From My Ford-Focused Canon 60D

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Home, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Winter

Nose – 1938 Ford One Ton Tow Truck

Ford Grain Truck – Wabamun, Alberta

67 Ford Econoline Van

64 Mercury Monterey 2

64 Mercury Monterey 1

Looking up from my Ford-focused Canon 60D the highway held a semi hauling a flat-deck trailer with a Diversified Bus on it, its roof crushed – a sight as curious as it is disturbing. Diversified runs buses in northeastern Alberta. A passenger bus like this, the kind Greyhound uses, is never something anyone wishes to see in this state – the image implies rollover and injury. Hopefully, the accident was less serious than can be imagined. But, on those long, northern Alberta drives Greyhound buses do slide sideways on ice, occasionally – accidents involving such buses do occur from time to time.

Each image presented, here, has been an editing exercise exploring editing sequences other photographers have utilized to arrive at final image renderings. Ford Motor Company (FOMOCO) provides subject for these images – the nose of the 1938 Ford One Ton Tow Truck, a late sixties Ford One Ton grain truck, a 64 Mercury Monterey and a 67 Ford Econoline van.

Listening to – Gwyneth Paltrow singing ‘Country Song’ and ‘Travis.’

Quote to Inspire – “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

Moments You Can’t Get Out Of

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Still Life, Weather, Winter

Jasper Alberta 1

Mountain River – McLure BC

Mount Robson BC 2

Mount Robson BC 1

Lake Okanagan – Kelowna BC

Jasper Alberta 3

Jasper Alberta 2

My wife told me that she had noticed the oil pressure indicator flashing and remaining on two weeks ago today. Hearing her words, I went outside and checked the oil dipstick and confirmed that we did have oil in the engine. Because we had a long drive to Edmonton coming I called the service technicians who advised that the issue could be an electrical problem with the sensor or an actual oil leak. They advised watching the fluid levels on the way down and to bring it in for service. I checked the oil before leaving. And, then, checked it again three hours later in Peace River … the oil pressure sensor light had come on. I pulled out the dipstick … there was no oil. What to do? Travelling on a Sunday the dealership wasn’t open. Calling roadside assistance only let me know that they would tow the vehicle to a maximum of 125 kilometres … I had 500 kilometres to go before making it to the dealership. I talked things over with a friend. The tow cost would be about $900 to get the vehicle to Edmonton. If I managed checking and adding oil as needed I might make it to Edmonton at considerably less cost. My wife and daughter got a hotel room in Peace River; they would come down with friends who would pick them up the next day. I would aim to make it to Edmonton adding four litres of oil to the engine every forty-five minutes. I made it after another seven hours, topping up the oil at -20C temperatures. At one point I lost the oil cap in one of those unreachable places of the engine compartment and had to jury-rig an alternative using sheet plastic.

From Edmonton, it was a flight to Penticton via Vancouver the next day to work on assets associated with my father-in-law’s estate. With a day’s work done, there, I began the drive back to Edmonton only to find that the highway I had chosen had to be closed because of accidents occurring in the slush and snow. Doubling back, I was able to drive through Kamloops on the Yellowhead Trail and aim for Edmonton via Jasper. I stopped for the night at Kamloops and then began my drive on the Yellowhead, a bright day with dry roads. I got a meal along the way and within a couple of hours was the unwitting victim of food poisoning. With no energy and chills I decided to hunker down in Valemount, British Columbia – at 2:00 p.m.. I got a hotel room and slept my way around the clock. After many hours of sleep, weakened, but ready to aim for home, I got back in the vehicle. The mountain images presented here are those preceding food poisoning and those from the day driving from Valemount to Edmonton.

Listening to – U2’s ‘Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,’ ‘In a Little While,’ ‘Elevation,’ and ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.’

Quote to Inspire – “A photograph is the pause button on life.” – Ty Holland

At the Ready

Backlight, Barn, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, Gas Station, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Winter

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 1

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 11

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 10

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 9

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 8

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 7

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 6

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 5

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 4

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 3

Ford One Ton Tow Truck – McLure BC 2

A 1938 Ford one-ton tow truck sits, seemingly at the ready, gazing out to the highway. Yet, at the ready, looks a lot like ready to sell.

