Road as Frontier

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer

1The Road – Arizona

2 The Road – Arches Nat’l Park

3 The Road – Arches Nat’l Park

4 The Road – Arizona

The road – some value the swift movement of traveling from point of origin to established destination; here, travel is not about what you encounter along your distance – travel is about getting ‘there.’ Robert Frost and Scott Peck, on the other hand, each refer to the road less traveled for what the road can reveal of the world and for how that road can grow us as we encounter new frontiers. Jack Kerouac, in his novel, ‘On the Road,’ refers to a life orientation of meeting, new, upcoming road – what we discover moving over it and how we grow as the road challenges us. That road and what we do along it becomes our narrative, our less traveled road.

Images from the road ….

Listening to – Chuck Berry’s ‘Route 66.’

Quote to Consider – “If photographs are messages, the message is both transparent and mysterious.”

Query – HDR Halo Removal

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer

Grand Canyon – Arizona 1

Grand Canyon – Arizona 2

Grand Canyon – Arizona 3

Grand Canyon – Arizona 4

Grand Canyon – Arizona 5

The following images of the Grand Canyon are high dynamic range (HDR) images. In editing these HDR shots the challenge has been to try and eliminate the halo surrounding edges of highly contrasted colours within images. The method experimented with this week has been to open the Develop module in Adobe Lightroom and within the Lens Correction menu to utilize the ‘Remove Chromatic Aberration’ there instead of relying only on a similar feature in the HDR Efex plug-in, on the plug-in side of merging the three (or more images). Beyond this, NiK Software’s Viveza is used to sharpen and add contrast and adjust/decrease brightness; after that Topaz Labs’ Clarity and Adjust helps adjust sharpness and saturation. With Viveza I’m finding success in editing toward what I want. I still am learning about choosing the filter/preset in Topaz Adjust and then finding optimal saturation from there.

If you are an HDR image creator I would appreciate hearing from you and the method you use to create your non-halo HDR images; this week, a software product called HDR Expose 3 (by Unified Color) has been recommended for its de-ghosting (halo elimination) capacity … do you use this?

Listening to – 16 Horsepower from their ‘Folklore’ album, in their rendering of a Nina Simone song, ‘Sinnerman.’

Quote to Consider – “In the past, a discontent with reality expressed itself as a longing for another world. In modern society, a discontent with reality expresses itself forcefully and most hauntingly by the longing to reproduce this one.”

Penned Deere

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John Deere 620 2 – Utah

John Deere 620 1 – Utah

The family archive of photos taken in the years my brothers and I grew up holds memorable photos of us steering a John Deere 4010 tractor under the watchful eye of cousins. Over the years there would be many rides on swathers, on tractors pulling hay racks, balers and bale stackers; there would be time in a grain truck and times when barlage would be collected and stored. There would be two Harvestore silos, towering high in the air and my cousin’s counter-weight innovation that allowed for the ride to the top of the tower and the descent back to the ground. The awareness and understanding that there were tractors that preceded the John Deere 4010 by decades is something I’ve come to understand more in later years. Here, is a John Deere 620 – along a highway in southeastern Utah, penned and perhaps ready for auction … or perhaps there and waiting for the would-be buyer.

Listening to – much of the soundtrack to ‘Good Will Hunting’ – Jeb Loy Nichols’ ‘As the Rain,’ Elliot Smith’s ‘Angeles’ and The Dandy Warhols’ ‘Boys Better.’

