cattail 1

Cattail 2

Summer – cattail shapes feature as photographic interest alone and in clusters. More an architectural entity, the cattails found seemed always to have their skins split and fuzzy cotton interior bursting forth. Not until August were full cylindrical (hot dog) shapes to be found, grown-in, intact, new.

Listening to – ‘Soft Place in My Heart’ by Buddy Holly & Bob Montgomery (1955, Wichitaw Falls, Texas).

Quote to Inspire – “A roll of film costs $6.00 – a roll of history is priceless.” – Anonymous

Erode & Gleam

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Fall, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

Plymouth Savoy – Beaverlodge, Alberta 1

Plymouth Savoy – Beaverlodge, Alberta 2

Plymouth Savoy – Beaverlodge, Alberta 3

Plymouth Savoy – Beaverlodge, Alberta 4

No longer gliding forward on each tire’s balloon cushion this vehicle slumps to the earth in resignation. Snow’s first fall dusts this Plymouth Savoy’s pitted hood, scars of gravel-sprayed journeys. Paint erodes, chrome still gleams. The vertical of trees’ up and down becomes contrast to rounder more human car curves.

Listening to – Lenka’s ‘The Show.’

Quote to Inspire – “I don’t believe a person has a style. What people have is a way of photographing what is inside them. What is there comes out.” – Sebastiao Salgado

Glass – Stained

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Home, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Winter

Stained Glass 1

Stained Glass 2

Stained Glass 3

Winter’s sun gleams passing through translucent glass, stained glass hung in our kitchen window to catch sunlight from the southern exposure of our home. The image, a macro shot, plays with depth of field – focus and blur – and colour and reveals some of the glass interior.

Listening to – Chilly Gonzales’ White Keys from the Solo Piano II album.

Quote to Inspire – “The photograph is completely abstracted from life, yet it looks like life. That is what has always excited me about photography.” – Richard Kalvar

Derelict Farmhouse II

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Christmas, Farm, Farmhouse, Homestead, Journaling, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Sunset, Winter

Derelict Farmhouse 2 – Lamont, Alberta 1

Derelict Farmhouse – Lamont, Alberta 2

Derelict Farmhouse – Lamont, Alberta 3

The front face or façade of a derelict farmhouse precedes a wooden grain shed and newer, state of the art grain silos. The image contrasts new, old and older. The house sits on a ridge overlooking a storage yard for people’s equipment, a collecting point or nexus for anything unused and nearly disposed of … old mobile homes, vehicles, farming implements and machinery. This house, on the other hand, has structure and form and context – it has beauty; it had purpose in a former time. What would this house have been like in its day, when people were proud of the land’s first fruits? Is this a homestead house built following World War I or World War II? Would the farmers who farmed here have come to Canada or would they have been a generation or two arrived. In terms of today, why has the building not been torn down? What memorial does this house provide and to whom? Who does this house continue to serve?

Listening to – Radiohead’s ‘Little by Little’ from the King of Limbs album (Live from the Basement).

Quote to Inspire – “Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform it by photographing it.” – Morley Baer

Edmonton Structures

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Christmas, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Winter

Muttart Conservatory – Edmonton, Alberta

Metallic Spheres Sculpture – Edmonton, Alberta 4

Metallic Spheres Sculpture – Edmonton, Alberta 3

Metallic Spheres Sculpture – Edmonton, Alberta 2

Metallic Spheres Sculpture – Edmonton, Alberta 1

Glowing green against the copper-lit reflection of city lights upon clouds, an image of Edmonton’s Muttart Conservatory moments after the world has shifted from 2012 into 2013. Other images are from the metallic, spheres structure/sculpture from the Southeast end of Edmonton’s Quesnel Bridge.

Listening to – Cheng Yu’s ‘Purple Bamboo’ and ‘Pipa 2’, Dust Devil’s ‘Liquid Lounge,’ and Alexander Kogan’s ‘Two Guitars’.

