Soul Searchers

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Christmas Heart – High Level, Alberta

Homestead – Rycroft, Alberta

Wagon Wheels – Beaverlodge, Alberta

Crosses – Bezanson, Alberta

At Christmas, Love amplifies, powerful and lifting, scrabbling through the dark mess of tangle. Care and pardon affirm, anchoring you, there, in other Hearts – disgrace yields, grace overcomes. Love finds its way. At Christmas, the first steps within the incarnation are taken; a betrothed groom and fiancée making the best of things, travel within a colonized Israel to add their names within a census, a decision perhaps that may have to do with the practicality in it being safer to identify as a family with what will follow from the census; the fiancée is pregnant, a surprise to the groom and his betrothed. Are the two young? Is Joseph older and knowing something of how to live a Life within this colonized world? Is he prepared for this night? A makeshift moment allows the two to shelter among animals in a barn or cave. Mary moves into labour, a baby is born, a new Life that becomes central to a grand narrative we all are participating in. The name Joseph is first used with Jacob’s wife Rachel, when she conceives and bears a son after many years barren; Joseph literally means ‘he who takes my shame away.’

All this and more become the Christmas story. A few songs tell the story well; but, the one that might best fit today’s times and needs could be that provided by Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds in ‘Christmas Song.’ I like the conceptualization of any of us as ‘soul-searchers.’ The blood of the children reference is, while scary, accurate within this song – blood covers sins; Christ’s blood was shed for all to overcome their/our sin-state and thereby becomes the blood of the children referred to within the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fbdylEE-0e4

The incarnation is an inconceivable event, something that needs more acceptance than figuring. You need to involve your imagination in such reckoning as precursor to such an event in preparation to be able to recognize when and if such an event does happen, has happened or will happen. You’d have to consider how involving God here on earth might play out.

The song that brought this kind of precursor imagining about best was a Joan Osborne, grunge-rock tune, that I heard most helpfully sung by Martyn Joseph on Radio Ulster’s ‘Rhythm and Soul’; thank you to Presbyterian Pastor, Steve Stockman for bringing all of that about. Here’s Martyn’s version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tV2I2KykhrQ

Here’s the Joan Osborne version of ‘One of Us.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7K1hckf1C3I

Quote to Consider – “The camera doesn’t make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to SEE.” – Ernest Haas

Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s ‘Beyond Us, ‘Not a Good Time for God’ and Martyn’s take on Bruce Springsteen’s ‘If I Should Fall Behind’ and ‘One Step Up.’ Also, taking a listen to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Highway Patrolman.’

There’s a lot of grace encountered in ‘Highway Patrolman;’ Springsteen goes on to tell that it deals with family, responsibility and duty when those things conflict. The lyrics are good dealing with brothers sharing good times as much as the morality involved in dealing with a brother who is straying – lyrics catching my attention follow ….

“Well if it was any other man, I’d put him straight away
But when it’s your brother sometimes you look the other way.”

“Me and Frankie laughin’ and drinkin’
Nothin’ feels better than blood on blood
Takin’ turns dancin’ with Maria
As the band played “Night of the Johnstown Flood”
I catch him when he’s strayin’, teach him how to walk that line
Man turns his back on his family he ain’t no friend of mine.”

May you find Grace this Christmas – my gratitude goes out to each of you who have been part of each step and evolution of this photoblog. Thank you – take good care of your good selves.

Winter Warmth

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Sunny, Sunday Afternoon – High Level, Alberta

The Mill at Sunset – High Level, Alberta

Winter Road – Blumenort, Alberta 1

Winter Road – Blumenort, Alberta 2

Grain Drying Operation – High Level, Alberta

It’s cold this morning – -33C with a wind chill of -39C. Some school bus routes have been cancelled. Steam from chimneys and exhaust fumes from vehicles mingle and hang in the air. Warmth will be needed to be outside today; what is worn will count as will the food used to keep the body’s furnace going and primed. It will be good to be moving rather than to stand still. And, in a day or two we’ll round that corner of the earth’s orbit marked by Winter solstice (that darkest, longest night of the year) and then we’ll begin our return trek back to days with more and longer hours of light.

Images – winter scenes around High Level, Alberta.

Quote to Consider – “Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood. To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge — and, therefore, like power.” – Susan Sontag, On Photography

Listening to – Loreena McKennitt, a celtic exploration of music – songs in my hearing include ‘Mummers’ Dance, Huron ‘Beltane’ Fire Dance and Annachie Gordon; I was surprised to find Canadian, Loreena McKennitt’s version of Annachie Gordon showing up on Irish radio playlists last night.

