The reason for travel found, I drove southward through Boreal Forest made farmland. Allowing my eye to look and see and using my camera, these are first images of farmsteads and homesteads, now derelict, that hold memories for families whose predecessors built them. For travelers, though, along northern Alberta roads, they serve as mile markers, helping them gauge their progress toward a given destination.
There is a visual narrative to gather – those with a camera, curious with wonder, often stop and photograph. I am one of those. ‘Who lived and worked here?’ ‘How did weather shape Life through each season?’ ‘What were hard times like?’ ‘What were the good times?’ The story is there. With patient wandering, the ‘would-be’ photographer can unearth different parts of that story and make sense of them.
Listening to – #447 – Publish Your First Book, The Photowalk Podcast
Quotes to Inspire / Consider – ‘You give Life to what you give energy to.’ – Gary Williams / Neale James (via The Photowalk Podcast); ‘The energy of the mind is the essence of Life.’ – Aristotle
In the first week of summer break, school’s work has lessened—the last report, comprehensive as it was, has been written and submitted. Students’ award photos have been edited and uploaded, and the division’s long-service award images have been edited and delivered by thumb drive to the appropriate person. Next year, I will use Dropbox to move big images over the Internet. That done, I am able to launch into summer’s rest, time to myself with my thoughts, and begin letting go of the year that has been our school year and bridling down my watch for the next necessary thing needing done. It is time to release all that and take-up my own Life, once again. Movies are being watched – older ones, older favorite’s, and ones linked to novels read. An old pattern is there – movie marathon nights help dissociate me from the year that has been, one part of unlocking the door to summer.
The other day, it was a good thing to wake up, gather my wife from her university work and into our truck, and get out for a drive. It set the tone for a summer’s day. That essential premise – get out the door – was lived out. I got out that door again yesterday, recalling with some strength that there should be a ‘Wheels and Deals’ event at the Mirage Hotel in High Level, Alberta, a ‘Show and Shine’ kind of gathering of favored vehicles with the added opportunity of a swap meet – ‘wouldn’t that be something for me to find a late sixties Pontiac, like the one I used to drive during high school?’ I took my Leica M8 with Zeiss ZM Biogon 28mm lens and went to have a look. I had my Fujifilm GFX 50r and Ricoh GR iii as cameras I might use as well.
I shot for the first hour with the M8, focusing with the rangefinder’s viewfinder and focus patch. I moved through the area as people set up. Cars, trucks and motorcycles arrived and were arranged in the hotel’s parking lot. I could move around, talk with vehicle owners, and photograph vehicles. I could shoot according to what I saw compositionally. I could take my time with the M8. Good.
The black-and-white image presented here highlights some elements of visual composition—the Pontiac and the Buick Super Eight cluster in terms of visual weight in the image, and the black-and-white gradient of tone reveals shape, reflection, and vehicle lines (and an era of automobile design). A sense of depth is there as the eye moves from the Buick, past the Pontiac, to the Mercury truck and the hotel’s entryway. While the image was shot and edited primarily in colour, using Silver Efex from the NiK Collection provided an extraordinary, eye-captivating, black-and-white image – an image captured yesterday, in the summer of 2024, that, in terms of variety and proximity among vehicles, black-and-white toning, visual weight, and proportion, could easily have been an image captured in black-and-white during the fifties when these vehicles were first manufactured. In that sense, the image becomes nostalgic. It relates to a time preceding me … just. Other colour images are presented for reference.
Listening to: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Open All Night,’ ‘Highway Patrolman,’ from the ‘Nebraska’ Album, JD McPherson’s ‘Let the Good Times Roll,’ and most of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Tunnel of Love’ album, starting with ‘Walk Like a Man.’
Quotes to Consider – Re: Photography …
‘Date your cameras, marry your lenses.’ This quote is new to me, yet highlights a key idea for photographers – that investing in glass (good lenses) is essential while the cameras used over time will change.
‘Innovation comes from people who take joy in their work (W. Edwards Deming).’ The quote was offered in a YouTube video offered by ‘Three Blind Men and An Elephant’ in their video, ‘Leica D-Lux 8 Defies Expectations, Including My Own, (2 July 2024)’ to recognize that Leica, as a company already producing stellar cameras, is one whose employees enjoy innovation and improvement that can be made to their cameras and lenses. On the Adizes’ Curve, Leica has embraced a key dynamic that allows them to remain in the ‘prime’ of organizational/corporate lifecycles.
A decade ago, we brought Dad back to Edmonton, Alberta, from his retirement in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia, and found him a venue for assisted care/living close to family. Alzheimer’s Disease had its hold on him, and my brothers and I witnessed the decline of Dad’s physical and cognitive abilities through to end-of-life. Managing short-term memory day-to-day grew difficult for him. Long-term memory, though, found him a resource for family histories. Playing the piano had always been a source of joy for Dad. At the piano, in these later years, he could find his way to the music of his youth and that which he enjoyed on his 1964 Heintzman piano through our family years. In Edmonton, the expressive side of Dad’s language diminished, yet we could interact with him through the yes-and-no nods and shaking of his head to help him establish certainty in his communication. As school began in September 2016, we lost him. He’d lived eighty-three years.
