Few Edmonton buildings call to mind New York’s projects, rugged and raw, half-formed, partially dismantled buildings of a not too distant era left behind and left derelict – home to those few or many down-on-their luck. The site of Edmonton’s former Molson Brewery in its semi-dismantled, unfinished and unconcluded state reminds me of the sights and sounds, the cadences and dialects of the English being spoken as I travelled by Greyhound from Toronto to Buffalo to New York City and then to Convent Station New Jersey in August of 1989 – a trip far away it seems in time, yet surprisingly near within imagination’s recollection. The priest who’d had his tonsils taken out at the kitchen table, the orthodox Jew in black taking daughters from Buffalo to New York, the Nun who led us in chant and harmony, the writing, writing and writing, Grand Central Station, Broadway, twenty-foot sidewalks populated with policemen, train travel and a Greyhound Strike – all were part of that five day trip.
Listening to and fretting Rickie Lee Jones’ Sailor Song, finding the sound and the rhythmic rhythm of a boat’s rolling on waves.
Quote to Inspire – “The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things in words.” – Elliott Erwitt
Metallic spheres are jumbled into a pile in an architectural or sculptural masterpiece on the east side of the southern end of Edmonton’s Quesnel bridge, a marvel … the kind you would expect to find near or under Seattle’s Space Needle.
What surprised me in my work photographing the structure is that each sphere reflects you back from whatever standpoint you are at. You cannot be out of the picture unless you leave your camera atop your tripod and move 100 feet from the scene. “No matter where you go there you are.”
Listening to and fretting David Gray’s Sail Away and Dar Williams’ The Beauty of the Rain.
Quote to Inspire – “I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.” – Trent Parke
A day or two after Christmas 2012, my brother and I got our families outside snowshoeing at Chickahoo Lake. In fresh air, our group got themselves tromping around the lake; I did so with my camera finding these cattails along the eastern lakeshore.
Listening to much of Jack Johnson this morning – Banana Pancakes, Sleep Through the Static, Bubble Toes and Staple It Together.
Quote to Inspire – “A photograph has picked up a fact of life, and that fact will live forever.” Raghu Rai
For Ivan, who took an enormous, enjoyable squeeze out of Life … a blessing from many to accompany your passing. Ivan passed away in Penticton, BC last week at the age of 74 leaving behind many good friends and family. The words are that of John O’Donohue but the sentiment and blessing contained within them are shared and offered by many.
I pray that you will have the blessing
Of being consoled and sure about your death.
May you know in your soul
There is no need to be afraid.
When your time comes, may you have
Every blessing and strength you need.
May there be a beautiful welcome for you
In the home you are going to.
You are not going somewhere strange,
Merely back to the home you have never left.
May you live with compassion
And transfigure everything
Negative within and about you.
When you come to die,
May it be after a long life.
May you be tranquil
Among those who care for you.
May your going be sheltered
And your welcome assured.
May your soul smile
In the embrace
Of your Anam Cara (that radiant source of wisdom, that link between the human and the divine).
~ Entering Death, To Bless the Space Between Us (A Book of Blessings), John O’Donohue
2012 – we will soon close-out 2012 and all that has been our photography through this year. Many of you have made your way to wordpress along a similar path, catalyzed by the prospect of a photo-a-day improving how we approach photography and taking that daily step of opening and closing a camera shutter, editing a photo and then loading the image (most times with comment) into your wordpress blog. I am in awe of the immensity of this endeavor and grateful to be in receipt of that recursive back and forth of dialogue, something that has created synergy and momentum in each of us returning to our wordpress blog with new images each day. Very good schtuff!
Each of you has been example to me. Each of you has captured images of Life being lived – medias res. Your photos contain mood, capture moment, find humour. I am indebted to each of you for those images of yours that stay with me, that I think about through the day and week. With likes, comments and encouragement, you’ve nudged me forward, further and further with photography this year and I have pushed the envelope in big ways. For all this, I am grateful … thank you for your part in what my 2012 has been.