Quote to Consider – “Every page of On Photography raises important and exciting questions about its subject and raises them in the best way.” —The New York Times Book Review

Composition – Edit Toward Mindfulness

Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Journaling, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 1

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 2

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 3

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 4

Elements of composition were the subject of discussion a day ago. Eight different ideas about composing a photograph were considered – pattern, symmetry, depth of field, lines and leading lines, framing, perspective, balance and colour. We ended at the point of composition being about finding the best way of seeing … the subject. The discussion stayed with me as I edited images later that evening – we also find the best way of seeing the subject in editing as we try out variation in exposure, consider the blur and detail of clarity and consider the depth or wash of contrasts. With each of these considerations as the image is edited we see more and more of what the image holds – things not fully seen or recognized when the right moment to capture the image was recognized. For me, composition and editing toward best composition are about discovering the narrative of the photograph; each edit or potential edit considered increases mindfulness of what’s going on or has happened within the photograph. These images do that.

Again, we are at one of the first stops in our scouting look at southeastern Utah. The foundations of a derelict building are tattooed and tagged with graffiti, foundation walls becoming canvas to expression. What are you mindful of in looking at this canvas (or perhaps an actor’s stage to extend and cross-pollinate metaphors)? What can be extrapolated?

Listening to – some of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Time Out’ and remembering my father and early years at home, sophisticated, challenging music; yet now also with a strong, strong element of home. This morning’s tunes have also included U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ – the curious phrase, probably for their young adult children is ‘young, not dumb.’ The morning has also held Coldplay – ‘Always in My Head,’ ‘Midnight’ and ‘Oceans’ among others.

Quote to Consider – “Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality … or they enlarge reality that is felt to be shrunk. One can’t possess reality, one can possess images – one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Her Garden

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Utah Flower 1

Utah Flower 2

In my life time, I have been witness to my mother’s gardens. She had three successive gardens, one in Edmonton, another in Brampton and her final garden in Qualicum Beach. Her gardens were always something to take in. Her garden would contain trees and flowers and shrubs, and, through the seasons there would be the colour of active and full Life and there would be the wither of desaturation found in dormancy. Through the year, my mother would research plants she’d like to grow and then take them on in her garden. This summer, our first scouting drive into Utah put us on the road for six hours doing a large loop of the southeastern part of the state. We found these flowers, plants very similar to some my mother had in her garden and occasionally would have in a vase on her dining room table.

Listening to – U2’s ‘California (There is No End to Love)’ … it starts out recalling the Beach Boys’ tune, ‘Barbara Ann’ … “Bar, Bar, Barbara, Santa Barbara.”

Quote to Consider – “For photographers there is, finally no difference – no greater aesthetic advantage – between the effort to embellish the world and the counter-effort to rip off its mask.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Sundays and Trains

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Union Pacific Engine – Ogden, Utah

Burned Out Box Car – Ogden, Utah 1

Burned Out Box Car – Ogden, Utah 2

Cargill Engine – Ogden, Utah

Rail Abstraction – Ogden, Utah

Rail Car – Ogden Utah

Red Cross Hospital Car – Ogden, Utah

Train Snow Plow – Ogden, Utah

Train Engine – Ogden, Utah

Union Pacific Box Car – Ogden, Utah

A Sunday – day’s end; we had enjoyed family’s camaraderie and been among cousins at our cousins farm, an hour away from our Edmonton home. On what is now known as the Queen Elizabeth II highway between Calgary and Edmonton we traveled home Dad at the wheel of our green 69 Pontiac Parisienne. Often on our right travelling northward with us would be a train – three or four engines together pulling a string of cars, box cars, black tankers, different hopper cars etc.. As we finally entered the city of Edmonton and made our right turn from Calgary trail onto 51st avenue at the intersection holding Koch Mercury and the Van Winkle hotel, we would encounter the train we had traveled with at the rail crossing behind Koch Mercury. And, as you sat in your car waiting for the train to pass you could sometimes signal the engineer to sound the train’s horn by putting your fist in the air and pulling down in same fashion that the engineer would with his hand on the cable line that would release the bellow of the train’s horn. More often than not, the train’s engineer would oblige, the horn would release and the sound could be heard for miles.

