Field – Selling Point

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Fall, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Season, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

R E O Speedwagon – Manning, Alberta 1

R E O Speedwagon – Manning, Alberta 2

In an open field, displayed for sale, parked next to a 1969 GMC grey and white one-tonne cab and chassis and a dented, yet intact retro green with white, 1957 Chevrolet sedan, sits an REO Speedwagon one-tonne cab and chassis. Further up this same field is a fenced-in area with large storage shed for large farm equipment and a farmer’s mechanic’s shop for working on equipment. Spray-painted on three sides of a smaller building closer to the road is the phone number needed for making contact with the seller of these implements and vehicles. Not a junk yard and not a used car lot, the field does serve as selling point for these vehicles that may be of interest to travellers driving by. This image is the badging as found on the REO Speedwagon with colour and with some desaturation.

Listening to – Ashley MacIsaac’s ‘She’s a Rare One’ performed with Jackie Robitaille.

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

Mountainous Depth

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Still Life, Weather, Winter

Valley – McLure, British Columbia 1

Valley – McLure, British Columbia 2

Valley – McLure, British Columbia 3

Valley – McLure, British Columbia 4

Valley – McLure, British Columbia 5

Valley – McLure, British Columbia 6

This high dynamic range image is a final outlook over the valley that leads north and east into McLure, British Columbia. Depth within the image is created overlapping elements within the composition, the mountain forming the background is overlapped by the central mountain, then the mountain on the left (middle ground) and finally the mountain on the right (closest – foreground). The train track leads the eye into the photo and you explore your way from foreground to background. Colouration versus black and white in the images also helps accentuate depth.

Listening to – U2’s ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Miracle Drug’.

Quote to Inspire – “I have to shoot three cassettes of film a day, even when not ‘photographing’, in order to keep the eye in practice.” – Josef Koudelka

Sharing the Field

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Fall, Farm, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

Field Shared – Greencourt, Alberta 1

Field Shared – Greencourt, Alberta 2

On the drive between Fort Vermilion and High Level, Alberta the clean, stubble-free fields were noteworthy … more indications that harvest is nearing completion. In addition to grain being gathered and hay bales being removed, the fields did look like someone had vacuumed each field, leaving no trace of the summer’s activity. In this image from a few weeks back, at Greencourt, Alberta alongside the highway north farming implements – a Mercury, two Chevrolets, a Massey Ferguson and John Deere – share a field with round hay bales waiting to be cleared off and stored. The older farming implements are on display … perhaps even for sale … perhaps memorial to farming years.

Listening to – Tyrone Wells’ ‘Time of Our Lives.’

Quote to Inspire – “All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.” – Elliott Erwitt

Harvest

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Fall, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Sunset, Vehicle

Harvest – Nampa, Alberta 1

Harvest – Nampa, Alberta 2

Harvesting Implement – Nampa, Alberta 2

Farmers are harvesting in northern Alberta. A season’s few warm months, with regular rainfall, have allowed northern farmland to produce and this year’s harvest holds promise … something extraordinary in terms of quality and quantity. In the year, we are at that point where the concept of harvest illustrates something of life and lives. Here, the ‘parable of the weeds’ being used to describe the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43 stands out; what captivates is that while the farmer has sown good seed and while he and his family sleep, an enemy intentionally sows weeds among the farmer’s wheat – a premeditated, vicious act aimed at dismantling a farmer’s livelihood. For the farmer, the end-state of harvesting the wheat he’s sown presents challenge because doing so will require that he allow the weeds to grow alongside the wheat until harvest, the weeds sharing the land’s nutrients, the weeds sharing the rain, and, the weeds sharing the sun. At harvest, this careful and patient farmer gathers each weed first, burns the weeds together and then harvests the wheat. This parable is used to describe the kingdom of heaven. That kingdom, the world we presently live in, contains those moving along in Life committed to God’s purposes and those opposing God’s purposes. This kingdom parable becomes example of the lives that live alongside each other, the reality of the good and evil that is at play and the farmer’s careful harvesting hands. It points to each Life being lived out and the farmer discerning what each life has been about as each reaches the harvest.