Take good care of your good, good selves … and enjoy the season as best you can – Merry Christmas.
Former Field Anchor – the photo presented here is another fence post found around Sangudo, Alberta. Again, the play has been in find ways to represent this image.
Listening to – Bruce Springsteen’s Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Happy Christmas (War is Over), Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, Chubby Checker & Bobby Rydell’s Jingle Bell Rock and Perry Como’s Home for the Holidays.
Quote to Inspire – “All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.” – Elliott Erwitt
This farmhouse image is one that I connect to moments we’ve all had – that ethereal, restless dream state when dreaming’s hallucination can draw forth what seems other-worldly connection. For me, I recall Mr. Lockwood who upon renting Thrushcross Grange ventured out on a winter walk to meet and greet his landlord, a man by the name of Heathcliff. The story, set in the late 1700s – early 1800s, sees the newly installed Mr. Lockwood walking to the property of his new landlord, a home with a name – Wuthering Heights. A snow storm brews up and makes it necessary for Mr. Lockwood to stay the night in his landlord’s home.
A place is made for him in what seems is a book cupboard or closet.
He reads a pen and ink commentary set forth in the margins of books within this sleeping closet; print books, the only source of paper available to another character, Catherine Earnshaw, are the place where Catherine journals about and considers her life – a journal that in tone and availability serves as confidante for the teen who as estate owner’s daughter is without ready access to peers her age at the Wuthering Heights farm estate. Mr. Lockwood can’t sleep – he reads and reads and reads about Catherine and Heathcliff … until in that ethereal, restless dream state he enters into dream hallucination, a state in which he encounters a young Catherine who within the snow storm outside knocks at ‘his’ window asking to be let in. The farmhouse in this image meets well many of the essential elements of what my mind imagines that Wuthering Heights could be. This house seems ready for all that Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, might hold. And, there’s more to that story ….
Listening to – Maria Dunn’s God Bless Us Everyone, Michael Hoppe’s Land of Serenity, Bill Douglas’ Irish Lullaby, Grant McAskill’s Bitter Season, Catherine Anne McFee’s I See Winter and Paul Brady’s Help Me Believe.
Quote to Inspire – “I want the viewers to be moved into the lives of the people that they are looking at, the visual experience is incredibly emotional.” Paul Fusco
December winter scene – homestead and trees, land that once was broken, now fenced in – protected, reminding and reminiscent of lives and the work of living. Snow blankets dormant land and caps a fence post, one among many anchoring three strands of barbed wire used to hold animals to this area of land while they graze. Horizon, sky, former home, snow and wood’s texture, softer muted colours – all hold my eye and attention.
Listening to – Madeleine Peyroux’s J’ai Deux Amours, Kenny Gamble’s Me and Mrs. Jones, Toni Sola’s Night Sounds Blues, and Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close to You, recognizable songs among others that form the From Paris With Love Soundtrack.
Quote to Inspire – “Emotion or feeling is really the only thing about pictures I find interesting. Beyond that is just a trick.” – Christopher Anderson
A December day – my brother forwards an e-mail from a family friend, someone from the old neighborhood in Edmonton’s Ottewell community, a friend we shared the neighborhood with as kids. At eighty years, his father, a good friend of my father’s, has passed – succumbing to cancer’s disease. The e-mail conveys global or summary view of his father, a statement written by a man in middle-age, a message made more striking because of its first shift to the past tense of Life – Life has been lived well; Life lived on … beyond the passing of his wife thirty years prior; and, anticipation of how the loss will be felt and recognized. Life’s patterns will change for his family without him.
My memory is of him, his wife, his three boys and his daughter in their Edmonton home on 94b Avenue during the seventies. An accountant, he drove a chocolate brown BMW sedan way back then. My Dad and he shared wit and story. Both were sharp, intelligent people – achievers with achievements; they and their wives had travelled – our families vacationed together. Dad and he were close and knew how to share time together well. Our families may even have met at Church – Ottewell United Church. As I think him through I think of starting points, places any of us began. For him, he’d been adopted in the thirties and loved and raised well – something carried on in each of his children.
