Tasking New Purpose

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Night, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

1953 Ford F-100 - High Level, Alberta

Someone’s project, this mauve and mint green 1953 Ford F-100 resides in the industrial area lot across from the Viterra grain elevator, a vehicle waiting for its next drive, more utility upon pavement. The mood of this photograph attracts. Its subject waits upon an earthly creator with abundant resources to transform ‘what was’ into ‘what will be,’ a creator who will set new purpose for this vehicle – breathing life into it, again. What this vehicle will become depends upon the creative imagination of those who will bring restoration.

Listening to U2 sing about INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence in Gone, from Best of 1990-2000 [B-Sides]; then it’s Gillian Welch singing Revelator from her Time – The Revelator album; finally it is Dar Williams singing Mercy of the Fallen from her album The Beauty of the Rain.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” – Bernice Abbott

Alberta Fissure

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Fall, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life

The Peace Valley at Dunvegan

At most points in the geography of Alberta the Peace River is at least one kilometre across. At various points it will broaden out allowing for islands and sand dunes. The first time I saw what the Peace River was about what I noticed was something this photograph conveys, the river has cut a fissure into the land through time and while the river is most times one kilometre across, the distance from level land on top of the river valley to level land on the top of the other side of the river valley is greater, spanning as much as four and five kilometres. The other thing noticed is that it takes about two kilometres of gradual descent in a vehicle to reach the river from the valley’s crest. This photograph is taken at the start of the descent toward Dunvegan and the Dunvegan suspension bridge looking north. It’s late on a September Sunday and shadows creep from the west extending eastwards.

Listening to Bill Mallonee & the Vigilantes of Love sing Resplendent from their Audible Sigh album, a message about the nature of resilience borrowing from the narrative of the dustbowl.

Quote to Inspire – “I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.” – John Steinbeck

Those Who Go Before Us …

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Cemetery, Home, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Winter

Cemeteries, for most people, are places of foreboding – we understand that we too shall end-up, here. Beyond the fact that we usually find ourselves at cemeteries on the other side of saying goodbye to loved ones and good friends, cemeteries also point us to the consideration of the life we are living. At our life’s end, we may be more in a state of regret having conformed our lives to the expectations of others, failing fully to step up and into the Life that is truly ours. On the other hand, on our death bed, it would certainly be something to smile, roguishly, and to own to others that we’d certainly taken ‘a good squeeze out of life.’ My wife’s friend from church, Herman Peters, passed away a week or two ago and his funeral and eulogy embraced his feisty, roguish approach to Life and seeing it through well. Herman’s eulogist, throughout his eulogy, would often lean over and look at Herman within his casket and ask, “Do you think it would be okay if I tell them about the time we did…?” Wow! What a way to go! Good schtuff, Herman – thank you to who you have been to all others and the friend and elder you’ve been to my wife. John O’Donohue and his Greenbelt lecture on the Imagination have been much on my mind as I’ve considered this photograph, tonight.

Listening to Pierce Pettis sing Love Will Always Find Its Way from his album,Everything Matters; other good, good songs include Neutral Ground and Just Like Jim Brown (She is History).

Quote to Inspire – “No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.” – Robert Adams, Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques, May 1995

Rocky Lane - Cemetery Headstones

Beaverlodge Grain Bin – Spring Light

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Still Life

Beaverlodge Grain Bin - Spring Light

Last February, my wife’s aunt was struggling with cancer at the Grande Prairie hospital. She went in during the Christmas break and remained there until May when she succumbed to the disease. In February, when this photograph was taken I was making time to be away from the hospital to see what was happening in the world. I got out toward Beaverlodge, Alberta. This photograph impressed me as one landmarking a period of time in which the intensity of light grows greater, day-by-day as we move forward from winter into spring – there’s something of ‘hope’ in it. Again, its subject is another grain bin; but, it sits upon a field that soon will grow black as snow melts into earth and then will grow green with as it’s planted and left to respond to the sun.

Again, listening to Liz Longley sing her song, Unraveling about her grandmother from her album Hot Loose Wire.

The chorus:

I’m the only daughter of her oldest son

I knew well before her spirit was gone

And her life is a thread woven into every part of me

She is unraveling, she is unraveling.

Quote to Inspire: “A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.” — Eudora Welty

What Happened Here ….

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 50mm, Canon 50mm Lens, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Winter

Early Fifties Two-door Sedan - Blue Hills

Car photography especially of early fifties vehicles, for me, derives from my learning to steer a car and then to drive one sitting next to a favourite, older cousin in his copper brown and white 1951 Mercury four-door. Strong-arm steering meant that effort was needed to guide the Mercury down dusty gravel roads. These drives usually followed Sunday get-togethers of my family from Edmonton with his in Rimbey, Alberta. The event, recalled to memory is that of a late spring or early summer drive, following an evening meal and Walt Disney. I might have been nine or ten years old when I first took the wheel for some good, adventure-filled times before saying our goodbyes, parting company and returning home in an hour-long drive to Edmonton. Always, my aunt, uncle and three cousins would wave to us from their porch as we left. Our families might see each other again in a month or two. Those were good times.

My starting point for this photograph is curious. I am unable to determine the make of this early fifties two-door sedan. Given that this Blue Hills’ farm and its woods have seemingly been left as if in the middle of things, its abandonment indicates something unfinished in not just one life but in the lives of a few. Here, what is sacred is often about the conception of ‘what-has-happened-here.’ It associates to memory that will not fade and cannot be left. With this image, just as in no-trace camping the art is to pass through an area without disturbing it, this photograph presents the necessity of capturing something seemingly sacred without disturbance – reverence and respect are needed.

Listening to the Dave Matthews Band from the album Stand Up and the childhood/teen reminiscences of Old Dirt Hill, a song that recalls my go-cart, our garage and back alley … and friends at Easter break in Edmonton in grade 5 – 1972 … what a week (and to be grounded part-way through).

Quote to Inspire – “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” —Diane Arbus

Plymouth Savoy Still Life

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life

Plymouth Savoy - Colourful

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

Visual Treasures Before You

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life

Weathered Shed and Rusted Alberta Plate

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.

Capturing Experience As Fact

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Journaling, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Vehicle, Winter

Moody - Plymouth Savoy 2

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

Sifting Photographs and A Drizzled Day

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Weather

Plymouth Savoy - McNaught Homestead

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.

Looking Up – Time for Macro

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Photoblog Intention, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Winter

Winter Greenery - Along a High Level Photowalk

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