Sifting Photographs and A Drizzled Day

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

Plymouth Savoy - McNaught Homestead

I’m sifting photographs on my computer, tonight, aiming to locate photographs taken of the road among mountains between Grande Prairie and Banff, Alberta, a trip taken this fall in early October. To refer to them will allow future planning of High Dynamic Range (HDR) shots; but, photographs have been shifted between my C: drive and L: drive within the past three months and am having no luck, tonight. Sifting at a later date will yield them.

A photograph has caught my eye, a reward for my look-back – a photo of an early fifties Plymouth Savoy dragged into the woods behind the McNaught homestead, home to Alberta artist, Euphemia McNaught. She’s had some intention in dragging the vehicle to where it sits among Aspen willows spaced with what appears to be regular rhythm as you look across the car from front to back and diagonally from driver’s side to passenger rear. This back drop changes in colour with the seasons – whites and blacks in winter, greens in summer and the reds of leaves in fall.

Those who discover and view the vehicle orient themselves to still life juxtaposition, a car oxidizes among the regular cycle of life and death of plants and greenery; the scene is a treasure in terms of colour, shape, context, season, light and themes of still life. The day amidst its drizzle did get cold but not before two hours had gone by looking through my camera lens at the car, its situation and the play of light.

Listening to U2’s One, tonight from the U218 Singles album.

Quote to Inspire – “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” ~ Ansel Adams.

Greenery – Among Light, Mist and Shadow

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Project 365 - Photo-a-day

Englishman River Falls, Vancouver Island, British Columbia

In the heart of coldest January, summer photographs aid reminiscence of warmer, pleasant times. I’ve been to Englishman River Falls on Vancouver Island three times – dangling feet in the water with my wife and cousin, hiking the area with my Mom and Dad and finally as photographic opportunity. This photo shows the interplay of the river’s movement among fading light, mist, shadow and greenery.

Listening – I’ve been listening to Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds Live at Radio City Music Hall – poignant, well-sung lyrics among resonant rhythms.

Curious quotes for the pondering:

“God becomes and unbecomes,” from Meister Eckhart highlighting the idea that God is only our word for it, that it’s so much more.

“God is not perhaps so much a region beyond knowledge, as something prior to the sentences we speak.” ~ Foucault, The Order of Things (cited in Marion 1994:570)

Alexandra Falls – Scale

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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)

1940 Plymouth – Deanz Garage

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Dean who owns Deanz Garage is a Mopar man. Despite working on the Mercury Meteor and helping me establish interest in restoring a 1969 Pontiac Parisienne, his restorations photobook is Mopar as are most of the vehicles in his yard – his Plymouth Roadrunner, his friend’s Plymouth Valiant, the 1940 Plymouth (for sale) and a mid-sixties Fargo pickup-van cross-over (also for sale). Meeting Dean and being able to photograph these vehicles was a treat and I appreciate the camaraderie he extends to all car buffs, including me – thank you, Sir!

With my photographs of the vehicles in his yard, here, I’m surprised I got the photos I did. Being three days from home and family, with little good sleep during my travels I was itching to begin the journey homeward when the opportunity confronting me was that of spending time in southern Alberta working toward good photographs. My plan for the day following the workshop was more global than specific. I knew that my next broad step would be a four-hour return drive to Edmonton. Without planning for what was possible in southern Alberta, before hand, travel toward Edmonton was the only next step I was focusing on. What I am coming to understand is that my practice needs to develop to more than having my camera with me wherever I am. The upside, though, is that I have a taste for the visual flavour of this area and know I would like to return to photograph these sights.

Listening to Shine by David Gray (an alternate tuning on my L’Arrivee L-03 guitar … a resonant and dissonant chording).

Quote to Inspire – “Landscape is the firstborn of creation. It was here hundreds of millions of years before the flowers, the animals, or the people appeared … In the human face, the anonymity of the universe becomes intimate … The hidden, secret warmth of creation comes to expression here.” ~ John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Thank you, thank you to all bloggers, thinkers, photographers and image-viewers for your encouragement, goodwill and comments. Good, good schtuff!!

28 December 2010 – Look Back Photos (Edmonton’s Low Level Bridge and Skyline)

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Edmonton Skyline 4

One year ago today my intention for photography in coming to Edmonton over Christmas was to capture sense of place. In any visit I had previously made to Edmonton through the years, I spent time on Whyte Avenue looking through Art shops for images of Edmonton – drawings, paintings and photographs. These shops would contain images of the High Level bridge, the train station on 103rd Street, many images of Old Strathcona (Whyte Avenue) and its various happenings, the Hotel MacDonald, the Alberta Legislature and the Edmonton Skyline – all representing a home I’d grown up in, all representing memory and a desire to revisit former times. In late afternoon on December 28, 2010, I parked my vehicle close to the Low Level Bridge and got down onto the ice of the North Saskatchewan River with tripod and Canon 30D and began clicking away using my Sigma 10-20mm lens.

In an hour and a half I had rounded up forty-nine images of my own, new photographic memories of Edmonton – the Low Level Bridge, the Hotel MacDonald, the Edmonton Skyline. I’d also encountered a disciplined martial artist training against trees, the welcoming smile of a female long distance runner and two University students who thought I’d fall through the ice along the river’s edge … go figure.

Listening to – Beggars & Buskers, by Eric Angus Whyte on the Luddite Sons album (thanks to Stocki for this recommendation on his Soul Surmise blog).

Quote to Inspire – “The key to seeing the world’s soul, and in the process wakening one’s own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination an illusion. It is the other way around.” ~ Thomas Moore ‘Original Self’