We found time, my brothers and I, to disburse Mom and Dad’s belongings among the family – furniture, paintings, photos, China, and personal effects … items that, in their use, would draw out memories of Mom and Dad. One item that came to me was a 1956 Red Dial Leica If camera. While growing up at home, with all my father photographed, of his and mom’s travels abroad, of our family on vacation, of times with extended family and with his time downstairs in his darkroom, Dad had not told me about this camera and the role it played early on in his career.
As far as I knew, my father used Canon cameras, a Canon F-1 and Canon AE-1, during our school years. Before I was born, he made photographs using a Yashica Twin Lens Reflex camera, a medium format film camera, and a handheld light meter. As a research chemist, my father used the 1956 Red Dial Leica If camera to determine and maintain the quality of the product the company produced. The camera was gifted to him in retirement to remember the place and people he worked with when he transferred with his company to Toronto in the mid-eighties. One of my brothers had talked to Dad about the camera and shared the story of its use with me.
The 1956 Red Dial Leica If camera is a rangefinder, a version of the Leica IIIf series without a viewfinder or rangefinder incorporated into its body nor with the ability to work at slow speeds. It uses 35 mm film. The camera measures 5.35 inches by 1.54 inches by 2.60 inches. The body has black leatherette skin, aluminum with chrome plated brass top plate, base plate and knobs. It has two hot shoes to allow the use of an external viewfinder and rangefinder. Where the camera, as produced, was intended for use with an Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 lens, the lens on this camera is a post-war Russian Jupiter 50 mm f/2 lens (a lens not comparable with the Elmar) and not used for regular photography. The Leica If is thinner than today’s cameras. Its weight, though not weighty conveys gravitas – you have a serious piece of photographic equipment in your hands.
Microscope and Adapter – The red velvet Leica camera box contains a camera manual and a manual for an adapter, a MIKAS Micro Attachment for the Leica. With the adapter, the camera can be attached to a microscope directly. The Micro Attachment adapter attaches to the camera’s lens mount and to the microscope. It provides an eye-piece/viewfinder midway along the adapter at an angle perpendicular to the microscope’s eyepiece tube for establishing focus. Making exposures involves calculating settings, trial and error and managing the microscope’s light source. The image produced is called a ‘photomicrograph.’ Placing the camera’s production year into Dad’s career timeline, he would likely have been working in Edmonton, and documents for the camera indicate it being sold in 1957-58.
Looking back to who my father was, I can readily associate a Leica camera with him – a Canadian student from the Maritimes who, at the age of 24, had earned a Ph.D. from a London university in the United Kingdom, a pioneer in organic chemistry on the world stage. He was good at what he did. Leica was quality. So was Dad.
Leica Cameras & The Candid Frame
My first significant consideration of Leica cameras occurred listening to a 5 October 2014 podcast, ‘The Candid Frame – with Ibarionex Perello,’ in which Ralph Gibson was interviewed (The Candid Frame #252 – Ralph Gibson). Dorothea Lange and points of departure were considered. A book Gibson had worked on called ‘The Somnambulist’ was discussed. Gibson discussed a kind of visual literacy that involves not only the content of an image but the visual narrative of the image juxtaposed with other images and in terms of an image among images in sequence. In other talks, Gibson would discuss the proportion of the page in which an image rests as influencing and shaping its visual narrative. Gibson shot with Leica film cameras. In his early post-Navy years, Gibson sometimes pawned one or two of his Leicas to make ends meet. Gibson’s later presentations would consider photography an act of perception, a matter of being present in the situation and to what is photographed. In a broader sense, photography for Gibson is a mindfulness or meditative practice. The range of understanding Gibson brings to photography is extraordinary and captivates – you recognize ‘this is what photography is about.’ Gibson remains a photographer who uses Leica cameras.
“Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It’s a way of Life (Henri Cartier-Bresson).”
Gratitude – I am indebted to Ibarionex Perello and his podcast, ‘The Candid Frame,’ for the over eight hundred interviews he has conducted with photographers and their take on what photography is about. Listening to these podcasts while cycling, walking, and driving has been part of my development as a photographer.
10,000 Hours & Photography
With the extremes of cold northern Alberta winters, my exercise game plan involved getting on an inclined treadmill for an hour each morning before getting to school. I set up a basement treadmill area so that with a minimum of noise, I could gather the full-body exercise of walking on the treadmill while watching television and listening to its audio feed through earbuds or headphones. All this occurred in the wee early morning hours while the household slept.
“Dreams without movement are delusions, escapes, kid’s play. You have to put your feet into your dreams if they’re ever going to be reality. The dreamers we know and love today are the ones who worked the hardest (Paul Newman/Interview with James Grissom/1993/Photograph by CW Braun).”
Considering the ‘ten-thousand-hour’ rule suggested by Malcolm Gladwell, that ten-thousand hours of appropriately guided practice would allow the learner to achieve a level of proficiency that would rival that of a professional, I directed my treadmill television watching toward photography. I explored what YouTube offered. I found photographers who used YouTube to share the immediacy of their photography experiences and who used YouTube to generate viewer interest in the photography workshops they led. Adam Gibbs (Quiet Light Photography), Gavin Hardcastle (Fototripper), Nigel Danson, Sean Tucker, and Thomas Heaton became mentor photographers with whom I began my ten-thousand hours of guided photography practice.
“Habit and imitation – there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of all working, and all apprenticeship, of all practice and all learning, in this world (Thomas Carlyle).”
