Highlight & Shroud

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rtown, Fort Vemilion, Alberta

Before the day’s meeting and before arriving at our meeting’s destination a colleague and I detoured to a way point with our cameras – his Nikon and my Canon. An hour later our cameras held images gathered from the St. Louis Roman Catholic mission in Fort Vermilion’s north settlement – Buttertown. During that hour, the groundwork for this high dynamic range shot was sparked by the cloud work highlights above and the darker light below enveloping the mission storehouse and surrounding foliage, shrouding texture and low-lying colour … three shots (-2, 0 and +2) a good harvest with which to begin a bigger day of work – my gratitude goes out to my fellow camera shooter and colleague, for investing an earlier hour with me, image-making. Good on you!

Photography, this week – this past seven days has been extraordinary in terms of encountering students, colleagues, friends and former students who have engaged in dialogue about photography, gear and software, each a photographer in the making. My gratitude goes out to each of you for your solid discussion and trajectory as photographers – good schtuff!

Listening to – the morning has held Casting Crown’s ‘Follow Me,’ Bruce Springsteen’s ‘One Step Up,’ and two tonally heavy tunes from Chris Whitley – ‘Big Sky Country’ and ‘Dust Radio;’ musically, U2’s ‘Vertigo Tour’ has been the concert to watch via DVD this week.

Quote to Inspire – “The photographer is always trying to colonize new experiences or find new ways to look at familiar subjects – to fight against boredom. For boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Penned Deere

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John Deere 620 2 – Utah

John Deere 620 1 – Utah

The family archive of photos taken in the years my brothers and I grew up holds memorable photos of us steering a John Deere 4010 tractor under the watchful eye of cousins. Over the years there would be many rides on swathers, on tractors pulling hay racks, balers and bale stackers; there would be time in a grain truck and times when barlage would be collected and stored. There would be two Harvestore silos, towering high in the air and my cousin’s counter-weight innovation that allowed for the ride to the top of the tower and the descent back to the ground. The awareness and understanding that there were tractors that preceded the John Deere 4010 by decades is something I’ve come to understand more in later years. Here, is a John Deere 620 – along a highway in southeastern Utah, penned and perhaps ready for auction … or perhaps there and waiting for the would-be buyer.

Listening to – much of the soundtrack to ‘Good Will Hunting’ – Jeb Loy Nichols’ ‘As the Rain,’ Elliot Smith’s ‘Angeles’ and The Dandy Warhols’ ‘Boys Better.’

Quote to Consider – “Every page of On Photography raises important and exciting questions about its subject and raises them in the best way.” —The New York Times Book Review

Composition – Edit Toward Mindfulness

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Foundation as Canvas – Utah 1

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 2

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 3

Foundation as Canvas – Utah 4

Elements of composition were the subject of discussion a day ago. Eight different ideas about composing a photograph were considered – pattern, symmetry, depth of field, lines and leading lines, framing, perspective, balance and colour. We ended at the point of composition being about finding the best way of seeing … the subject. The discussion stayed with me as I edited images later that evening – we also find the best way of seeing the subject in editing as we try out variation in exposure, consider the blur and detail of clarity and consider the depth or wash of contrasts. With each of these considerations as the image is edited we see more and more of what the image holds – things not fully seen or recognized when the right moment to capture the image was recognized. For me, composition and editing toward best composition are about discovering the narrative of the photograph; each edit or potential edit considered increases mindfulness of what’s going on or has happened within the photograph. These images do that.

Again, we are at one of the first stops in our scouting look at southeastern Utah. The foundations of a derelict building are tattooed and tagged with graffiti, foundation walls becoming canvas to expression. What are you mindful of in looking at this canvas (or perhaps an actor’s stage to extend and cross-pollinate metaphors)? What can be extrapolated?

Listening to – some of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Time Out’ and remembering my father and early years at home, sophisticated, challenging music; yet now also with a strong, strong element of home. This morning’s tunes have also included U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ – the curious phrase, probably for their young adult children is ‘young, not dumb.’ The morning has also held Coldplay – ‘Always in My Head,’ ‘Midnight’ and ‘Oceans’ among others.

Quote to Consider – “Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality … or they enlarge reality that is felt to be shrunk. One can’t possess reality, one can possess images – one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Curious, Unique

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Utah Landscape

Having read Jack Kerouac’s novel, ‘On The Road,’ this image of American landscape holds interest; the building within this landscape was perhaps intact and used at the time the novel was written, the end of the forties. I’m liking the resulting edit, expressive in terms of colour and compositionally pulling my curiosity toward this former building.