Shape Sense – Light & Shadow

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Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 1

Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 2

Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 3

Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 4

Autumn Gold 2 – Donnely, Alberta 5

It’s cold this morning. At -26C, the conundrum is how to deal with my camera (battery-life) and tripod (breakable at colder temperatures). Warmly cloaked, as I trek round my morning’s 6km circuit, I’m resigned to using the walk to scout out pictures. Throughout, I’m listening to conversations – interviews, podcasted on my iPod. But, cold-weather photo-making is not as easy an endeavor as capturing an image within that moment when I find its promise. I turn my initiative to what I can do indoors – editing of previous photos, investigating shots that I haven’t yet worked with and finding new results. This morning is follow-up to other images in the series following the Autumn Gold image from a few days back. Versions of the photo are non-HDR, HDR Black and White and HDR Colour – some fun. The realization is that the HDR images provide better gradation of light and shadow creating better sense of shape as contrasted with non-HDR images. Have a look.

Listening to – Krista Tippett’s interview with Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche; interesting concepts include the necessity of becoming vulnerable in order to be able to love another and the vulnerability of God in Loving us. Another captivating idea is the path from soul to reality … the curious extrapolation is how this path is distorted, twisted or perhaps even strangled; the last thought has be prodded from a friend’s newly found cynicism – a lot can stand in our way, obscuring our vision and awareness of others.

Quote to Consider – “Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty. Except for those situations in which the camera is used to document, or to mark social rites, what moves people to take photographs is finding something beautiful.” – Susan Sontag, On Photography

Autumn Gold

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Autumn Gold – Donnelly, Alberta

An autumn memory, a gift to view as we move into snow and extreme sub-zero temperature – nature’s architecture providing visual articulation of golds on black at harvest.

Quote to Inspire – “Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality …. 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’

Listening to – U2’s ‘In a Little While,’ Linkin Park’s ‘Roads Untraveled,’ Jessica Sanchez’ ‘Lead Me Home’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Shelter from the Storm.’

Superstructure – Red

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Elevator Silo – High Level, Alberta

The reds of the silo structure frame and the perspective created looking through it attracted my eye to the silo and elevator structure last Sunday. Then it’s been about the textures within the image and those applied to the image.

Listening to – ‘Songs for the Philippines,’ a collection of many songs for a mere $10.00 on iTunes – a small, small donation to the Typhoon victims of the Philippines. It’s been One Direction’s ‘Best Song Ever,’ Pink’s ‘Sober,’ Paolo Nutini’s ‘Simple Things,’ Josh Groban’s ‘Brave,’ James Blunt’s ‘Carry You Home’ and Pitbull’s ‘Feel This Moment.’

Quote to Inspire – “The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flaneur finds the world ‘picturesque.’” – Susan Sontag, On Photography

To A Photograph

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McNaught Homestead Wheels – Beaverlodge, Alberta

Wagon Wheels – McNaught Homestead 3

Wagon Wheels – McNaught Homestead 2

Gardner Hamilton’s quote, “a [photographer] is someone who does not necessarily go out with a mission, but someone who is [or becomes] mentally aware of when they have walked into a photograph” sticks with me. The quote comes against the question of what influences the photographer’s perception and readiness as he or she comes to a photograph. As we come to the moment of opening the shutter, preoccupations, Life events (digested and undigested) and distractions shape how we are vulnerable to the scene and what becomes the image.

There is duality in how any photograph is arrived at. In one instance, it is Life’s clutter that promotes the withdrawal and escape that produces a photograph – the need to see and experience visually, the new, something other. In another instance, it is the decluttering in dealing with one’s psychological hygiene that creates the readiness, openness and choices that result in the photograph. Beyond this, one’s personal baggage and one’s habits as a photographer can serve as ballast shaping what the photograph becomes or directing the photographer to the photograph, connecting him/her to the image created – that ballast becomes one’s style.

Within past weeks, I have witnessed a convergence of ideas that promote dealing with one’s psychological hygiene in prayer, meditation and journaling. Blog posts of Creatives chronicle the experience of possessing a solid foundation built on healthy psychological hygiene as launching pad for Creative pursuit. The clutter of your ‘stuff’ – your events, your history, the stuff you need to own – needs to be dealt with so you can move on and make creative choices. Krista Tippett has interviewed Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman, pioneers in bringing Buddhism to America in her ‘On Being’ podcast entitled Embracing Our Enemies and Our Suffering, a Buddhist take on many things and engaging reality; psychological hygiene is an endpoint, here, too. The convergence has led me all the way back to Ira Progoff and his ‘At a Journal Workshop – Writing to Access the Power of the Unconscious and Evoke Creative Ability.’ I opened this book this morning. We’ll see what happens.