The ‘just-like-me’ impact of these videos was surprising. Within a landscape photo shoot, the Lowepro camera bag on the ground that Thomas Heaton was opening up was one I was using. The Canon 5D Mk III camera he put on a tripod was one I used. His Canon 70-200 mm, f/2.8 lens was a lens I used. In weekly videos, Thomas talked through image-making as he made images. Watching the videos, I encountered a photographer who was personable, fallible and a photographer keenly interested in his craft and landscapes around the world. Travel, hiking, camping, exploring various landscapes, image capture, image editing and image printing were the mainstays of his videos. I began to see what was possible in landscape photography and was developing an understanding of choices that can be made when making photographs. The breadth of what photography can achieve became more doable and within reach.
“Apprenticeship is all about being tutored by those who have trod the path we desire to tread (Vincent Okay Nwachukwu).”
The images of a New Zealand photographer attracted my attention. His photography and work came across as a YouTube channel recommendation. Inspired by Thomas Heaton’s vlogging, Paul C. Smith shared videos that explored New Zealand with a camera, exposing viewers to New Zealand’s culture, people, and landscape. While photographing much of New Zealand with Olympus Digital cameras, one being an Olympus EM-D E-M5 II that I also use, Paul also photographs New Zealand with Leica cameras – an M6, M8 and M9. Much of his photography is done with the M8, and the images produced contain a quality reminiscent of Life Magazine images from the 1950s and 1960s – a quality resulting from the camera’s APS-H 10.3-megapixel Kodak CCD image sensor in combination with the colour red being diffracted differently through Leica lenses (as compared to other non-Leica lenses). An infrared UV filter can be used with Leica lenses to render a more natural colour. Paul does not always use the infrared filter, though. Paul speaks of the ‘buttery’ feel of images captured with Leica lenses. You can see this in his photography.
Here are some examples of M8 images I have made – they are from Southern Alberta, Canada.
Paul C. Smith is a self-taught photographer who has a great sense of composition, colour, and light. He believes that a photograph is the result of seeing context, proportion, balance, and placement. To enhance colour, textures, tone, and mood in his pictures, he chooses his Leica M8 camera, which gives his photos a stunning, filmic look. For black-and-white images, he uses his Leica M6 film camera as it presents tone and mood differently. While he uses his Leica M9 camera, it does not get as much use as the M8. ‘Heart’ is another essential ingredient that produces treasure in his images. When someone takes in his photos, they become privy to his response to the subject and scene, and they can consider the beauty and moment captured in his photos. For Paul, a photograph, if done well, is ‘a stolen moment.’
“A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective (Irving Penn).”
“Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them (Carl Jung).”
Leica M8
In the summer of 2018, I visited The Camera Store in Calgary to check out new and old cameras before returning home. While there, I noticed two used Leica M8 camera bodies on consignment. I was intrigued by the possibility of trying out the Leica M8 to see if it could help me improve my photography skills and compare my results with those of a fellow photographer who used the same camera. However, the essential question was whether I could make the Leica M8 work for me and produce the photos I wanted. I decided not to buy the camera as I was unprepared to make such a purchase and needed to rationalize such spending. It was a year later when I purchased the remaining Leica M8 with a Leica Summarit 35 mm lens. I learned to operate the camera by taking photos during the drive home. Once I got home, I ordered a battery charger from the Leica store in Miami, Florida and a few years later a new battery from B&H Photo. I also updated the firmware for the Leica M8. Later, I would add a Zeiss 28mm 2.8 ZM Biogon lens and a fifty-year-old Ernst Leitz Wetzlar Elmar 90 mm lens.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage (Anais Nin).”
A season of learning began, making photos whenever possible with the M8. The camera helps slow down image-making. I work in aperture priority mode and select an f/stop based on my intention for the photo. Images are composed within the viewfinder frame lines and then the rangefinder focus patch must be aligned to the image within the viewfinder to achieve focus. Once aligned, pressing the shutter button captures the image. This process promotes consideration of composition, lighting, and positioning with respect to the subject. Each element adds to the creation of a well-thought-out image. The resulting ten-megapixel photos are extraordinary.
Operational Fix – Leica M8
While old Leica M8 batteries can be charged, weak batteries can cause operational issues and issues writing images to an SD card. I thought my Leica M8 had died two years ago – the menu would not hold settings; photos, once taken, would not write to the SD card. My research on what I encountered took months, and finally surfaced a recommendation to replace older batteries with new ones as a solution. Because I enjoyed working with this camera, I gave it a go and purchased a new Leica Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery (Leica 14464) from B&H Photo. The new battery restored all camera functions and full camera use.
Picture, Story, Photographer
In October 2022, Paul C. Smith produced a video entitled, ‘Cameras Are My Clickbait.’ Responding to a viewer’s question about the cameras he used, Paul spoke about his early YouTube work and having produced videos that few people viewed. He began making videos highlighting photography, the photographer and the camera used. The cameras were older, used, high-end cameras. Gear talk tended toward the trial-and-error process of mastering the camera’s use to create a photograph. Such discussion concerned what impressed him about the picture produced on the other side of picture-making with the camera. Of the cameras used – Olympus, Leica, Hasselblad and others – the Leica M8 was his first choice.