Listening to – U2’s ‘Sleep Like a Baby Tonight,’ ‘Cedarwood Road’ and ‘Raised by Wolves.’

Quote to Inspire – “For photography to compete with painting means invoking originality as an important standard for appraising a photographer’s work, originality being equated with the stamp of a unique, forceful sensibility.” Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Her Garden

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Utah Flower 1

Utah Flower 2

In my life time, I have been witness to my mother’s gardens. She had three successive gardens, one in Edmonton, another in Brampton and her final garden in Qualicum Beach. Her gardens were always something to take in. Her garden would contain trees and flowers and shrubs, and, through the seasons there would be the colour of active and full Life and there would be the wither of desaturation found in dormancy. Through the year, my mother would research plants she’d like to grow and then take them on in her garden. This summer, our first scouting drive into Utah put us on the road for six hours doing a large loop of the southeastern part of the state. We found these flowers, plants very similar to some my mother had in her garden and occasionally would have in a vase on her dining room table.

Listening to – U2’s ‘California (There is No End to Love)’ … it starts out recalling the Beach Boys’ tune, ‘Barbara Ann’ … “Bar, Bar, Barbara, Santa Barbara.”

Quote to Consider – “For photographers there is, finally no difference – no greater aesthetic advantage – between the effort to embellish the world and the counter-effort to rip off its mask.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Sundays and Trains

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Union Pacific Engine – Ogden, Utah

Burned Out Box Car – Ogden, Utah 1

Burned Out Box Car – Ogden, Utah 2

Cargill Engine – Ogden, Utah

Rail Abstraction – Ogden, Utah

Rail Car – Ogden Utah

Red Cross Hospital Car – Ogden, Utah

Train Snow Plow – Ogden, Utah

Train Engine – Ogden, Utah

Union Pacific Box Car – Ogden, Utah

A Sunday – day’s end; we had enjoyed family’s camaraderie and been among cousins at our cousins farm, an hour away from our Edmonton home. On what is now known as the Queen Elizabeth II highway between Calgary and Edmonton we traveled home Dad at the wheel of our green 69 Pontiac Parisienne. Often on our right travelling northward with us would be a train – three or four engines together pulling a string of cars, box cars, black tankers, different hopper cars etc.. As we finally entered the city of Edmonton and made our right turn from Calgary trail onto 51st avenue at the intersection holding Koch Mercury and the Van Winkle hotel, we would encounter the train we had traveled with at the rail crossing behind Koch Mercury. And, as you sat in your car waiting for the train to pass you could sometimes signal the engineer to sound the train’s horn by putting your fist in the air and pulling down in same fashion that the engineer would with his hand on the cable line that would release the bellow of the train’s horn. More often than not, the train’s engineer would oblige, the horn would release and the sound could be heard for miles.

It’s been a generation or two since Dad and Mom took my two brothers and I to my cousin’s farm. I have had my own time working with trains during summers in University, often as rail car spotter. My own son is now entering his fourth year of University and there’s even been a good long while since he and I would read of Sir Topham Hat, Gordon, Percy, Thomas et al in Reverend W. Awdry’s ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ books.

And, my own interest in trains has not waned. The following photos are a number of first edits from Ogden and engines for viewing at the the Union Pacific railway station, there.

Listening to: ‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone’) and ‘Every Breaking Wave’ from U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ – flip, you don’t have to buy the album, it’s free in iTunes; also the morning has been about Springsteen’s music and musicares celebration of his achievement.

Quote to Inspire – “… Photographs are evidence of not only what’s there but of what an individual sees, not just a record but an evaluation of the world.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Recommended book encouraging literacy in children – ‘The Read Aloud Handbook,’ by Jim Trelease

Opportunities, Extraordinary

Backlight, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Flora, Journaling, Light Intensity, Night, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Shuttertime with Sid and Mac, Summer, Sunrise

Vermillion Lakes, Banff, Alberta 1

Vermillion Lakes, Banff, Alberta 2

Vermillion Lakes, Banff, Alberta 3

Vermillion Lakes, Banff, Alberta 4

Vermillion Lakes, Banff, Alberta 5

Vermillion Lakes, Banff, Alberta 6

Vermillion Lakes, Banff, Alberta 7

Vermillion Lakes, Banff, Alberta 8

One aspect of photography that has grown into practice is the matter of recognizing the opportunity presented by the derelict car in a field along the highway, the abandoned farmhouse and former granaries, that thing that you come upon in your travels that you may not ever see again. The challenge is to make time for it, to engage fully in seeing it, to name it, to grasp what it is and what has been its narrative, to share time with it. The choice becomes that of photographing it (… or not) and there are choices in editing that honour the subject and the image, to find its best way(s) of being seen. The image, in its being shared creates opportunity; what has been witnessed and what has been created, not only allows others to see something more of the world, but serves to encourage (or perhaps compel) exploration of that thing witnessed through your camera and lens.

