Thelwell Ponies

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, Fauna, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Winter

Fairview Horses, Fairview, Alberta 1

Fairview Horses, Fairview, Alberta 2

Fairview Horses, Fairview, Alberta 3

Fairview Horses, Fairview, Alberta 4

I am able to recall my first year of school and one of those Life-changing events, that of taking my father to the Edmonton International Airport – Mom, Grandma and me. Something new for me and my brothers, this same event was rejoinder for my father – he was getting back to the globetrotting that was so much of his career prior to the arrival of my two brothers and me. Business trips took Dad often to the United Kingdom to stay current with practices/methods in plastics development/technologies. Beyond the United Kingdom, Dad moved around the globe in a chemist’s technician’s capacity dealing with the technical side of plastics use; the customer was always right – if the plastic produced didn’t work for the customer, the company Dad worked for always solved the problem and worked to create the plastic needed by each customer-manufacturer. Dad’s globetrotting in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties had the ceremony of preparation and departure; and, homecoming also became ceremony – gifts for the family let us know that we were thought of even when he was away from us.

Horses – the images of horses, here, were photographed just north of Fairview, Alberta. Their shapes remind of a British cartoonist who drew so many cartoons of the British countryside – Norman Thelwell often drew images of ponies … cartoons that these photographs recall. Check out Norman Thelwell at http://www.thelwell.org.uk/ . One of the gifts my father brought back for me when I was twelve was a small paperback of Thelwell’s pony cartoons – something I can remember reading in my room on a rainy day in June in Edmonton.

Listening to – Los Lobos and ‘Two Janes.’

Quote to Inspire – “Ultimately photography is about who you are. It’s the truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit.” – Leonard Freed

Waiting … Unused, Boarded-Up

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Weather, Winter

Hay River, NWT – Boats 1

Hay River, NWT – Boats 2

Hay River, NWT – Boats 3

Hay River, NWT – Boats 4

Hay River, NWT – Boats 5

In January’s winter, huge, huge boats – complex structures, rigged out with all kinds of equipment to make them self-reliant and useful upon the water – have been dragged to ground from the world’s largest lake – the Great Slave Lake; the boats wait, unused, boarded-up and dormant within acres and acres of Hay River’s boat yard. Canada’s Great Slave Lake is large enough to make transport of materials more efficient, faster and more direct when these boats are used than when moving materials around the perimeter of the lake by transport truck. These boats have names – Jock McNiven, Lister, Horn River, and Radium Empress – and in being named do stir curiosity about the origin of such reminiscence in each boat’s appellation. Snowy and overcast, the day yields -26C at 5:00 p.m. on a January winter day in Canada’s Hay River, Northwest Territories; overnight it will get colder. It’s the kind of day when a Hay River resident keeps an eye out for the potential of a stranded motorist, a neighbor, needing a tow from the snow bank or a boost of their car/truck’s battery. People living in Hay River know how to live in Hay River.

Listening to – Enrique Iglesias – ‘When I Fall in Love,’ with words on You Tube, a song our school’s custodian frets at this day’s end upon a Yamaha guitar … good, good schtuff!

Quote to Inspire – “I have the great privilege of being both witness and storyteller. Intimacy, trust and intuition guide my work.” – Jim Goldberg

Stowed Away

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Flora, Fog, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day

Boats in Woods – Hay River 1

Boats in Woods – Hay River 2

Stowed away among the brush, the husks of two boats dragged from the water, now uncared for, left to the elements.

Listening to – Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ and ‘Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes’ (only now realizing that these were recorded in South Africa at a time when Artists Against Apartheid were sanctioning the Arts, there … in addition to all other sanction; a bold, bold move on Paul Simon’s part).

Quote to Inspire – “I am not an artist. I am an image maker.” – Thomas Hoepker

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

Grain Elevators – St. Albert, Alberta

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New Year’s Day – in Edmonton and its surrounding region the daylight hours of 2013 are sun-filled against a backdrop of blue sky. I’m out, looking around at the world with my camera, making my way from Edmonton’s west end, through its University area and Whyte Avenue. My wife, daughter and son are at my brother’s home reading … and there’s some baking going on.

I have some of the day with my camera.

The Edmonton Clinic at the University of Alberta reveals itself to be something eye-catching when complete – a longish curve of glass that will stretch for a city block in length and upwards about eight stories; the building will be about reflection as much as the glass permits a looking in on all that’s going on. But, the photo is not for today; the construction is still in progress and from the best angle impedes what is likely the best shot.

The day does hold its share of shots as I move to the Molson Brewery site that’s being dismantled. Then, it’s out to St. Albert to Edmonton’s northwest. My wife has recalled our seeing grain elevators as we drove into St. Albert last summer for a huge farmer’s market and she recommends searching for them. I have a look and discover that the grain elevators are part of a heritage museum in St. Albert. The elevators are behind chain-link fence, yet I can still photograph them.

I move from St. Albert west towards Spruce Grove. I use an elasticized, nylon tow rope to pull out someone in a silver, Dodge Dakota whose slid into a country ditch with the snow. On this road are many old farms and farm structures to photograph. But, at this time of day with an upcoming get family together this part of the day is about scouting visually for possible shots … for next time.

Listening to – Paul Gross and the Due South soundtrack.

Quote to Inspire – “My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.” – Steve McCurry

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