Good photographers will affirm a core truth Paul draws attention to – “Photography is about the picture, the story behind the photo and the photographer. The equipment is not that important – a camera is a camera.” A Frames Magazine podcast with photographer Walid Azami presented a few weeks after Paul’s video (November 2022) echoes the matter of equivalency of gear and takes the discussion Paul offered a step further … ‘[You] either have a Sony, a Fuji, a Canon, a Nikon, or a Hasselblad and … it comes down to a couple of other brands too. That’s it. … [We] all … have the same gear … [What] makes you … stand out is [that] you have to have opinions.’ While Walid asserts that what separates one photographer from other photographers is your opinion, he would likely agree that ‘opinion,’ as he refers to it, comes down to the photographer’s way of seeing and that one’s ‘way of seeing,’ ‘one’s opinion’ is the embodiment of ‘style.’ This part of the photographer’s photo-making adds to the image’s narrative and the photograph produced.
Along Those 10,000 Hours
Ten-thousand hours of appropriate, guided practice seems longish to me now. One hour a day for one year yields a minute step forward to the ten thousand hours Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his book, ‘Outliers.’ In terms of photography, it is not only about being mentored by a photographer. The praxis part of photography must be dialed into the equation – the time in play with the camera in hand, solving problems and making photos. It is the getting out to photograph, taking time to consider intention, making many photographs, sitting down at the computer editing and working out the presentation of photos by way of the printer, photobook or a photoblog such as this. It’s also about encountering the good, bad and unintended consequences of making and presenting photos along the way. It is about learning to see and recognize where an image lies (often right in front of you) and recognizing opportunity. Sometimes it’s the photo waiting for you as you drive by, and you need to make an active choice: stop, turn around, go back, see the scene, walk the scene, and gather not just one photograph but several. In many ways, it is about mastering yourself so that you have the discipline to go back, see all that is there and take the next step in taking the photo. A photo mentor steps in as you choose along the way – you witness the work of others, you take a workshop, you read books that develop your understanding of photography (e.g., Susan Sontag – ‘On Photography), you listen to podcasts, you find your way to talking through photographs with other photographers, friends and family, and you encounter moments that surprise you when the understanding and doing of photography coalesce in pictures you produce. Your photography becomes about the images you make, the stories behind your photographs, and you as a photographer. I am a long way into my ten-thousand hours and perhaps closing in on meeting its threshold. But there will always be something more to consider, learn, and evolve into practice. Right?
“One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and on. It’s on all the time. (Annie Leibovitz).”
Listening to: Hollow Coves’ ‘Pictures,’ Roo Panes’ ‘Message to Myself,’ JD McPherson’s ‘Dimes for Nickels,’ The New Customs’ ‘Chasing Light,’ Liz Longley’s ‘Unraveling,’ John McCutcheon’s take on ‘Turn, Turn, Turn,’ Dougie Maclean’s ‘The Osprey,’ and Galen Huckins Glacier Quartet’s ‘The Kennicott.’
Photography is more an active endeavour than a passive one. You take a photo by placing yourself in front of your subject – you move in small ways aligning camera and lens to subject, and at other times, you move in terms of distances travelled, large and small, to photograph your subject. The word endeavour has work at its core, perhaps even … sustained work, linked to achieving a goal.
In 2009 – 2010, I stumbled upon the photo-a-day challenge, an active pursuit in which a would-be photographer can engage in photography and evolve skills needed to take, edit, and present photos. Over time, the photos created would become stepping stones from which one could look back and consider emerging questions about photography that one was ready to have answered when they had consolidated (put together and understood) the question to be asked. Add exposure to others’ photography, and questions would then be about how photographers brought together an image and their intention to present it in the way they had. Photography in a 365-day, photo-a-day pursuit would become step-by-step, emergent learning. As a favourite ‘Motivation to Move’ podcaster, Scott Smith puts it, all you’d need to do is ‘Stand up, take a step, and repeat … until you’ve reached the goal of your dreams.’
Investigating what others had to say about photo-a-day challenges, Woody Campbell surfaced as a photographer with an interesting tack. In Woody’s ‘1 Photo Every Day’ website, you’ll find that Woody has resolved to ‘… take one photograph every day for the rest of [his] life (www.woodycampbell.com)’ and that, at the time of writing, he has done so for thirteen years. He posts his images in a format of day number since he began photographing for this project – his post for Friday, 30 June 2023, while having a small statement descriptor, also notes the post as ‘Day 5006 of photograph every day for the rest of my life;’ in each post he also presents a look-back image – an image to recall and share.
What is there, though, is Woody’s commitment to photo-a-day image-making, and for the would-be photographer, in addition to Woody’s engaging and captivating photography, an arms-length camaraderie and inspiration in like-endeavour are to be found. Because he engages in this work, you are joining him in like-endeavour.
My trek through the photo-a-day project that this WordPress blog sprang from today finds me sifting through 1100+ edited images taken since 2021 that have not been posted, images that were destined for this ‘In My Back Pocket Photography’ blog. As a teacher now in summer, I am enjoying the post-race wind-down following a ten-month marathon with students, staff, and parents, a school year saturated with people, planning, teaching, and testing. However, through the school year, while I have continued to take photos on an almost daily basis, the matter of posting photos has many steps along its way and my posting stats disappoint grievously.
In this third week of July, I am surfacing to a less other-focused Life, something Frank McCourt refers to in his biography, ‘Teacher Man,’ as all that time off, abbreviated as ‘a.t.t.o.’. All that time off allows me to consider and return to personal pursuits and one of them is posting on this blog. At present, the situation gives me the opportunity to consider and present to you ‘points of departure’ as Dorothea Lange states it (via Ralph Gibson) – the common themes or projects I tend to photograph as I review images moving forward since 2021.