Images – a sunny, snow winter’s day serves to light and sculpt wagon wheels at the McNaught homestead near Beaverlodge, Alberta.

Listening to – ‘Take California’ by the Propellerheads, The Beatles’ 2009 remastered take of ‘Across the Universe,’ U2’s ‘In a Little While,’ Katy Perry’s ‘Unconditionally (Johnson Somerset Remix), Lady Gaga’s ‘Born this Way’ (The Country Road version) and The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be.’

Quote to Inspire / Consider – “Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Each still photograph is a privileged moment turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Meditative Original

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Winter Rails at Sunset – Rycroft, Alberta

Winter Crossroads – Rycroft, Alberta

Yield Sign – Rycroft, Alberta

That day – I enjoyed it. Days away that my wife encouraged when the draw back to work and home was the safer, more familiar choice; listening to her I got a hotel room, stayed put, slept and the next morning, looked anew at the world with my camera. Any camera work is about venturing beyond one’s Life script, that next thing needing done, the next thing needing to be said or listened through, that next place to be. You discover your original self as you come against the touchstone of encountering what is new through the lens of your camera and creating an image – you become more of you in the encounter of learning through seeing once again. Something similar is surely meant when photography is considered meditation.

These images are on a backroad near Rycroft, Alberta returning home.

Listening to – The Lumineers’ ‘Stubborn Love,’ Our Lady Peace’s ‘Wipe that Smile Off Your Face’ and Bruce Springsteen’s ‘One Step Up.’

Quote to Inspire – “The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.” Susan Meiselas

Pillowed, Pocketed – Undulation

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Golden Hour Hay Bales – Sexsmith, Alberta 1

Golden Hour Hay Bales – Sexsmith, Alberta 2

Golden Hour Hay Bales – Sexsmith, Alberta 3

In the golden hour, when the sun nears the horizon to sunset, I was travelling, leaving Grande Prairie and had driven past Clairmont and Sexsmith just where the divided highway shrinks down to two lanes. To my right was the patterning of snow covered round bales of hay, a regular undulation resembling a pillowed or pocketed quilt. I stopped, got into my winter gear and with camera claimed these shots.

Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s cover of ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad.’

Quote to Inspire – “My photography is a reflection, which comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity – the suspended moment – intervenes during action, in the viewfinder.” – Abbas

Blumenort Shop

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Farm Shop – Blumenort, Alberta

It is snowing. I have driven out to La Crete, Alberta to deliver the table top of my mother and father’s teak dining room table to Homestead Kitchens, reputable wood workers in our region. It’s likely that the wood needs to be refinished – I have left the job to them and their good judgment. Now, where the drive out was done carefully on roads covered with freezing rain, the return journey is done in light snow flurries. Still, in looking out for possible pictures I come across this farmer’s garage/shop near Blumenort, Alberta and collect a few photos. I’m liking the image.

Listening to – Caia’s ‘Remembrance,’ and then Martyn Joseph’s take on Bruce Springsteen, ‘Badlands,’ ‘Blood Brothers,’ ‘Brilliant Disguise’ and ‘Cautious Man.’

Quote to Inspire / Consider – “Using a camera appeases anxiety which the work-drive feel about not working when they are on vacation.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Time’s Relentless Melt

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Plymouth Savoy – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 1

Plymouth Savoy – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 2

Plymouth Savoy – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 3

Wagon Wheels – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 1

Wagon Wheels – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 2

Wagon Wheel – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 3

Wagon Wheel – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 4

Wagon Wheel – McNaught Homestead, Beaverlodge, Alberta 5

Last weekend, on walkabout with my camera, I stopped in at the McNaught Homestead, near Beaverlodge, Alberta, an anchor in my growth as a photographer, a place where I had taken one of two photoplayshops with two instructors calling themselves the Ditch Divas, likely in reference to their stopping for photos alongside roadways. The homestead, as with any farm, is an extraordinarily good place to look at how light, colour, shape and background work together as you consider and make a photograph. On my iPod, I was listening to Susan Sontag’s collection of essays entitled ‘On Photography,’ a good text to listening to at different points in your photographic growth. The photos that follow are taken at the McNaught Homestead. I enjoyed the time with camera and subjects.

Listening to – Krista Tippett’s interview with Eve Ensler of ‘Vagina Monologues’ fame; the interview focused somewhat on sexual violence toward women and later focused on moving on or through cancer treatment. Also, listening to Jack Johnson’s & G. Loves’ song ‘Jungle Gym,’ Tyler Bates’ ‘Ventura’ and ‘Mad World’ by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules.

Quote to Inspire / Consider – “To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability … [all] photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” – Susan Sontag, On Photography.