Listening to – the Tragically Hip’s ‘Wheat Kings,’ Murray McLaughlin’s ‘Farmer’s Song’ and Ray LaMontagne & the Pariah Dogs ‘Beg, Steal or Borrow.’

Quote to Inspire – “I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.” – Trent Parke

Valleyview Farm Buildings

Barn, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer

Derelict Farm Buildings – Valleyview, Alberta

Derelict farm buildings and an unused field on the road home, near Valleyview, Alberta.

Listening to – Concrete Blonde and ‘I Don’t Need a Hero.’

Quote to Inspire – “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” – Garry Winogrand

That Shed – Canada’s

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, Flora, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer

Canadian Shed – Donnelly, Alberta 1

Canadian Shed – Donnelly, Alberta 2

Enjoying the compression of distance in this favourite image of the Canadian grain shed on the northward approach to Donnelly, Alberta.

Listening to – Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon.’

Quote to Inspire – “I have the great privilege of being both witness and storyteller. Intimacy, trust and intuition guide my work.” – Jim Goldberg

Chrome Brightening

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

Mercury 155 Grain Truck – Manning, Alberta

Years on, chrome lines and badging still highlight and brighten detail work on an early fifties Mercury M-155 grain truck at the Manning Pioneer Museum in Manning, Alberta.

Listening to: my daughter skillfully work Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ on our piano upstairs.

Quote to Inspire – “It’s not how a photographer looks at the world that is important. It’s their intimate relationship with it.” – Antoine D’Agata

That Thought, Complete

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Journaling, Light Intensity, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Spring, Still Life, Sunset, The Candid Frame, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

Alberta Reflection – Grande Prairie 1

Alberta Reflection – Grande Prairie 2

Alberta Reflection – Grande Prairie 3

Alberta’s Big Sky – 1

Alberta’s Big Sky – 2

Along Northern Roads – Grande Cache, Alberta

HDR – Subject Revisited 1

HDR – Subject Revisited 2

Trestle Bridge – Grande Cache, Alberta

Wet Rock – Banff, Alberta

Wooded Reflection – Jasper, Alberta 1

Wooded Reflection – Jasper, Alberta 2

Wooded Reflection – Jasper, Alberta 3

The following text is excerpt, core invitation to a cousin to interact with me through my photo blog and exposes intentions for the blog and posting.

“My photoblog’s URL is http://www.lumensborealis.com , written from the point of pseudonym, also most often written at day’s end … a mind saturated, releasing the day; sometimes this can seem very close to the poignant remark made by an Auschwitz inmate in Schindler’s List … ‘I had a complete thought, today.’ Sometimes my posts are good and flow and cohere. But, I’m also editing what I write to limit consequence along parameters suggested by William Stafford in his book, ‘Crossing Unmarked Snow:’

1. The things you do not have to say make you rich.
2. Saying the things you do not have to say weakens your talk.
3. Hearing the things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing.
4. The things you know before you hear them, those are you and this is the reason you’re in the world.

A compelling set of assertions, for any of us, that aims at honourable and integrated Life … a good thing – it’s how I’m aiming to write the blog. Still, in my reading of it there often is opportunity to add more Art within my writing.

The Photoblog – Photography is what the photoblog is about – a photo-a-day kind of thing as intention and as means to grapple with photography and enhance skills; but, at almost two years in I’m only on post 271 and not beyond a year’s 365 posts. The blog is also about responding to each photo or set of photos as starting point to engage the rabbit trail of memory associating to family and times.” And, it often leads my thought to a set of Rimbey farms and my cousins, there.

Listening to – the Candid Frame with Ibarionex Perello in an interview with Will Jax about his Juke Joint photography in the French Quarter of New Orleans; part of the discussion that intrigued was the matter of consent, of giving back, contributing – all parts of what grants access within the exchange that is photography.