Current Points of Departure (2021 to present, Summer 2023)
Along Northern Roads – Alberta
Winter Walks / Cycling in High Level, Alberta
Dunvegan Historic Site and Dunvegan Bridge – Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Grain Elevators
Industrial Area (Morning Rides – Winter and Summer) – High Level
Peace River Area, Alberta
Trains
Quotes & Concepts to Consider & Inspire
Oubaitori – (1) ‘the idea that people, like flowers, bloom in their own time and in their individual ways (Victoria Ericksen);’ (2) ‘the meaning of oubaitori is that, instead of comparing ourselves to other people, we should be focusing on our own growth, and valuing what makes us special (https://vocab.chat/blog/japanese-oubaitori.html).’
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the ‘question’ (Eugene Ionesco).”
‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic and power in it (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).’
‘You’ve got what it takes, but it will take everything you’ve got.’ – Anonymous
‘I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go (Langston Hughes).’
Listening to: David Gray’s ‘Sail Away,’ Martyn Joseph’s ‘One Step Up,’ Over the Rhine’s ‘Who Will Guard the Door,’ Amanda Marshall’s ‘Believe in You,’ Van Morrison’s ‘Behind the Ritual,’ and Billy Joel’s ‘This is the Time.’
Rosanne Cash says about songwriting, “… Songs are there in the ether, and you just have to have your skills good enough to get them.” Like acapella singer Bobby McFerrin, Cash believes that as a songwriter, “You catch songs…. [and,] … you have to have your catcher’s mitt on…. Sometimes I’m afraid that if I don’t get it down, then somebody else will (Rosanne Cash, Time Traveler – On Being with Krista Tippett, 5 January 2012, https://onbeing.org/programs/rosanne-cash-time-traveler/ ).”
Photography is like that – about being present and ready for what you see, connecting with the moment, and ‘catching the image’ and its import as it confronts you.
Wheat Kings and farmsteads served as points of departure. Stirling, Wrentham, Skiff, Foremost, Orion and Manyberries were place names in my travel – each had wooden grain elevators from the previous century used to stockpile grain for railway transportation. Some appeared to remain in use. Grey, weathering wood of still-standing derelict farm buildings clustered in disused prairie farmland with the rusting reds and browns of grain trucks – abandoned, yet holding memory to the past. General stores no longer in use faded in terms of colour and signage. I and my cameras went about image making.
As I meandered, making exposures, travelling east and south, then west toward Milk River, two or three mountains loomed, growing more prominent in Alberta’s southernmost prairie, an unexpected juxtaposition – mountains within the prairie. I photographed them in stages as I travelled closer to them. While the mountains seemed to span the Canada – United States border, I was seeing the Sweetgrass Hills of Montana and evidence that volcanoes were a part of the prairie shared between Montana and Alberta. My mobile phone carrier began sending SMS messages advising of the need for a rate-plan change should I cross into the United States and need to use my phone. They were looking out for me. Good!
At this point in my summer, I was re-reading Thomas King’s novel, ‘Indians on Vacation,’ which has become one venue for Canadians to begin opening out Canada’s treaty history following the release of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission report in 2015. Characters, Blackbird Mavrias (or ‘Bird’) and Mimi, are vacationing in Prague, in the Czech Republic.
In the interrogatory phrase they encounter with familiar cadence, ‘Where are you from?’ an equivalency of people among peoples, vacationers among vacationers, is drawn out. At play is Bird and Mimi’s nationality, which, while Canadian, shifts as they share it between Canadian (from Canada) and their indigenous first nation identification as Cherokee (Bird has Greek and Cherokee lineage) and Blackfoot (Mimi). ‘Where are you from?’ … is always a jumping-off point for being known and getting to know others.
Bird Mavrias is a writer and journalist looking toward retirement. For Mimi and Bird, considering Prague’s history, exploring it as a city, and its current events – all serve to jostle them, surfacing memories. Their conversations move them through their past and occasionally surface facts from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report – moments of poignancy, disappointment and numbing revulsion concerning the unimaginable. Somehow, what they remember almost becomes a Viktor Frankl choice point to move forward, to move on.
Bird recalls a story he covered regarding an encampment at ‘Writing-On-Stone’ in southern Alberta. Within the park, on the southern side of the Milk River, an indigenous woman sought to gather and practice traditional ways with those of like-mind, ways of their people(s) on their people’s land. The story recognizes a need to find and return to traditional ways. The story looks at the breaking down of the camp and moving trespassers from the site. Bird’s recollection recalls the impotence of the situation – what it did not achieve and its disappointment.
In my drive, moving south and east toward Aden from Milk River and then toward the Sweetgrass Hills of Montana, I came upon this site at ‘Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.’ In Blackfoot, this site is referred to as Áísínaiʼpi, a word meaning ‘it is pictured’ or ‘it is written.’ The conceptualization of photography as being ‘writing with light’ and exposure of what the camera witnesses seem close to indigenous intention here, and the word Áísínaiʼpi seems as though it should be part of a photographer’s vocabulary. In both cases, the terminology refers to memory being held to be witnessed, considered and understood.
Gauging what remained of my day in terms of kilometres, gas and final meal, I began my return drive to Lethbridge and my hotel quite late. Tired at the end of my drive, I had accomplished a lot of what I intended – a day open for discovery, thought and camera work. I found Wheat Kings. I encountered the big sky of southern Alberta’s prairie landscape. I had scouted and became acquainted with an area of Alberta I was interested in and will return to.