Static, the Ford’s paint flakes away and metal beneath oxidizes into rust, colourfully. Curves are the thing, in the shape and detail of the cab, in each window, throughout the length and nose of the hood, in the catch-all of the fenders and in the perfect circles of the lights; straight lines add contrast to these curves with the verticals and horizontals of the running boards, bumper and grill; and then there are the diagonals associated with the structure for leverage, towing and pulling other vehicles. There’s remarkable engineering, here, both in the original build of the Ford and in the impromptu innovation of the towing structure … someone has the knack for towing vehicles. The whole vehicle is architecture, engineering, shape and detail from a former time, a time that preceded me, a time that was my father’s – all pull my interest to this Ford. And, there’s anticipation of how it would drive and how it would ride … the finding of gears, the getting it to move and remain moving … there’d be the unique bounce and shift of weight as the truck moves over terrain … there’d be the rhythm of engine combustion idling and working, pacing out each mile … and there’d be the view from within while piloting this vehicle – all intrigue me.

Automobiles that have left the road have been set back on the road surface by this Ford. Remnants of collisions – damaged vehicles, damaged people and damaged egos, their aftermath has needed transfer to homes, autobody shops and junk yards, something this Ford has provided regularly. In extreme and extraordinary winter weather this Ford has been one to venture out on uncertain roads and perhaps there would be no safer place than in an outfitted Ford one-ton tow truck with a rested driver who understands people, the road and his machine. This Ford one-ton tow truck is for sale down around McLure, British Columbia; the first person with $2000 or so dollars takes it.

Listening to – Tom Cochrane’s ‘Big League’.

Quote to Inspire – “Buy a good pair of comfortable shoes, have a camera around your neck at all times, keep your elbows in, be patient, optimistic and don’t forget to smile.” – Matt Stuart

Inuksuk GPS

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Winter

Inuksuk 1

Inuksuk 2

Inuksuk 3

Inuksuk 4

Semblance of human existence, an inuksuk serves as landmark and waypoint on one’s unknown path or journey. Its surprise guides you along your way when you’re alone with map and compass, scanning the horizon, considering the course you’ll take; its message – “you are on the right path, keep going … you’ll get there.” With an inuksuk, another human being has taken the time to gather stone and rock to create a representation of the human form only to encourage you and others, letting all know that others have been right where you now stand/sit. At that point where they experienced indecision in navigation, they came back to this point to guide you forward.

Navigation – some of my week has been about travel in unknown territory. I’ve been driving using my global positioning satellite unit, my Tom Tom GPS to direct me to my destination. At one point the mountain road I was on was closed down owing to slush and snow. I had to double back to find another route – a four hour correction in the middle of the night. While there were lines on the road and tire tracks of vehicles preceding me, there were no inuksuks along the way.

Listening to – War’s ‘Low Rider,’ Bo Diddley’s ‘Ride on Josephine,’ Moby’s ‘Flower,’ The Crystal Method’s ‘Busy Child,’ Lori Carson’s ‘You Won’t Fall’ and Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues.’

Quote to Inspire – “Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.” – Garry Winogrand

No Through Road

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, Homestead, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Winter

No Through Road 1

No Through Road 2

No Through Road 3

No Through Road 4

No Through Road 5

In Alberta’s northwest, a backroad highway connects the town of Grimshaw with the town of Fairview; halfway between the two this road runs north one kilometre from the connector into muskeg and bush, a place where a family has made their home. At this intersection, heart-shaped wreaths are attached to two signs – this one, ‘No Through Road’ leading into this homestead; and, another is attached to the stop sign as the road rejoins traffic along the connector highway. The words ‘no through road’ within a setting in which a farmer would have a tough go in producing crops or raising livestock provoke ideas about Life’s journey needing to be carved out, step following step, day-by-day with eyes upon one’s goal – our path being something we construct each day of our Life. Life becomes journey, Life holds endeavor and endeavor is about recognizing potential, engaging in work, and celebrating/acknowledging achievement.

Thinking through this No Through Road sign first surfaced ideas about settling and moving no further, recalling mediocrity, a term derived from medias (middle) and ocrus (mountain), settling having to do with the climb of a journey up a mountain and finding oneself getting comfortable at the halfway point so much so that no further movement along the climb is undertaken. The narrative within this image is not about mediocrity, however. Life’s endeavor or Life’s challenge is more significant, that act of choosing to plant yourself where you are, looking to what you can achieve, using all that you know – skills and abilities – to embrace Life’s challenge in order to add something into the world. That’s what goes on at the end of this road. The through road that is yet to come will associate to the Life or Lives beyond the present endeavor at this road’s end.