Some of this is about that key teaching from Robin Williams, as professor Keating, in the ‘Dead Poets Society’ in the first poetry lesson – ‘Gather ye rose buds while ye may,’ the import of which was his solemn admonition to his students – ‘seize the day’ and ‘make your lives extraordinary.’ Carpe Diem is about seizing the day as much with any of life’s opportunities as with the opportunities for images that can be created with a camera.

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/579285/Dead-Poets-Society-Movie-Clip-Seize-The-Day.html

In Banff last week, perhaps owing to summer heat or day/night air pressure differential in the mountains I found myself not always sleeping through the entire night and chose to get out with my camera for landscape photos in pre-dawn dusk. Before leaving for Banff, I had reviewed Maciek Solkulski’s Google+ page for winter sunrise shots he had taken at the Vermillion Lakes in Canada’s Banff National Park. Maciek, an Edmonton photographer, is one half of the podcasting duo of the Shutter Time with Sid and Mac podcast. From Mac’s Google+ page I was able to review maps of where the Vermillion Lakes were in relation to Banff. And, so, before dawn, two days in a row, I got out to the Vermillion Lakes for morning images; these are presented here.

Listening to – Elliott Smith’s ‘Between Bars,’ ‘No Name #3’ and ‘Angeles,’ Gerry Rafferty’s ‘Baker Street’ and The Waterboys’ ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ – all songs from Good Will Hunting.

Quotes to Inspire – (1) “The photographer both loots and preserves, denounces and consecrates;” and, “Life is not about significant details, illuminated (in) a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Forgotten & Found

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Salt Flats – Salduro, Utah 1

Salt Flats – Salduro, Utah 2

Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah

That idea, potent, yet half-formed did have to be put down, but not put away – it would yield treasure should I return to it. My father, a plastics chemist, evolved a habit of downloading his mind into moleskins as his best tack for moving past interruption and returning to most current endeavor. Years later I would discover Evernote, a digital means of recording texts or MP3s of current and next ideas without losing them. Scott Smith (Motivation to Move) and Dave Allen (author of Getting Things Done) would both advocate the practice of downloading one’s mind and a system for organizing those ideas into workable and profitable work. Tonight, enough things have occurred organizationally to allow me to uncover and sift through months of notes, curious quotations and ideas (mine) and the trajectory upon which they can move were I to breathe Life into them.

Curious Ideas to Consider (from Moleskin pages)

(1) “… Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can’t be consistently fair or kind or generous or forgiving [any of these] without courage.” – Maya Angelou (in conversation with Krista Tippett, ‘On Being’ podcast)

(2) On Photography – “In composition the important thing is to isolate and simplify.” – Tony Sweet (in conversation with Ibarionex Perello, ‘The Candid Frame’ podcast)

(3) The BBC reported 07 August 2014 that dementia has been linked to lack of exposure to sunlight; my father has Alzheimer’s Disease.

(4) Love Your Enemy (what doing so also means) – it involves the courage to be vulnerable with those with whom you passionately disagree; it requires that you consider what in your own position troubles you, and, that you consider that which resides in the other person’s position that attracts you – an idea from an ‘On Being’ podcast dealing with American Civil Rights.

(5) “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.” – Laugh-ins’ Lily Tomlin (in conversation with Krista Tippett, ‘On Being’ podcast)

Part of tonight’s treasure has been the scribble containing music heard as far back as January, this year. My scrawl was the result of auditory capture; listening to CKUA while down in Edmonton I heard two songs – the first, was a quiet, fingerstyle rendering of the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction from James Lee Stanley and John Batdorf; the other, was a take on U2’s ‘With or Without You,’ most likely offered by Sarah Darling … tonight is my first chance to hear it again and to purchase it.

Forgetfulness
by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

The poem reminds of George Smiley in one of Le Carre’s MI-5 novels and the personal wisdom of relaxing his mind and letting that half-forgotten idea, concept or name resurface in its time (relax and let your mind have the time … it will come).