Harvest, though, caught me by surprise. Somewhere between 10:30 – 11:00 p.m. I drove past this late-night harvest scene below. The sight was extraordinary for me because the grain harvest in northern Alberta occurs from late August to mid-September. Here, it was an extraordinary sight … to see as many as five combines gathering grain from the prairie immensity. These mid-August images contain silhouettes of combines and grain haulers outlined in black against a colourful backdrop of setting sun, sky and prairie. People are at work, doing this day’s work as daylight diminishes.
Catcher’s Mitt & Day’s End
My day did not end there. Returning late to Lethbridge meant supper would be drive-through or order-in, and I hadn’t eaten for hours. Near midnight, a McDonald’s provided two quarter-pounders with cheese and a pop. A young, homeless teen hid in the shadows of the building beyond the sight of the cashier. As I moved from the drive-through, the teen presented cardboard on which was written, ‘Needing food. Can you help?’ I gave her twenty dollars, then left, returning to my hotel.
In all this, consideration of Thomas King’s novel has continued to intrigue me in its detail, humour, happenings, intention, and reference to areas of this country I know. It seems to hold the potential to prompt moving toward a good understanding of historical, colonial or treaty complexities for treaty people on both sides of each treaty. The narrative leaves off with vacationers returning from a vacation to the stability and familiarity routine offers but with questions and urgings about what’s next. Often returning from vacation, though, we are empowered (and perhaps have gained perspective enough) to consider ‘the what’ of what’s next. For Bird and Mimi, Tofino is on the table.
A year later, the photographs gathered continue to serve as a point of departure, not just in terms of images or photographic projects, but as a jumping-off point for thought and perspective gathered from such thought. A catcher’s mitt was at play within the day in song, thought and photos.
Quote to Consider / Inspire: “I like it when one is not certain about what one sees. When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden, we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion.” – Saul Leiter.
Listening to: Courtney Marie Andrews’ ‘I’ll be Thinking On You,’ Ben Harper’s ‘Yard Sale,’ Terra Lighfoot’s ‘One High Note,’ GA-20’s ‘Dry Run,’ Iris Dement’s ‘The Sacred Now,’ Alberta Hunter’s ‘I’ve Got a Mind to Ramble,’ and Kue Varo’s ‘Yip Yip.’
A re-edit and reworking of vehicle images from this blog, photos captured a decade ago, are presented here – line, shape, and size draw my attention, as does consideration of vehicle ride, feel, weight and driveability. Nostalgia may describe my desire to see and photograph these vehicles. However, these vehicles are from former eras. My interest is also in the post-war world of mom and dad, uncles and aunts, grandparents, and the time preceding me – their time engages my imagination.
The trucks were part of an army of vehicles that played a role in constructing the Mackenzie highway that serves northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories. They had been part of the vehicle collection of the Mackenzie Highway Truck Museum at Sangudo, Alberta. The museum vehicles have since been auctioned off long after the photographs were taken, and the museum structure itself has been dismantled and taken away. I am reminded here that my educator-grandfather worked different administrative roles in the highway’s construction during his summer teaching breaks. The early fifties Pontiac (a Chieftain or Pathfinder) continues to sit along the Mackenzie highway on its west side at Grimm’s Service Station in Manning, Alberta. My Pontiac interest derives from a two-door 1969 Pontiac Parisienne that transported our family through eleven years, the vehicle my parents taught me to drive in. A ‘car-guy’ interest also draws me to find aesthetic commonality or influence between the older and newer Pontiacs.
This text revision occurred on Friday, 18 August 2023. Wildfires in the Northwest Territories threaten communities and have burned through some communities. Yesterday, the city of Yellowknife was added to the list of communities being evacuated, and it is possible that wildfires could reach the city this weekend. The Mackenzie highway, referred to above, is the exodus route for NWT residents relocating to Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray, Edmonton and Calgary evacuation centers. These residents of the NWT are travelling through High Level today, gassing up, finding food and carrying on. It is indeed a hard thing they do: leave all that home is behind, take those things most precious with you, and not know what’s next. You are in our thoughts today. We wish you well.
Listening to – Snow Patrol’s ‘Chasing Cars‘ and ‘Berlin,’ Kathleen Edwards’ ‘Take It With You When You Go,’ and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Ghosts.’
Quote to Inspire – “Photography has no rules; it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved (Bill Brandt).”
7 – St. Henry’s Roman Catholic Church, Twin Butte, Alberta
8 – St. Henry’s Roman Catholic Church, Twin Butte, Alberta
9 – St. Henry’s Roman Catholic Church, Twin Butte, Alberta
10 – Twin Butte, Foothills, Front Range Moutains
11 – Twin Butte, Foothills, Front Range Moutains
12 – Foothills Homestead
13 – Foothills Homestead
14 – Foothills Cloud Work
15 – Foothills Homestead
16 – Foothills Cloud Work
17 – Waterton Lakes National Park
18 – Waterton Lakes National Park
19 – Waterton Lakes National Park
20 – Waterton Lakes National Park
Getting south – it began with a camera lens. While I was required to be in Edmonton for our annual, mid-year teacher conference, I would have three days to myself prior to this conference. I could work on finding a used 28mm Zeiss Biogon lens, a rangefinder lens that while wide-angle is rumoured not to offer any distortion. It had just been advertised. And, I had been looking. One 28mm Zeiss Biogon lens was on offer in Calgary. It would be a used lens, but it would be half the price of buying one new. The seller was unloading gear – trading away and aiming toward new and better. From Calgary, I could then head south into the Pincher Creek, Waterton and Lethbridge areas and follow my eye’s curiosity and gather images with my camera.
