Train Trestle

The day was a perambulation through southwestern Alberta in February 2020. Arriving the night before after two long days driving from the north and arranging things with my daughter, I had the day to myself with my Canon and Leica cameras before dining, visiting and catching up with her and her time at university. It was a pre-COVID day, days before I needed to attend a teacher convention and like many teachers, I was concerned about COVID becoming Canadian news, then Alberta news and finally, our community’s news. In a month, my students, colleagues and family would be in lockdown. Then a call from our daughter came – university students were being sent home. With me being in quarantine as a precaution, my wife would need to travel the same route I had, collect my daughter from university, and bring her home. I am proud of her for seeing this immense task through.

The train trestle in this photo is south of Pincher Creek, Alberta. On the other side of the trestle was a sign indicating an Alberta historical site. St. Henry’s Church was at the summit of Twin Butte. A ‘butte’ (French for knoll) is an isolated hill or mountain with steep or precipitous sides that usually has a smaller summit area than a mesa (Spanish for table). I climbed the road in my Corolla. St. Henry’s Church resides on the Twin Butte summit and allows looking out over a vast expanse in all directions. East and north are prairie farmlands. On this day, south and west presented a snow-filled valley stretching toward the Rocky Mountains and a sun-dazzling display of tempestuous winter cloud work making its way over the mountains. I gathered many photos from St. Henry’s Church across to the Rockies and again from the crest of the summit where the road returns down to the highway.

The day was one of the best, last, and most memorable days of photography for me before COVID, a day that offered a collection of photos to edit, share and discuss through social media.

My wife and I travelled through the area a little over a week ago (6 August 2023) from Lethbridge to Magrath, Leavitt, Waterton Lakes National Park, Pincher Creek, Fort MacLeod and Lethbridge. Some photos were taken, but the drive was more a matter of whim, exploration and sharing the world with my wife. The drive remains beautiful, one that draws out intention and wanderlust from me.

Quote to Consider / Inspire – ‘To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart (Henri Cartier-Bresson).’

Listening to: ‘People Get Ready (Live)’ from Seal’s ‘Soul Live’ album.

I arrived in Lethbridge.  Calling my daughter, we coordinated our meeting. She had work to complete for an assignment due in one of her university classes the following day.  I would explore southwestern Alberta with my cameras and meet her that evening for a meal at the Firestone Restaurant. Here is a morning image, a winter image along a range of wind turbines between Fort MacLeod and Cardston – a silhouette.

Quote to Consider / Inspire – “Ultimately – or at the limit – in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. ‘The necessary condition for an image is sight,’ Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: ‘We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes (Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography).’”

Listening to: Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris with ‘Red Staggering,’ ‘Rollin’ On’, ‘Love and Happiness’ and ‘Right Now’ from their All that Roadrunning album.

Enjoying this – getting out and away from behind closed doors and seeing the world through with camera and lens – southern Alberta images, February 2020.

Pre-Owned Equipment – Selling It?

What do you do?  Are you in the predicament of wanting to try different cameras?  I have used Canon cameras mainly. I have an Olympus EM-5 Mk II and a Fuji X-100F.  How do you sell or trade off your older camera(s)? There are KEH and B&H Photo that I have bought used equipment from. There’s even MPB. But I have never sold my cameras. What has your experience been like selling cameras? 

Quote to Inspire / Consider – ‘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).’

Listening to: ‘Beachcombing,’ ‘I Dug Up a Diamond,’ and ‘This Is Us’ from the ‘All the Roadrunning’ album from Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris.

One of the first images with a fifty-year-old rangefinder 90mm prime lens. A Sunday afternoon image found out near Fort Vermilion’s north settlement in colder October days before snow.

Quote to Inspire / Consider – ‘Always seeing something, never seeing nothing, being a photographer (Walter De Mulder).

Listening to:  John Prine lifting his voice with ‘When I Get to Heaven.’

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A too-long drive finds me having travelled 1200 km one-way, southward on a Labour Day weekend.  I am taking my daughter’s car down to her, at University in Lethbridge.  She and her mother are travelling together in my truck with boxes of personal effects and are ahead of me by a couple of hours.  I have stopped at Fort MacLeod to ease body stiffness and to look around.  I have my range finder camera and a 28mm wide angle prime lens to gather practice with.  I stop at the North West Mounted Police barracks which in non-COVID times would be a tourist site; today it’s closed.  It looks to be an interesting site from outside its walls.

From the barracks, I scan the horizon and find this Alberta Wheat Pool grain elevator. I find my way to it and enjoy an hour of stop and start composition finding. I work through different exposures from all sides of the elevator; my daughter and wife have given me the gift of time that is at my leisure. Good. I have the other 1400 km to travel back home in the next two days. The fun will be in the editing of these images in the months that follow.

Quote to Consider / Inspire – ‘A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into (Ansel Adams).’

Listening to: John Prine’s ‘Summer’s End’ (again), ‘Caravan of Fools,’ ‘Lonesome Friends of Science’ and ‘No Ordinary Blue’ from ‘The Tree of Forgiveness’ album.

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Land, cloud, light and colour – in juxtaposition they caress and collide yielding immensity in southern Alberta prairie and among foothills and mountains.

Quote to Consider/Inspire – ‘To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy (Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers).’

Listening to: Bob Dylan’s ‘False Prophet,’ ‘My Own Version of You’ and ‘I’ve made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You’ from his ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ album.

Immensities – southern Alberta prairie that stretches out unending, wind and cloud moving in the sky above and these four-story tall wind turbines. Each immensity is a necessary component of what are termed ‘wind-farms,’ an alternate means of creating electricity that does not require coal or the damming of a river system.  Again, these are images from February’s road trip between Lethbridge and Waterton Lake National park.

Quote to Inspire –  ‘The Earth is Art, the photographer is only a witness (Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Earth from Above).’

Listening to: Bob Dylan’s ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways.’

The Azure grain elevator has been an intended, return-to location for my camera and me.  The last time I shot this grain elevator, I did so in the early afternoon and was looking into the sun. Doing so, produced more of a silhouette and the harsh light did not yield colour well. These images are taken more than a kilometre from the elevator. The telephoto lens does well compressing distance between tractor, grain elevator and mountains – all seem quite close to each other when, in fact, a sizable distances separate them.

Quote to Inspire – ‘Photography takes an instant out of time, altering Life by holding it still (Dorothea Lange).’

Listening to: ‘Blue Moon,’ ‘Unforgiven,’ ‘Wave’ and ‘Don’t Let It Go’ from Beck’s ‘Morning Phase’ album.

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Gratitude – an evening’s opportunity to be out with cameras behind Nanton, westward into foothills at summer’s end.

Quote to Inspire – ‘All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth (Richard Avedon).’

Listening to: ‘Cycle,’ ‘Morning,’ ‘Heart is a Drum’ and ‘Say Goodbye’ from Beck’s album, ‘Morning Phase.’

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A few Nanton, Alberta moments, perhaps an hour’s worth of stop and start in collecting these grain elevator images with an older rangefinder camera, the camera slowing me down … allowing me to think through exposure settings, the gather of composition, the finding of what works and the back and forth zoom only accomplished by foot.

Quote to Inspire: ‘I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph (Leon Levinstein).’

Listening to: ‘Naima,’ ‘Libra,’ ‘Capella,’ and ‘Ad Te Levavi’ from Tommy Smith’s ‘Into Silence.’