A vase and a serving dish, both glass, both transparent yet holding colour, both with shape and form and both reflecting light are subjects in the images presented here. Both glass structures are lenses, the vase, a lens revealing entire beauty of the flower held, the serving dish, a lens to the manna that soon will be eaten. The polished surface’s shape and form reflects light. So too does the interior of the glass. There’s that place where the glass in being shaped curves or twists receiving form. From that point within there’s reflection, a glint of light from within shining back. Analogy extends forward … what structures hold us that allow us to be seen? Would this be a home? Would this be a marriage? A vase holds the still-life flower, a living thing of beauty while beautiful. Moving past prime, dying, it is discarded. For us, we each have a rich, subtle life, one that few others really know well. Is friendship the vase-lens structure allowing for revelation of one’s subtle life? Something in this analogy is truth my mother understood. Her memory via her paintings prods me forward toward unraveling it.
Listening to Bruce Springsteen from the Tunnel of Love album – One Step Up; Bryan Ferry sings Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues from Dylanesque. Amiina from the album Kurr provides a tonal, music box sound in Rugla. Rugla reminds of another ambient mix by Sigur Ros from the Takk album – Glosoli. Later, I’m listening to Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie, thoughts Bob Dylan offers – The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) 1961-1991.
Quote to Inspire – “Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation – everything except a stage set.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson – Photography Year 1975 – Life Library of Photography, page: 216
Car photography especially of early fifties vehicles, for me, derives from my learning to steer a car and then to drive one sitting next to a favourite, older cousin in his copper brown and white 1951 Mercury four-door. Strong-arm steering meant that effort was needed to guide the Mercury down dusty gravel roads. These drives usually followed Sunday get-togethers of my family from Edmonton with his in Rimbey, Alberta. The event, recalled to memory is that of a late spring or early summer drive, following an evening meal and Walt Disney. I might have been nine or ten years old when I first took the wheel for some good, adventure-filled times before saying our goodbyes, parting company and returning home in an hour-long drive to Edmonton. Always, my aunt, uncle and three cousins would wave to us from their porch as we left. Our families might see each other again in a month or two. Those were good times.
My starting point for this photograph is curious. I am unable to determine the make of this early fifties two-door sedan. Given that this Blue Hills’ farm and its woods have seemingly been left as if in the middle of things, its abandonment indicates something unfinished in not just one life but in the lives of a few. Here, what is sacred is often about the conception of ‘what-has-happened-here.’ It associates to memory that will not fade and cannot be left. With this image, just as in no-trace camping the art is to pass through an area without disturbing it, this photograph presents the necessity of capturing something seemingly sacred without disturbance – reverence and respect are needed.
Listening to the Dave Matthews Band from the album Stand Up and the childhood/teen reminiscences of Old Dirt Hill, a song that recalls my go-cart, our garage and back alley … and friends at Easter break in Edmonton in grade 5 – 1972 … what a week (and to be grounded part-way through).
Quote to Inspire – “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” —Diane Arbus
Mid-sixties Ford 3-Tonne Grain Truck – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Cattails 1
Cattails 2
Cattails 3
Older White Grain Truck – La Crete, Alberta 1
Older White Grain Truck – La Crete, Alberta 2
Derelict House / Farm – Blue Hills, Alberta
Mid to Late 50s Sedan – Blue Hills, Alberta
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
Again, today – out and about on a photowalk … others’ fresh perspective has me looking up and looking at things. Green needles of a conifer remind and point towards spring … loving the colour and background, here.
Listening to U2’s Mysterious Ways … the subject and content of the lyrics are something good to unravel, in their unraveling. Coldplay’s In My Place, is up next, reminding of U2, Paul McCartney, Coldplay and the Verve’s Richard Ashcroft (Bittersweet Symphony) and the world-wide Live 8 concert and the Gleneagles decisions made by G8 leaders … some good, that day! Brian Adams kicked things off in Toronto followed in the day by The Tragically Hip and Great Big Sea.