Locking in this plan, I began my drive late on a Sunday afternoon in February. The drive would be under overcast skies. The temperature would be close to 0C throughout the drive. I would use ten hours to get to my destination. I could manage it. I would pass through Edmonton near 11:00 p.m., proceed to Red Deer and stay the night at a hotel there. The drive to Edmonton was uneventful. The drive beyond Edmonton was not ideal. Temperatures through the day had been warmer. I was driving a car, not my truck. I began my drive toward Red Deer. I got on to the Queen Elizabeth II (QEII) Highway (between Edmonton and Calgary). With temperatures close to 0C through the day and with a recent snowfall, the QEII was slushy, sloppy and slippery. I passed the Wetaskiwin turn-off and then encountered a brightly lit, highway alert road sign indicating that travel was treacherous. The drive became a matter of keeping a safe speed and working through the road’s slushy, ever-hardening, icy mess. I made it to Red Deer, got a hotel room, showered and got to sleep.
The next morning was sunny. I messaged the lens seller advising that I could meet today and provided a location in downtown Calgary for us to meet. The lens seller indicated that meeting at lunch was possible. All was in the works. I breakfasted across the way from the hotel at Red Deer’s Donut Mill. Then, the seller messaged back. The seller could not meet. The seller would need a day or two in order to meet. I am not sure how best to have managed this situation. But, the time frame would not work for this trip. And, the seller was deviating from his first communication. A red flag went up, for me. Many things could have been at play for the seller. And, perhaps aiming to meet in the same day as my indicating interest was problematic. I halted things and asked the seller to disregard my interest in the lens. All this occurred within and hour and a half of first messaging the seller.
I moved on.
With that done I found myself in Central Alberta, still with an intention to travel further south and to explore with my camera. Travel would take me to Calgary and to The Camera Store. I would look around at books, at new cameras (Nikon and Fuji), at used cameras, at used lenses, at new lenses, at camera bags. I would have two good chats with sales people – warm, educating, engaging conversations, conversations in which my curiosity was able to lead some of the way. Good. I left at the end of store hours aiming to return to the store as I came back through Calgary.
Onward to Lethbridge – my intention was to get settled in Lethbridge and work from there to look around southern Alberta. Later that evening, I got a hotel room, washed my car and got a meal.
The next day, after a good breakfast at the hotel, I started out. The day began as one overcast with heavy, grey cloud. But, weather in this part of Alberta is quite changeable in terms of how it interacts with the Rocky Mountains. Mountain weather is something intriguing, especially for my northern Alberta eyes – something I remember from times hiking along mountain trails on out-trips in the Crowsnest Pass and when camping in Banff and Jasper. Almost as soon as I moved south and west from Lethbridge I encountered windfarms – rows and rows of gigantic, white wind turbines used to gather / produce electricity. I would drive south from Fort MacLeod and on my route to Pincher Creek I would find other wind farms. In posting wind farm images on Facebook, earlier this year, I would find that many people in southern Alberta no longer see their value, are concerned about their impact on the environment and find themselves rejecting how they have altered the landscape they live within. Along the drive I would find last areas of prairie within foothills. I would find homesteads as the only structures seen on the land for miles and miles, the land being that allocated for grain farming. From Pincher Creek to Waterton Lake National Park I moved further into the undulation of foothills and the mountains; the weather was mountain weather, weather that can shift rapidly. Sunshine and bright blue sky would be there one minute, the next I was driving through or standing in a cloud. Cloud work so close to land has immensity and is something to take in. Light and shadow are always moving with these clouds revealing a shifting contour, shape and relief. The highway south from Pincher Creek becomes the path along which foothills meet the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Homesteads are a part of this landscape as well – grain farms and cattle ranches. Again, changeable mountain weather, mountain and foothill landscape, farms and roads – all would catch my eye, my curiosity, my imagination.
I took a chance on a historic site. I drove from the highway out and up to Twin Butte upon which St. Henry’s Catholic Church sits; to the east it looks out to the prairies; to the west it looks from the butte over a valley of foothills and to the front range of the Canadian Rockies. To look out over all this, immensity is there … and it would be appropriate to use the term majestic. I rounded out my day’s picture-taking with a small look into Waterton Lake National Park before returning to Lethbridge. I paid the day’s entrance fee and took a slow drive into the park to gather a couple of images – the Prince of Wales Hotel is subject of two of these images. A good day out with my camera, it was. The next day I would return to Edmonton, to colleagues, to a conference. The Zeiss Biogon 28mm lens remains a lens I am still hunting for.
Quote to Inspire / Consider – “To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, there are always two people: the photographer and the viewer (Ansel Adams).”
Listening to – a cover of John Prine’s ‘Summer’s End’ by Sierra Hull; a song that’s so big and full of grace; Sierra does John proud with it. Good, good.
In Alberta’s northwest my family and I have lived in Fox Lake, Garden River, La Crete and High Level. The roads are long and distances travelled influence our cost of living. It can be cost effective to travel south for supplies if you are buying in bulk and stocking up. Yet, buying local permits piecemeal buying as needed and supports local business. We buy groceries here at home. And, I will travel south in the year.