Quote to Inspire – “You yourself are unique–you have ways of seeing your world that are unlike those of anyone else–so find ways to more faithfully express that, and your style will emerge.” ― David duChemin, Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

HDR – Image Subjects, Revisited

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 50mm Lens, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Spring, Still Life

HDR – 1947 Ford One Tonne Tow Truck, McLure, British Columbia

HDR – North of 60 Bus Shelter Seats, Valleyview, Alberta

I have had a go at creating two High Dynamic Range (HDR) images in the last while. In landscape images my practice is to shoot with Automatic Exposure Bracketing (creating 3 images in succession -1, 0 & +1) and explore how the images will turn out in HDR. The images are of subjects I have shot before; but, they are not the original image shots included in previous posts. They are ‘also-ran’ images of the 1947 Ford One-tonne Tow Truck from McLure, British Columbia and the ‘would-be’ bus shelter seat, North of 60 style. In both the detail, lines and range of light are enhanced (or at least different).

Listening to – today it’s been the conclusion of Ken Follett’s ‘Pillars of the Earth’ on the long drive home from Edmonton to High Level. The narrative provides glimpse of Monarchy, Ecclesiastical ambition and all that was behind building cathedrals and parishes; the story moves from Life at the local/village level all the way to Thomas Beckett and King Henry and those who contested the throne.

Quote to Inspire – “Vision is that original spark that was ignited within you and made you pick up a camera to capture whatever it is you saw, that made you turn to shout “Did you see that!” only to find no one there–so you created an image to do the telling.” ― David duChemin, Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

HDR – Details, Paint & Upholstery

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Podcast, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Shuttertime with Sid and Mac, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Weather

Chevrolet Grain Truck – Edmonton, Alberta

The late forties-early fifties Chevrolet half-tonne grain truck is subject for this image and with Automatic Exposure Bracketing moving toward a final image becomes an exercise in creating a high dynamic range (HDR) shot. For me, unless shooting people within an event, my practice in creating most photos is to work with a tripod in manual (M) mode and to set the camera for the three settings of Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) – the regular or average exposure, an exposure a stop down (a darker, low key exposure) and an exposure a stop above average (a lighter, high key exposure).

Focus counts – the manual focus on my Canon EOS 60D allows me to focus upon that part of the image needing clarity, but it does so allowing me to focus upon that portion of the subject in three magnifications using the display on the back of the camera: first, what I would see through the viewfinder – normal magnification, next at 10 x optical zoom and then at 15 x optical zoom. Each level of displayed magnification allows me to adjust focus with greater and greater and greater precision. Stability also counts in focusing on the subject; the camera fixed to a tripod ensures that the camera does not move and that resulting images are tack sharp, free from blur.

Creating the exposure, creates not one, but, the three AEB exposures in succession ( – , 0 , + ) when the shutter button is pressed. After the exposures are brought into Adobe Lightroom, I am able to use HDR Efex to combine the three exposures into one image that allows the combined exposure to become an image accommodating greater range of light – more similar to what the human eye can see. I like the way Photomatix does HDR; but, NiK Software’s HDR Efex is a more stable and flexible program.

So, today’s image is an HDR shot. In the next few days my intention will be to try an HDR image that combines a larger number of exposures and to see what happens along the way. I’m reminded that the Shutter Time with Sid and Mac podcast has a couple of excellent pointers for HDR shots (somewhere between episodes 15 and 23). Mac and his wife Kasia would most likely have me using HDR for shots combining landscape, cloud-work and sunsets/sunrises. As well, Trey Ratcliff is the photographer who seems to have done most with HDR or at least has written most substantially (perhaps most helpfully) about HDR; two weeks ago he was in Vancouver and aiming to take on someone as protégé for an evening photographing the city, the water, the landscape and the sky from the top of a well-situated, tall skyscraper. It would definitely have been fun to hang out together for an evening creating HDR images – watch out for him on Twitter at @TreyRatcliff .

Listening to – Peter Himmelmann’s ‘Mission of My Soul.’

Quotes to Inspire – (1) “[…] That’s what HDR does. It adds details, paint, and upholstery to the Photograph. It’s still a photograph, but now enhanced [….] — GusDoeMatik (2) “To me, it is better to “guess” at how something works, experiment, fail, guess again, fail, and keep repeating that process over and over again until you either figure it out or you discover a multiplicity of other cool tricks along the way.” ― Trey Ratcliff