Curious Quote to Inspire – “In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” – Alfred Stieglitz
Today – out with fellow photographers, a first cluster together. Some creatives among the group, ones willing to experiment with perspective and their subject. Totally cool to be a part of things today and to capture this photographer’s photo in the making. Good schtuff!
Listening to How Soon Is Now by the Smiths, as found on The Wedding Singer Soundtrack.
Quote to Inspire – “Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” – Imogen Cunningham
Within a photograph appreciation for proportion is found by relating a known object to something recognizable in the photograph – scale is established within such comparison. Here, the summer photograph of the Alexandra Falls contains a person standing on top of the west edge of the falls. In comparison with yesterday’s ice-filled Alexandra Falls, the person in the summer photograph provides a basis from which to consider the actual size of the ice pile collecting below the falls, in the gorge.
Listening to Rondo-Allegro, a Mozart Clarinet and Oboe Quartet (music that organizes and shapes the mind – one of my father’s contributions to our growing up).
Quote to Inspire – “Sometimes you need to take a little holiday away from yourself – negativity; and call off the Rottweiler’s of analysis and accusation and give yourself a free space; and say for the next week I will give myself a free break and do nothing against myself until my old sense of myself builds up – be courteous to yourself.” ~ John O’Donohue, Divine Beauty – The Invisible Embrace, a Greenbelt lecture
Summer - Alexandra Falls (proportion by comparison to known object ... the person)
Christmas Star – Silhouetted against Colourful Bokeh
Little Toy Train
Snowman Against Bokeh
Ballerina – Black and White
Hello Kitty
Christmas Eskimo
Colourful – Saint Nick
23 December 2011
With photography, because assets are invested in capturing images, it is likely a good thing to create a system of ‘intended practice’ so that time and resources are not wasted. While image capture can occur anywhere within any environment, determining what images to capture within available time requires good understanding, judgment and planning. These develop noting how success occurred with previous images. Beyond this, such discernment also develops recognizing what possibilities were available within unsuccessful images.
Some photographs are best considered first photographs, images that are test shots or scouting shots, images that allow you to understand the subject and its environment and possibilities for future shots. Working with such photographs acquaints you with what else is possible and becomes your intention for subsequent photographs. Subsequent photographs can be approached directly – “I will go to the site/subject and try such and such.” Or, subsequent photographs can be approached indirectly, returning to the site/subject in the mindset that “If I’m there again I will take advantage of the situation to create this result.”
Because the timeline between initial, scouting photographs and subsequent photographs can be great, record keeping regarding intentions is needed. The record considers the initial photograph – what was happening with light, composition, camera angle and camera settings. And, the record considers intention – what you intend for the image now that you’ve edited it, thought about it and recognized its other possibilities; the record notes conditions that would be present were subsequent shots to be attempted. In both cases, whatever the image is about holds something that draws you back; this is the other important variable about the subject that needs to be articulated and noted. It is the quality you want to be revealed in subsequent photographs.
While gathering intentions for upcoming photographs does require record keeping, being able to seize the opportunity for that photograph needs to be immediately available, something more than returning to a notebook. A map of the region to be photographed is a good collecting point for intentions in upcoming photographs; a map can be hung on a wall and sticky notes containing brief notes can be attached to it in terms of intended/upcoming photographs. The sticky note can contain information about the upcoming photographs and can point you back to your notebook for intentions.
Snap shots are images taken when someone stands up, clicks the shutter and most likely repeats with little or no intention. Photography, on the other hand, is about seeing and understanding the world through the camera lens with intention. In the next few days I will most likely hang a map of our municipal district on my study wall and use a moleskin and sticky notes to articulate what I would like to see happen in those photographs I take that are beyond the initial scouting photographs.
I M A G E S – Trinkets and bobbles upon our Christmas tree are today’s colourful subject; ‘bokeh’ is explored.
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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