Listening to – Roky Erickson’s You’re Gonna Miss Me, Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy, Elton John’s Crocodile Rock, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ Crimson and Clover, Katrina and the Waves Walking on Sunshine and Bruce Springsteen’s The River.
Quote to Inspire – “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” – Garry Winogrand
Molson signage, atop the former, now derelict Edmonton Molson brewing plant anchors Edmonton to a nostalgic, retro-feel of former days. Next door is the former Crosstown Motors’ Dodge Chrysler dealership site. Blocks away from Edmonton’s Waterloo Mercury dealership on 107th Avenue and 114th Street, the Molson Brewery site is perhaps most appropriately considered part of Edmonton’s Oliver community. Beer was made here, and through each year brewer after brewer was bought out by the larger Molson corporation, each good beer being subsumed into Molson’s menu of beer. The Molson building and brewery site is now in the process of being dismantled. It’s in the way of what now could be. There’s a great gash in the earth in front of the brewery building – what had been basement to a portion of the brewing site is being removed. The older, more aesthetically pleasing portion of the building still remains, behind chain-link fence. Architecturally, this regal, ornate building dates back to the 1920’s or thirties … perhaps the forties. Design, texture and colour all comprise what the building is about … but you do have to look around to see what is there.
I’m reminded of a summer, two years back and of combining a quality ginger beer with a dark lager, making something Dad called a Shandy for Dad and I – a couple of good, summer sips.
Listening to – You Can’t Buy Shoes in a Painting, by Jill Osier (read by Eliza Foss from poetryfoundation.org) on CKUA.
Quote to Inspire – “A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny moments in a person’s life that reveal greater truths.” – Anonymous
Saturday, we are two Saturdays before the Christmas of 2012. The Mayan calendar that had threatened to cancel all of time’s forward movement now seems unlikely to halt the movement of the moon and planets; the clock and calendar will continue to tick on, day by day.
Tonight, it’s been television with family – The Barbie Nutcracker and now Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby in White Christmas. Today, Christmas plans have been considered; how our few Christmas days will be spent with family has been hammered through. We will see my father, we will see my brothers, our kids – the cousins will gather and shop and talk; there will be Christmas games and family times … and photos. For us, way up north, most Christmas gifts have been gathered. Some discussions still need that – discussion; but, the gifting of gifts is being sorted through and understood with good understanding. A photo of a Rocky Lane homestead house, already framed upon my wall will become present for my father, a pioneering reminder/analogy for my father and his Edmonton work at Edmonton Works – the textures and highlights and colours work well together and hold the eye and interest of the viewer.
Tonight, there’s the excited buzz of cousins chatting at a distance over the telephone about the possibilities that their Christmas will hold – a holiday is being planned, places to shop are being determined and things asked for are being disclosed. There’s been a daughter/father phone call checking in on how Christmas will be spent at another location where we will not be; there’s been goodwill there and solid encouragement to spend time with that son of ours who’s been away at University these last four months. As things wind down at work, things are winding up for the Christmas we will make for our family and friends – last evening it was a joy just to sit around a kitchen table at a friend’s home, to chat and dig a little deeper into that thing we call Life … friendship’s blessing – something I’ve been able to count upon all year.
Today’s been a slower one, a day for recovery from a weeklong cold, a day to exercise and yet a day to slow down and gather energy. I fell asleep watching the Shawshank Redemption, a film that Steve Stockman (Stocki) has often recommended. I’ve been editing photographs today, older ones from within this year … a second glance, a second edit and the second-sight of understanding visual narrative within images; it’s been a time to experiment and play … a good day.
Listening to – Holly Golightly’s Wherever You Were, Tim Armstrong’s Into Action, Hawaii Five-O by the Ventures, Nazareth’s This Flight Tonight and Joy sung by Mick Jagger with Bono.
Quote to Inspire – “With photography, I like to create fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society’s natural prejudice and giving this a twist.” – Martin Parr
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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