Train Trestle – Lac St. Anne, Alberta 1Train Trestle – Lac St. Anne, Alberta 2Train Trestle – Lac St. Anne, Alberta 3
High above a creek running in spring’s thaw, a train trestle’s metal geometry, angles bolted and welded together, contrasts against water’s fluid state and creek bank flora … colourful, yet still to come alive.
Listening to – Ibarionex Perello interview Walter Plotnick on ‘The Candid Frame,’ a discussion of wet photography and digital process – check out episode #189 http://thecandidframe.blogspot.ca/ (you’ll find this as a podcast through iTunes).
Quote to Inspire – “Everything shifts as you move, and different things come into focus at different points of your life, and you try to articulate that.” Chris Steele – Perkins
Cattails – Near Fort Vermilion TurnoffHomestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 1Homestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 2Homestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 3Peace River – Fort Vermilion, AlbertaPeace River Beaver – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 1Peace River Beaver – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 2Peace River Beaver – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 3Peace River Sunrise – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Up, earlier than sunrise, traveling, from High Level to Fort Vermilion … early, early morning to witness all that comprises sunrise – the Peace River looking east from Fort Vermilion at the newly risen sun, a beaver marking territory, a Buttertown homestead and cattails coloured in spring splendor.
Listening to – Robbie Robertson’s ‘Sweet Fire of Love,’ Lucinda William’s ‘Concrete and Barbed Wire,’ Melissa McClelland’s ‘Brake,’ Bryan Ferry’s ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ and Ryan Adams’ ‘Hotel Chelsea Nights.’
Quote to Inspire – “Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly is.” – Anonymous
Buttertown Homestead – Fort Vermilion, AlbertaSunset Above the Peace River – Fort Vermilion, AlbertaStore Shed – St. Louis Catholic Church – Fort Vermilion, AlbertaDerelict Vehicle – A Former Time – Buttertown, Fort Vermilion, Alberta
A weeklong endeavor involving our junior high students saw Alberta’s Trickster Theater group work with them to create and perform a handful of short dramas dealing with human rights around the world. Students engaged in this learning by doing, many came out from shells they’d been cloistered into through our long, long winter; all enjoyed the fun of team performance. My role was to collect images for presentation within an Animoto slideshow. In pre-screening the slideshow the phrase photo manipulation was used favourably to refer to presenting an image in new and interesting ways to draw the viewer to the action or happening within the image or to draw the viewer into the image’s feeling, mood or atmosphere. Saturation and desaturation, focus, detail and blur, tinting, vignette and cropping – all are manipulations of the photograph allowing amplification of image narrative or feeling, mood and atmosphere. The images presented here have each received photo manipulation, the editing that follows image capture and moves them to rendering.
Listening to – Tyler Bates’ ‘Pamplona’ and ‘Ventura,’ Tyrone Wells’ ‘Time of Our Lives,’ and Rascal Flatts’ ‘My Wish.’
Quote to Inspire – “A photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes – just sometimes – one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness. Much depends upon the viewer; in some, photographs can summon enough emotion to be a catalyst to thought.” – W. Eugene Smith
Day’s end reveals a world of colour within a longer, spring sunset. Russet orange dominates the backdrop for new spring buds and their companion, a century old homestead home in Buttertown across the river from Fort Vermilion, Alberta. Out-of doors movement occurs easily and remains novelty following a seemingly never-ending winter that saw so much darkness and snow – so good to be outside and in the world.
Listening to – Chris Whitley’s ‘Big Sky Country.’ The playlist has also held the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and ‘If You Wanna Get to Heaven,’ and the Rolling Stones with ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.’
Quote to Inspire – “Emotion or feeling is really the only thing about pictures I find interesting. Beyond that it is just a trick.” – Christopher Anderson
Bull Dozer and GMC Cab and ChassisCab and Chassis and Panel Van 1Cab and Chassis and Panel Van 2Cab and Chassis and Panel Van 3Cab and Chassis and Panel Van 4Fargo and Other – Sangudo, AlbertaFargo Dump Truck 1Fargo Dump Truck 2Fargo Dump Truck 3Fargo Dump Truck 4
“It will grow on you,” describes the growing appreciation for something that comes about through regular interaction with that entity over time. Books and music ‘grow on us.’ Styles come and go, and, they grow upon us – we acclimate to them. Friendships, perhaps even relationships subtly grow on us without our knowing it – we realize their entity at a certain point, perhaps in their first absence. Gathering museum machinery images associated with the Alaska Highway construction has had several images grow on me, me seeing and appreciating more of what they are about over time. This equipment has been kept up, maintained in working order over two or perhaps three generations. Function, style, colour and form have each been preserved. That’s something that someone has had a hand in doing, perhaps many hands have shared in doing.
Listening to – Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’ and Tyler Bates’ rendering of ‘Ventura.’