It’s been a generation or two since Dad and Mom took my two brothers and I to my cousin’s farm. I have had my own time working with trains during summers in University, often as rail car spotter. My own son is now entering his fourth year of University and there’s even been a good long while since he and I would read of Sir Topham Hat, Gordon, Percy, Thomas et al in Reverend W. Awdry’s ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ books.

And, my own interest in trains has not waned. The following photos are a number of first edits from Ogden and engines for viewing at the the Union Pacific railway station, there.

Listening to: ‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone’) and ‘Every Breaking Wave’ from U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ – flip, you don’t have to buy the album, it’s free in iTunes; also the morning has been about Springsteen’s music and musicares celebration of his achievement.

Quote to Inspire – “… Photographs are evidence of not only what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Recommended book encouraging literacy in children – ‘The Read Aloud Handbook,’ by Jim Trelease

Midnight Sun – Mists

Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Sunset, Weather

Highway Mists – Twin Lakes, Alberta 1

Highway Mists – Twin Lakes, Alberta 2

I asked my son to stop our truck, here, at Twin Lakes just where you begin a five kilometre descent, a significant change in altitude often accompanied by an equally significant change in weather. Twin Lakes was our first safe opportunity to pull off the road and to use the camera to capture what we’d been seeing. Not quite, London’s pea-soup fog, but fog thick enough for you to hear a vehicle approaching before you would see it. And, northern Alberta is the land of the midnight sun; at 10:30 p.m. the sun has still not quite crossed the horizon to the West (left). There were perhaps ten other, perhaps more dramatic shots before this point in the road that I would have taken, but stopping in misty conditions could have caused an accident. Better to be safe and take shots without peril.

Listening to – ‘On Being with Krista Tippett’ and her 2011 interview with Vincent Harding who recently passed away; Vincent has connection to the Mennonites and wrote some of Martin Luther King’s speeches.

Quote to Inspire – “Imperfect technique has come to be appreciated precisely because it breaks the sedate equation of Nature and Beauty.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Sun Streams, Mist & Pure Seeing

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Flora, Fog, Homestead, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Smoke, Spring, Weather

Mists – El Tizate, Guatemala 1

Mists – El Tizate, Guatemala 2

Sun streams down over a mountain through morning’s mist – condensation and wood smoke – into the community of El Tizate. It is morning, perhaps the last day of our time in El Tizate – we wait for our tour bus; I look out at the world through my camera and lens – rewarded with this extraordinary scene to my foreigner’s eye.

Listening to – three songs from Casting Crowns: ‘Just Be Held,’ ‘Broken Together’ and ‘Follow Me.’

Quote to Inspire – “Poetry’s commitment to concreteness … parallels photography’s commitment to pure seeing. Both imply discontinuity, disarticulated forms and compensatory unity – wrenching things from their context …, bringing things together elliptically….” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Outsourcing a Photo Walk

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1 Farm Road – Beaverlodge, Alberta

2 Farm Road – Beaverlodge, Alberta

3 Farm Mailbox – Beaverlodge, Alberta

Those of you, who have read Timothy Harris’ book, ‘The Four Hour Work Week,’ have likely contended with the possibility that it may be possible to generate an income from only four hours per week. While that may be the premise for this guide to entrepreneurialism in the twenty-first century, the book also presents many novel concepts for earning a living. Within a project-based earning environment, another idea would be to follow a pattern of working for two months and then taking a month off – the focus would be to manage one’s resilience and project tenacity using the principle of contact and withdrawal as it is applied to work. Cool stuff! Beyond this, the book presents many resources available for the entrepreneur who needs help with part of a project – that project piece can be outsourced to others who can earn a living helping you out. What occurred to me within the last few days was to outline a project – a photo walk – to be organized and configured according to parameters that I set. Then, I would outsource my project idea and have others potential photo walk leaders (perhaps other photographers) bid on the opportunity to lead the photo walk and from there refine terms toward what would work for the project leader and me and others who might participate in the photo walk. The eLance website would be the forum in which I would farm-out and tender the project to others. Hmmh? Have you ever thought of doing something like this?

