With this image, I’m beyond camera in post-processing toward this colorful result. The Plymouth Savoy plays its own part in longer term decay among this still life. I like it.
Listening still to www.ckua.org and Hole in the Wall by the Bobby Blue Band from their album Year of Tears.
Quote to Inspire – “Light glorifies everything. It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects. The object is nothing, light is everything.” — Leonard Missone
With photography, there’s a subtle contemplative side which must be settled into and found; then, ‘click’ you’re in … amid revelations of colour, texture and visual treasure, all sitting there, before you. Right?
I’m looking back through my McNaught Homestead photos again this evening – this image surfaced in terms of colour, form and texture … and thoughts about what I’d do with it, anew.
Quote to Inspire – “I see something special and show it to the camera. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.” — Sam Abell
Listening to www.ckua.org ; it’s Friday night and Liz Mandeville belts out Corner Bar Blues from her Red Top album.
At an age when wearing glasses assists me in my day, my experience of working with a camera through to editing an image often is about revisiting subject and context to see what else is there; it is actual re-view (review). The process is similar to gleaning feedback in using a personal journal. And, in journaling, one point of revelation has been sorting through the conception that memory, perception, thought and even feeling are only what they were on the day that they occurred. In that portion of experience in which they occurred they were what truth was – they became the facts in response to Life’s events for that duration of time. Without a record, the memory that is carried forward can shift, adjust and change over time … with new thoughts, feelings, perceptions and influences – memory is or becomes malleable. Just like a journaling process, creating a photograph isolates the truth of ‘what was’ for the duration of time in which it occurs. What is also valuable about a journal and photographs produced by the photographer and camera is that you can revisit subject and context to see and appreciate more of what else was there. The journal and photograph inform you and other readers/viewers about the personal narrative of the writer/photographer. The feedback of what else was there, that you now see, informs future action.
Listening to Neil Young’s Old Man and reminded that Lizz Wright also sings this song; there’s not so much experientially that separates us, the older and younger; it does seem to be a father-son song and the son’s revelation of greater similarity than difference.
Quote to Inspire – “Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.” — Ansel Adams
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.
Again, today – out and about on a photowalk … others’ fresh perspective has me looking up and looking at things. Green needles of a conifer remind and point towards spring … loving the colour and background, here.
Listening to U2’s Mysterious Ways … the subject and content of the lyrics are something good to unravel, in their unraveling. Coldplay’s In My Place, is up next, reminding of U2, Paul McCartney, Coldplay and the Verve’s Richard Ashcroft (Bittersweet Symphony) and the world-wide Live 8 concert and the Gleneagles decisions made by G8 leaders … some good, that day! Brian Adams kicked things off in Toronto followed in the day by The Tragically Hip and Great Big Sea.
Curious Quote to Inspire – “In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” – Alfred Stieglitz
Today – out with fellow photographers, a first cluster together. Some creatives among the group, ones willing to experiment with perspective and their subject. Totally cool to be a part of things today and to capture this photographer’s photo in the making. Good schtuff!
Listening to How Soon Is Now by the Smiths, as found on The Wedding Singer Soundtrack.
Quote to Inspire – “Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” – Imogen Cunningham
Deer – three does chased by a stag crossed Alberta highway 88 as I traveled eastward from High Level to Fort Vermilion at 8:00 a.m. on January 23, 2012; the three does made it across safely between myself and oncoming vehicles. I slowed my truck down on the icy road but not enough to miss hitting the stag. I stopped further ahead and turned around to see about animal remains that might need to be hauled from the road. Nothing was found. There was a swale in the snow where the deer had drifted into the ditch on the north side of the highway. But, the stag and does had taken off. My truck, on the other hand, received damage – the grill and light housing mainly and the radiator and transmission cooler were pushed back toward the engine. I checked it out and watched the gauges – it held together for another 160 km and still is driveable today. Despite being in immaculate shape, at 286 000 km, this 2000 GMC Sierra is considered a write-off as the cost to repair the truck exceeds the value of the truck.
The antlered stag, imagistically recalls U2’s Electrical Storm video, its being written about Ireland’s Easter Day Accord, and the ghosted image of the stag in the Electrical Storm video – a subject I’ve commented on on the old U2 Zoo Station (Zooropa) website.
Listening to – Impermanent Things by Peter Himmelman from his Stage Diving album.