Images presented here include the blue and white contrast of Utah’s salt flats as well as a black and white edit of the same image. As well, there’s the road from the interstate to the Bonneville Speedway – Speed Week is next week.

Quote to Consider – “Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Listening to – Sarah Darling’s rendering of ‘With or Without You’ and John Batdorf and James Lee Stanley’s ‘Ruby Tuesday,’ ‘Wild Horses,’ and ‘Satisfaction.’

Utah – Salt Flats & Sky

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Utah Skies – Knolls, Utah 1

Utah Skies – Knolls, Utah 2

For perhaps five years, each time my wife and I took our son and daughter out to enjoy a meal at High Level’s Boston Pizza with friends or on our own we would gaze upon what has become a familiar painting on the wall above the cash register and waiting area – Jack Vettriano’s Bonneville; the painting celebrates the work, the interest and the observation of what it is to break and set different land speed records in various vehicles. Beyond this, there was that movie … Anthony Hopkins, as actor, played the role of Burt Munro in a 2005 movie, ‘The World’s Fastest Indian’ (Indian, here, referring to the Indian motorcycle). Burt Munro was a mechanic/inventor/racer from New Zealand who raced motorcycles. He set a world record at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. My wife encouraged me to go. She and our daughter would remain at the hotel and lounge at the pool cooling themselves in Utah’s summer heat (close to 100 F most days). They would remain cool, rest and read their newly purchased Barnes and Noble treasures. I would investigate Utah’s salt flats.

From Midvale, I steered our rented 2012 Toyota Rav 4 toward Salt Lake City and then follow directions from our Tom Tom GPS to Utah’s salt flats, then to the Bonneville speedway and to Wendover, Utah and the B-29 Bomber Base where the crew of Enola Gay were trained in World War II. By day’s end, I would have photographed the salt flats, Bonneville and Wendover; I would have had a flat tire and need to double back to Wendover to have the tire repaired; and, I would almost run out of gasoline on the return drive home. Doubling back would allow me to investigate more fully the B-29 Bomber Base and discover a goldmine of remarkably maintained American-built cars from the sixties and seventies – both at Wendover, Utah.

Here, one of the final rewards of the day was the evening cloud-work after the sun had crossed the horizon.

Shout Out – a big thank you to Maciek Sokulski (‘Shuttertime with Sid and Mac’ podcast) for articulating good best practices for working with Adobe Lightroom.

Quote to Consider/Inspire – “This freezing of time – the insolent, poignant stasis of each photograph – has produced new and more inclusive canons of beauty.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Listening to – Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Highway Patrolman.’

Amid Blackened Pick Up Stix

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Muskeg Flowers – Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta 1

Muskeg Flowers – Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta 2

I hadn’t driven the back road from Fort Vermilion to Slave Lake for perhaps ten or more years. While intention had been to cut hours from drive time, my curiosity pulled me toward what had become of Slave Lake after the town had been overcome by forest fire in May, 2011, losing a third to two thirds of its homes and businesses. I remember being five hours north and listening to radio reports of the fire moving rapidly, of the fire jumping highways, of the immediate need for evacuation of residents from Slave Lake to Athabasca and of those residents being given emergency shelter in school gymnasiums. Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ was played by local radio stations to highlight the firefighters and water bomber pilots battling the fire and the evacuation of residents – some of the song’s lyrics associate well to the experience endured; the paradox of setting fire to rain was the attracting lyric.

For me, three years on, travelling to Edmonton, along highway 88 toward Slave Lake, I found other areas of forest that had been touched in the same fire. I stopped my car for the second interruption to my drive, where the silhouette of remaining blackened, yet dead trees continue to stand somewhat vertical, in the up-and-down of pick-up-stix, against a northern Alberta sunset – their silhouette catching my eye and drawing out my camera. The first growth of flowers, cotton-like intrigued me. I walked in twenty metres on muskeg – watery, peaty, muddy, gelatinous earth that overlays earth beneath that remains frozen. These flower images were gathered.

Listening to – Supertramp’s ‘Live in Paris ’79’ Concert; I’d first seen the ‘Crisis, What Crisis?’ concert in 1978; currently captivating songs include ‘Bloody Well Right,’ ‘Another Man’s Woman,’ ‘Dreamer’ and ‘Crime of the Century.’

Quote to Inspire – “Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one – and can help build a nascent one.”