Dunvegan – it is a place I travel through on my way south to Grande Prairie; with the suspension bridge crossing the Peace River, it is a place I know by sight; it became a place I would investigate. Fifteen years would pass before indigenous Art, Alberta history and site use would coalesce with it being a fixed name in my mind – Dunvegan. Like other points along the Peace River you descend into this river valley. A road cuts a long two-kilometre gradient into each valley wall, north and south, to ease the braking efforts of heavy-laden transport trucks. At the lowest point, you cross the kilometre-wide Peace River on a yellow and brown suspension bridge. Then you accelerate moving up and out of the river valley – south towards Rycroft, north towards Fairview. Dunvegan is the name given to the plateau area under and surrounding the north side of the bridge.
Seeing Dunvegan – I would see Dunvegan in indigenous paintings at Grande Prairie Art galleries. The contour of the land folding down from a high river bank to plateau holds the eye. With skilled use of colour and light, the painter could draw attention to sacred place and practices. Longing for old ways was found in such Art. Still though, I was not recognizing these paintings as the area I travelled through a couple of times a year.
Dunvegan took hold in my classroom with my students. Each day, along with our school, students and staff read for 15 minutes. ‘Drop Everything And Read’ (DEAR) saw my students return to one book for regular reading, ‘Alberta Ghost Stories.’ One tale in the book told of a ghost sighting in an upper room in one of the old Dunvegan historical buildings. From what I recall, as with most ghost stories, light dwindles well past dusk. A living and breathing mortal is walking outside the house. He feels compelled to look up and sees someone or something looking at him. There is surprise, impact and connection in seeing and in being seen. The tale’s impact is greater finding out that the house has been shut-up for decades with no way in. Readers in my class always discussed what they thought was going on … offering speculation. The story became real to them. Like me, my students and their parents traveled through Dunvegan on their way to Grande Prairie. Often, they would stop at Dunvegan for lunch or a smoke break. The Dunvegan story held their imagination and during a travel break they would investigate as far as they dared. My students’ stories of being in Dunvegan would return with them to class every few months.
Still, haste in my travels got the better of me. I was not yet stopping at Dunvegan in my travels southward. And, it was only a few years ago that I first stopped in at Dunvegan. My wife had spoken about a nursery for spring bedding plants that she and a friend would go to hours south from High Level. She had been talking about Dunvegan Gardens, one of the best nurseries in Alberta. You find it at/on the eastern-most section of the Dunvegan plateau. Located between Fairview and Rycroft, the Dunvegan Gardens serves residents of Grande Prairie and from as far north as High Level.
One time, as she and I came upon the Dunvegan turn-off my wife pointed out the Dunvegan Gardens to me. It was the place she and her friend had been. And, my wife got me to slow down, turn-in and stop at Dunvegan to look around. I was finally connecting the dots – this was Dunvegan. Since that time, perhaps for the last six or seven years, I have been making time to stop and look around with my camera. Good. The Dunvegan site is a beautiful and worthy landscape in all seasons. One of these times I am hoping to pass through the area in late October or early November when the Dunvegan valley is sometimes shrouded in mists.
Dunvegan has been one of the prominent fur trading areas in Alberta. Fort Dunvegan was a trading post. Established by the Northwest Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company would later take over the trading post. A Factor’s house still stands. The site would evolve to hold two Churches, a Roman Catholic mission – St. Charles, and, an Anglican mission later – St. Saviour’s. Behind the Factor’s house is the plateau area upon which are four or five Tipis with poles raised waiting for hide or canvas covers. The site is older than Canadian history, the site being a meeting point or assembly area for indigenous peoples.
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).”
Listening to – The Candid Frame: Conversations about Photography podcast and Ibarionex Perello’s time in Japan in December, 2019; being present to situation, setting, light. Good, good.
High Level, Alberta images consider the cold of January – mist reflects light from main street, street lights (-18C); dense, early morning mist surrounds the high school (-42C).
Quote to Consider / Inspire: “Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future (Sally Mann).”
Listening to: an audiobook of Sebastion Barry’s ‘The Secret Scripture;’ and, U2’s ‘Lights of Home.’
The sky is blue. Long, thin wisps of cloud move at higher altitude in the atmosphere – we could have cloud cover in a day’s time. Following winter solstice, the sun perches low over the horizon in the afternoon. At 2:00 p.m. shadows run long over unimpeded surfaces. Buildings on either side of Edmonton city streets become canyons holding solstice shadow. Without a cloud blanket, the sun’s radiant heat will continue to escape and our part of the world will grow colder in coming days. In daylight, it is -32C … it is a colder day for some photos. Steam, a by-product from buildings maintaining heat, drizzles upwards into the atmosphere. Colder images from a colder Edmonton afternoon during Christmas break.
Quote to Consider / Inspire – “The most important thing about photography is who you are, and I can go into depth about the psychology of that, but there’s no way you can take a photograph and not leave your imprint on it. Every time you hit the shutter it’s based on who you are, that’s what makes you different from everybody else. My style is that I shoot from the heart, to the heart (Joe Buissink, Light Stalking).”
Listening to: Carrie Newcomer’s ‘The Beautiful Not Yet,’ ‘Three Feet or So,’ ‘Sanctuary,’ ‘Cedar Rapids at 10 AM’ and ‘A Shovel is a Prayer.’
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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