Quote to Inspire – “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” -Ansel Adams
Edmonton – June 2, 2011 – In 1988, in Anzac, Alberta I painted the walls of a Northland School Division teacherage making it home for my wife and I in our second year of marriage. That fall, I listened and painted as a song aired for the first few times on the local FM radio station from Fort McMurray featuring Robbie Robertson and familiar ‘Joshua Tree’ vocals as back-up to the song with also familiar chiming guitar work. As I listened I was confirming the sacred arena that the lyrics were dealing with. Backing to the song was provided by Bono and Edge of U2. The song, Sweet Fire of Love, alluded to and opened out the experience of awakening to the Holy Spirit’s work. In the lyrics, awakening was the issue and the story side of the song had a biographical element, something true and encountered by members of U2.
I would read about such awakening in Steve Stockman’s Walk On – The Spiritual Journey of U2, a book originating in response to a Canadian in Vancouver, British Columbia challenging Steve to set out proofs that members of U2 were Christian. There was much disbelief about U2 being Christian. The band’s appeal to audiences would seem worldly and something quite far away from … ministry. Yet, Steve set about looking through the U2 canon to establish context and biblical reference for U2 songs and in doing so exposed the bad and good, the hurt and the love experienced in the current Church. Moreover, Steve considered the role contemporary secular and Christian music play in overcoming or ameliorating a grace-filled Christian walk.
Throughout this time of challenge regarding U2’s credible Christian walk, Steve hosted a Sunday radio show called Rhythm and Soul on BBC Radio Ulster (8:00 p.m. – Ulster, 1:00 p.m. – Alberta) that examined Christian message found in contemporary Christian and secular music; over the internet, I tuned in from 2002 to 2007. By the time Rhythm and Soul completed its run, Steve had written three books considering music in the Christian walk, completed a Masters of Theology, led youth (young adult) missions trips to Cape Town, South Africa and had served as Dean of Derryvolgie Hall at Queens University in Belfast, Ireland. In the summer of 2005, I enjoyed an hour’s visit and dialogue with Steve at Regent College (Vancouver, British Columbia). After a few years, Steve became chaplain at Fitzroy Presbyterian Church in Belfast, Ireland; he now has a blog that follows from his Rhythm and Soul days and his Rhythms of Redemption blog – its called Soul Surmise. For Steve, Bono of U2 remains his favourite Irish pastor. For me, I finally got to see U2 in Edmonton, Alberta at Commonwealth Stadium in my forty-ninth year, days before I would turn fifty – 2 June 2011.
The photographs presented here capture something of the evening. It being an overcast day on June 2, 2011, the night became chilly and U2 donned extra clothing to stay warm. The evening held stories of Bono hitch-hiking in a Vancouver rainstorm and being picked up by a Vancouver Canuck’s player who Bono rewarded with tickets to the Edmonton performance. Bono sought out a female audience member to sing a Canadian tune, Neil Young’s Heart of Gold. The whole of the stadium knew each song of the U2 canon; all sang with U2, and together. As I would remark later – I was glad to be able to take my wife, daughter and son to see a live performance by a band whose music has filled our home through the years – a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime night.
Here’s the set list.
Curious quote for the pondering:
“… some may call it blasphemy
But I believe it’s true
God lies there beside you in the gutter
And grace, like a mother holds you.” ~ Steve Stockman, from poem, Up on Scarlet Street
Listening to Ryan Adams’ Wonderwall from the album, Love is Hell
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)
The photograph presented, here, is one of the five boats on Vale Island at Hay River, NWT. While several wordpress blogger photographs this week explore the theme of ‘simple’ in a weekly photo challenge, this photograph more accurately conveys the sentiment of ‘being at rest or at peace.’ This photograph is quirky, though, a boat dragged among the trees, a boat left to rot away … and still the lighting, the subject and boat’s shape suggest simplicity, perhaps a simplicity in resignation. As a concept, simple can be construed to mean the basics involved in the minimum equation for living; it can refer to what one finds easy to do and tangentially it can refer to limited cognitive capacity, perhaps a capacity less than what is required in order to live. Again, the photograph really presents the simplicity of resignation – a life resigned, something complete, something simple.
Listening to The Good in Me is Dead sung by Martyn Joseph in his album Don’t Talk About Love, Volume 1
Quote to Inspire – “There is no such thing as ‘correct’ composition, just bad composition, good composition and inspired composition.” ~ Andrew S. Gibson, Beyond Thirds – A Photographer’s Introduction to Creative Composition
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