I did have all these thoughts. But, the weekend that could be used for this endeavor crept up rather quickly. I did not configure the project. I did not submit my project for tender in elance. I was not at the start or finish of a photo walk. Rather, at the end of my work week at school, having been encouraged to get away for some photography by my wife and others at school, I gathered my photo gear and bags, got into our Ford F-150 and headed south. I aimed at Edmonton and intended to see my father who’s in a retirement home, there. But, at four hours in to the journey the weather changed – winter rain began to fall and it seemed unwise to travel the remaining distance on treacherous roads. No hotels could be found in Valleyview. I changed my course and phoned ahead to Grande Prairie’s Stanford Inn – they had a room for me.

Saturday in Grande Prairie was overcast. It was not a day for outdoor photography.

Saturday became more an opportunity to explore what was new in familiar stores, to see a movie and to gather and replace clothes damaged in our recent Guatemala trip. At Long and McQuade Music I stopped in and tried out a couple of L’Arrivee guitars; I taught one of the sales persons a song – Rickie Lee Jones’ ‘Sailor Song,’ a song my mother heard me play when she was alive. It was a high point in the day to be able to jam with another guitar player.

Sunday, on the other hand, swept in with substantial spring muster. To the west from Grande Prairie clouds billowed as they crossed the final strip of the Canadian Rockies before meeting foothills and prairie. The photos presented here are ones gathered along a westward trek from Grande Prairie towards the Rockies – an interesting area in terms of landscape and it being a bright spring day. The subject is a paved farm road near Beaverlodge, Alberta – something extraordinary for me as most farm roads I have known have been gravelled ones. Here, the reflection of the sky colours the road blue.

Listening to – Rickie Lee Jones’ ‘Sailor Song.’

Quote to Inspire – “But when viewed in their new context, the museum, or gallery, photographs cease to be ‘about’ their subjects in the same direct or primary way; they become studies in the possibilities of photography.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’.

Jasper Avenue Apartment

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Jasper Avenue Apartment – Edmonton, Alberta 1

Jasper Avenue Apartment – Edmonton, Alberta 2

Jasper Avenue Apartment – Edmonton, Alberta 3

An Edmonton apartment overlooks the North Saskatchewan River. It is a building that has been around since the thirties or forties and is architecture of my mother’s time, a time when walking was the way through Edmonton and vehicle use was limited. The apartment is one I associate to Canadian literature as backdrop or setting to scene, a building that could feature in Mordecai Richler’s ‘The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz’ or within Robertson Davies’ ‘Fifth Business.’

The apartment draws me to recall Morley Callaghan’s ‘Such is My Beloved.’ The novel looks at a priest in the Great Depression making sense of God’s Love and the encounter of his reaching out with Christian care to two prostitutes, an encounter in which his efforts are taken advantage of and as I now recall, a situation repeated for real much more recently and narrated more accurately in Nadia Bolz-Weber’s memoir, ‘Pastrix.’ In ‘Such is My Beloved,’ the cocoon of Church, Church-Life and Church politics, all, cloud the words of the great commission being lived out and because they are not current or used readily by the congregation their exploration by Father Dowling is an innocent and naïve endeavor, one done on the sly without others knowing, a first, sustained attempt that’s taken too far with aims of turning recipients’ Lives around.

The story functions as a morality play, unfortunately tragic in structure and is more cautionary about not living out the Great Commission. In actuality, the Great Commission is likely more of ‘do-what-you-can-with-what-you’re-presented-with;’ when lives begin to turn around the Church can mobilize with many resources.

Listening to – The Blind Boys of Alabama and ‘Run On for a Long Time,’ ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘Soldier’ and ‘Way Down the Hole.’

Quote to Inspire/Consider – “The camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed …. You are not intervening in their lives, only visiting them.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’