Wreaths tied to signs caused me to stop and look around; the wreaths are inviting and suggest love and care and concern for others; the wreaths also serve to landmark one family’s location on their portion of the frontier for others to find.

Listening to – The Cinematic Orchestra and ‘Ma Fleur’.

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

Erode & Gleam

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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

Dodges, Pontiac and Ford – All Start

Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Christmas, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Still Life, Sunset, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Winter

38 Ford 1 – Lamont, Alberta

38 Ford 2 – Lamont, Alberta

38 Ford 3 – Lamont, Alberta

38 Ford Grill Work – Lamont, Alberta

My mind seems to be within the years tonight, thinking back to Ardrossan, out east from Edmonton, to Ivan’s country estate, an expansive, one-level home set on an acreage lot with a shop big enough to accommodate a semi-tractor unit (or perhaps two). Within the shop there’d be a mocha Chrysler New Yorker with black vinyl roof, a white Dodge 100 shortbox (his father’s) with a camper on top, a gold and brown Dodge Mirada and an old, old, blue Ford tractor with blade behind it to grade the snow and gravel.

On a Saturday or Sunday in the eighties I’d bring his daughter (now my wife) out to the acreage – she’d spend time with her mother in the house and I’d spend time out in the shop chatting – looking at the world with a sideways glance with Ivan. We’d reason our way through a few things. We’d work on the brakes for a motorbike for his son or replace a piston or piston ring on his skidoo. And, we talk all the way through it. He’d have an old, old Coke Machine in the corner stocked with eight or nine flats of beer … sodas, he called them … and in the course of an evening a chunk of a flat would disappear.

Outside his shop, one time, we ran oil or power steering fluid through the running carburetor of my father’s 69 Pontiac Parisienne. The engine coughed and coughed and sputtered; it may have died. And, then with some skilled cranking of the starter Ivan brought it back to life with a roar – the carburetor now clean and optimized. I’m sure he was having some fun with me … seeing where my worry and trust would lie.

A few years later he set me to work polishing a four-door, cream coloured Ford Gran Torino, a vehicle our family bought from our uncle in Rimbey. This was the four door version of the 76 Ford Gran Torino made more notable by the Starsky and Hutch television series in the late seventies. With our Ford and with a professional polisher, rubbing compound and glaze I worked on the car for four of five hours. Ivan had me wash down the engine in addition to washing the exterior. When it came time to drive home the Gran Torino wouldn’t start. And, when I went up to the house I found that while my girlfriend (now wife) and her mother were watching television, he was sleeping in his chair. Not wanting to disturb him, I went back down to the shop, hooked up some booster cables between the Ford and his Dodge Ram, not knowing anything about reversed polarities on the Dodges of the day.

Hmmh … Now two vehicles wouldn’t start.

I had to roust Ivan from his sleep and let him know that in addition to my not being able to start my vehicle, I now couldn’t start his. The language was colourful, yet mindful of not wanting to go too, too far. He seemed to know within minutes that water under the distributor cap of the Ford was the problem; we dried it with a rag. And where there’d be an electrical etching in the top of the distributor cap, he knew to take a pencil and draw two lines, one on each side of the etching, perpendicular to it; that limited the problem. We boosted the Ford … still using his Dodge, his way. The Ford started. I’m sure he was happy to get me on my way. And, he was certain that he’d have his truck running within moments after I left. Ivan was a Dodge man.

Ivan was one of the first people I’d heard refer to rust on a vehicle as it being cancered out or having cancer … something he knew how to remedy in an autobody shop. The Ford image presented here is one found a few miles from the southern gate of Elk Island National park; the nearest towns would probably be Lamont or Bruderheim. To some extent the Ford has its share of cancer; but, in totality there is more there of the car than not there, making it an excellent candidate for restoration. The vehicle has had me thinking back to Ivan and the early days of dating my wife. 🙂

Listening to – ‘The End of Illness’ by David B. Agus, MD, a book looking at a systems approach to good health … it’s about understanding your body’s system and how it works, for you.

Quote to Inspire – “Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly is.” – Anonymous

Spherical Pile

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Light Intensity, Still Life, Winter

Spherical Pile – Edmonton, Alberta

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

Cattails – Eastern lakeshore

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Christmas, Flora, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Still Life, Winter

Eastern Lakeshore – Cattails

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