Quote to Inspire – “I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs.” – Wayne Miller
Peace River Sunset – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 1Peace River Sunset – Fort Vermilion, Alberta 2
Sunday evening, on my own, at Fort Vermilion’s boat launch I witnessed the sun drop below the horizon and the dusky, rich colours and lengthening shadows produced – day’s end in the land of the Midnight Sun. The event recalls (and was perhaps inspired by) redjim99’s poem, his 200th, on his ‘notyethere’ wordpress blog, ‘The Road at Sunset’ and his discussion of the illusion of horizon; accurate and cleanly worked – it is worth checking out.
Roman Catholic Church – Buttertown, AlbertaWoking Church – Woking, Alberta
Church, a place and time of whole-hearted, meaning-crammed communion, is something each of us encounters in different venues that captivate us – the camaraderie found in others’ company, the transcendence found in the out-of-doors, the intersection of our Life with lyrics and melody in song. That place to encounter (perhaps share or confess) truth safely, in safety, that place to come to terms with tough times and the good, Church is both a social and familial entity, a place in which you can grow and mature. Not movement forward, independent of others, not alone in thought, not only within our own priority, Church is that sacred entity of relationship carried forward by two or more people in Life’s pilgrimage connecting each to something bigger than self (selves), that thing that drives ethics in action and purpose in Life, that thing realized when we realize we are here for more than ourselves, having something to contribute to the Lives of others.
Church as pilgrimage has been on my mind as I’ve watched a film by Emilio Estevez – ‘The Way.’ Martin Sheen, as father makes pilgrimage from France to the Church of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, a trek following ‘The Way of St. James.’ Tom (Sheen) takes up this eight-hundred kilometre trek, a trek his son had begun and makes it on behalf of his son who, recently deceased, is ever-present throughout the trek task. The pilgrimage becomes Church as three ‘peregrinnos,’ pilgrims, cluster with and around Tom; each carrying forward a Life task that’s brought them to a cross-road in their Lives. It’s not so much that disclosure of Life’s challenge needs to occur among the peregrinnos, but that each comes to understand that their shared company and good understanding of what’s at play in each other’s lives makes the road easier – something that Church is about, an entity of relationship carried forward that associates to Life’s pilgrimage, direction and purposes.
Images – The Roman Catholic Church of St. Louis in Buttertown (across the Peace River from Fort Vermilion, Alberta) and the Woking Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Woking, Alberta).
Listening to – much of the soundtrack to ‘The Way,’ containing two songs that intrigue, David Gray’s ‘My Oh My’ (from Rhythm and Soul broadcasts) and Alanis Morissettes’ ‘Thank U’. James Taylor’s ‘Country Road’ also features in the film.
Quote to Inspire – “Imagine a world without photography, one could only imagine.” – Berenice Abbott
More than a passing glance, photography has you stop and see the subject, consider context and best perspective and then expose the image. Editing takes you one further step with the image; you encounter more of what comprises the image and more of what is possible for the image in its rendering. Here, are the Valleyview bench seats again, exposed in the full morning sun of a sunny, Sunday morning. Two weeks on from the exposure, I’m seeing more of the light and shadow-play in the image. I’m coming back to it to see what else it can become. The image reveals someone’s attempt to make the bench seats something more permanent with the anchoring of the base on the right. The image has me consider the weathering of the seats through yet another winter season. And, at the time of exposure I had no idea that I would be tinting the image toward red or blue, or, that I would be working the image through in black and white.
Listening to – Johnny Cash’s rendering of “God’s Going to Cut You Down.”
Quote to Inspire – “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” – Ansel Adams
Along the Road – Woking, AlbertaBarn – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta 1Barn – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta 2Canadian National Bridge – Edmonton, AlbertaGrain Shed – Manning, Alberta 1Grain Shed – Manning, Alberta 2Grain Shed – Manning, Alberta 3Grain Shed – Near Figure 8 Lake, AlbertaTrain Trestle – Sangudo, Alberta
Alone, along the road, driving home, structures from a former time and world that Alberta was age and erode with the seasons. Cared about structures are kept for their continued functionality, others for their memorial’s sake, to remember people and their time. Other structures, uncared for, decay and become derelict, awaiting demise. Each informs of their former time – what was then and what was on the go and what it was like being there (and then). Halt the car, grab camera and tripod, look around … repeat … all the way home. Snow melts. Spring takes hold.
Listening to – Joshua Redman’s ‘Stop this Train,’ and Sigur Ros’ ‘Svefn-G-Englar’ and ‘Glosoli.’
Quote to Inspire – “It’s not how a photographer looks at the world that is important. It’s their intimate relationship with it.” – Antoine D’Agata
Sidelined at day’s end, looking in to the vehicles of Sangudo’s Alaska Highway Construction Museum, creating an exposure through chain-link fence using smallest depth of field during the stretch of evening’s Golden hour and liking the colour, shape and shadow-work associated with these two trucks from that former time.
Listening to – Ed Sheeran’s ‘The A Team,’ Ben E. King’s ‘Stand By Me,’ Bruce Springsteen’s ‘One Step Up’ and Bill Mallonee & The Vigilantes of Love’s ‘Resplendent’ and ‘Nothing Like a Train.’
Quote to Inspire – “The idea of photography seemed to come together with the idea that this is how I could be – someone who could have one step in the world while at the same time being one step removed from it.” – Donovan Wylie
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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