Quote to Inspire – “For me, photography has become a way of attempting to make sense of the strange world that I see around me. I don’t ever expect to achieve that understanding, but the fact that I am trying comforts me.” – Mikhael Subotzky

Last, Day-lit Images

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Lens, Christmas, Light Intensity, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sunset, Weather, Winter

Scotford Refinery – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta

An image of the Scotford Refinery near Fort Saskatchewan, one of the last day-lit images shot at dusk looking east towards Edmonton after a good day of looking for and finding images.

Listening to – Simple Minds’ ‘Alive and Kicking.’

Quote to Inspire – “The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.” – Robert Doisneau

Blake’s Bison

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Christmas, Fauna, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Shuttertime with Sid and Mac, Sunset, Weather, Winter

Bison – Elk Island 1

Bison – Elk Island 4

Bison – Elk Island 3

Bison – Elk Island 2

In a day that’s been bright, yet overcast, the sun shines through broken cloud as it moves towards the horizon in late afternoon, shining directly on two Bison grazing at Astotin Lake in Elk Island National Park, images inspired by Sidney Blake’s discussion of animal/nature photography and by her extraordinary black and white images of Bison in winter.

Listening to – The Von Bondies with ‘C’mon C’mon’.

Quote to Inspire – “When people ask me what equipment I use – I tell them my eyes.” – Anonymous

Ethereal, Restless – Dreaming

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Fall, Farm, Farmhouse, Flora, Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Still Life, Weather

House of Dreams 1

House of Dreams 2

House of Dreams 3

House of Dreams 4

House of Dreams 5

This farmhouse image is one that I connect to moments we’ve all had – that ethereal, restless dream state when dreaming’s hallucination can draw forth what seems other-worldly connection. For me, I recall Mr. Lockwood who upon renting Thrushcross Grange ventured out on a winter walk to meet and greet his landlord, a man by the name of Heathcliff. The story, set in the late 1700s – early 1800s, sees the newly installed Mr. Lockwood walking to the property of his new landlord, a home with a name – Wuthering Heights. A snow storm brews up and makes it necessary for Mr. Lockwood to stay the night in his landlord’s home.

A place is made for him in what seems is a book cupboard or closet.

He reads a pen and ink commentary set forth in the margins of books within this sleeping closet; print books, the only source of paper available to another character, Catherine Earnshaw, are the place where Catherine journals about and considers her life – a journal that in tone and availability serves as confidante for the teen who as estate owner’s daughter is without ready access to peers her age at the Wuthering Heights farm estate. Mr. Lockwood can’t sleep – he reads and reads and reads about Catherine and Heathcliff … until in that ethereal, restless dream state he enters into dream hallucination, a state in which he encounters a young Catherine who within the snow storm outside knocks at ‘his’ window asking to be let in. The farmhouse in this image meets well many of the essential elements of what my mind imagines that Wuthering Heights could be. This house seems ready for all that Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, might hold. And, there’s more to that story ….

Listening to – Maria Dunn’s God Bless Us Everyone, Michael Hoppe’s Land of Serenity, Bill Douglas’ Irish Lullaby, Grant McAskill’s Bitter Season, Catherine Anne McFee’s I See Winter and Paul Brady’s Help Me Believe.

Quote to Inspire – “I want the viewers to be moved into the lives of the people that they are looking at, the visual experience is incredibly emotional.” Paul Fusco

Barbed and Anchored

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farmhouse, Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Winter

Fence Post and Homestead

December winter scene – homestead and trees, land that once was broken, now fenced in – protected, reminding and reminiscent of lives and the work of living. Snow blankets dormant land and caps a fence post, one among many anchoring three strands of barbed wire used to hold animals to this area of land while they graze. Horizon, sky, former home, snow and wood’s texture, softer muted colours – all hold my eye and attention.

Listening to – Madeleine Peyroux’s J’ai Deux Amours, Kenny Gamble’s Me and Mrs. Jones, Toni Sola’s Night Sounds Blues, and Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close to You, recognizable songs among others that form the From Paris With Love Soundtrack.

Quote to Inspire – “Emotion or feeling is really the only thing about pictures I find interesting. Beyond that is just a trick.” – Christopher Anderson