Reddening

Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Season, Summer, Sunset, Weather

Skyline – Edmonton, Alberta – Canada

Edmonton Skyline – Edmonton, Alberta Canada 1

Edmonton Skyline – Edmonton, Alberta Canada 3

Skyline – Edmonton, Alberta – Canada 4

I dropped them off. Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium now held them – my wife, our daughter and our daughter’s friend – tickets, purchased last November; the event, a One Direction concert.

I began looking for possible photographs – different subjects presented themselves. I got out of our truck opposite Strathcona Composite School and had a look at a rat rod parked outside a gym on the southbound Calgary trail – very minimalistic in design and with little to draw the eye. I moved on. On Jasper Avenue the Gibson Building has always been an interesting subject to photograph – a building built to accommodate the wedge or pie piece shape of the land beneath it. But for the last eighteen months a neighboring construction zone has interfered with its presentation; I would need a fish eye lens to make something of the building without capturing the construction site. A photograph would not be viable today. Later, I had a good walk through the John Walter museum and gathered more information about the area and the history of one of the Walterdale homes I had photographed months before. There, in walking back to my truck, I ran into one of my daughter’s friends from her dance company – she was staying with grandparents and had recognized me. We said our hellos; I chatted with her and her granddad and we parted.

The evening clouded over. As the sun moved into its golden hour, I got to the Riverdale bike bridge and began gathering the shots above of the Edmonton Skyline. People walking by offered encouragement and saw the photographer’s opportunity of reddening clouds. One Direction’s music could be heard in the distance – people wondered if the music was part of the Taste of Edmonton event that was also going on, currently. In wind, spitting rain and cloud, wiping the lens with lens cloth regularly I gathered these images.

Quote to Consider – within the intention of ‘In My Back Pocket – Photography,’ has been the movement toward the seamless ‘See, Think, Do’ of image capture and image making. The following image conveys something similar and is found in Franz Kafka’s ‘The Wish to Be a Red Indian;’ “If one were only an Indian, instantly alert, and on a racing horse, leaning against the wind, kept on quivering jerkily over the quivering ground, until one shed one’s spurs, for there needed no spurs, threw away the reins, for there needed no reins, and hardly saw that the land before one was smoothly short heath when horse’s neck and head would be already gone.” Liking this … sort of what photography can become, response.

Listening to – Maeve Binchy’s ‘A Week in Winter’ for the long drive to and from Edmonton.

Footner Anchorage

Canon Camera, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Still Life, Summer, Sunset

Anchored Float Plane – Footner Lake, Alberta – Canada

A smoky dusk at Footner Lake in early July, late in the evening and perhaps for the first time in twenty years I witnessed this sight, a float plane, anchored and ready for use at this dock. And, at 10:20 p.m., the air at the lake fills with the sound of different air tanker water bombers returning to the High Level airport (half a kilometre away) – propellers feather, the rubber of wheels squeak loudly meeting the tarmac followed by the winding down of engines and flaps up cutting air, slowing each plane, and then taxiing to a halt. Finally, the air quiets for the night and all becomes still.

Listening to – Joe Strummer & the Mescalaros’ ‘Coma Girl,’ Amos Milburn’s ‘Chicken Shack Boogie,’ Alan Vega’s ‘Dujang Prang’ and Jimmy Reed’s ‘Take Out Some Insurance.’ All are songs Bruce Springsteen highlights as holding promise, ones that he enjoys and will recommend in MOJO magazine.

Quote to Consider – “You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you have and probe deeper.” – William Albert Allard

From within the Smoke

Canon Camera, Flora, Night, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Smoke, Summer, Sunset, Weather

Wildfire – 10km South – High Level, Ab 1

Wildfire – 10km South – High Level, Ab 2

Wildfire – 10km South – High Level, Ab 3

Wildfire – 10km South – High Level, Ab 4

Outside on Saturday afternoon, I was mowing grass on day 1 of our summer break. Daylight filtered through a light smoke haze. Looking from the yard of our High Level home southward plumes of smoke were notably dark and heavy … and very close to town. In a wildfire advisory I was to read that only ten kilometres separated a wildfire from High Level. Air tankers roared through the air all afternoon and into the night soaking the blaze with water until 10:00 p.m.. Later that evening, in driving out to the point nearest the fire on the highway I witnessed a DC-3 air tanker moving through smoke arcing out of a water-dropping run – crossing the highway from right to left and climbing as it turned to its left and northward to the High Level airport … a sight that would have made an extraordinary photograph. I pulled off the road onto a temporary turnout and took these images. In one I aimed to capture the sun as a solid orange disk as seen through smoke; the image I present here is one result I am happy with though it is not what I intended.

Listening to – Willie Nelson’s cover of ‘Just Breathe’ with his son Lukas and Willie Nelson’s cover of a Coldplay tune, ‘The Scientist,’ featured in the Robert Downey Jr. film with Robert Duvall, ‘The Judge.’

Quote to Consider – “It can be a trap of the photographer to think that his or her best pictures were the ones that were the hardest to get.” – Timothy Allen, ‘On Editing Photos’

Wildfires Held

Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, School, Smoke, Summer, Weather

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 1

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 2

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 3

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 4

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 5

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 6

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 7

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 8

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 9

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 10

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 11

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 12

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 13

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 14

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 15

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 16

Wildfire – Hutch Lake, Alberta, Canada – 17

The school year is complete and I am settling into summer bit by bit. For the most part we have a smoky haze surrounding us. Ten kilometres south of High Level, Alberta a wildfire burns and tonight’s most current report is that fire is being held. But, there are sixty wildfires in our region, some threatening communities; residents in the community of North Tallcree have been put on evacuation alert. We are not quite a tinderbox, but our forests are dry and we’ve had little rainfall.

Yesterday, I drove out to Hutch Lake, 20 kilometres north from High Level and saw that forest on the east side of the highway was smouldering; air tankers and helicopters slinging water were dropping water on the fire. I was able to photograph a team of the smaller Amphibious Airtankers as they dropped water on fires and skim across Hutch Lake loading water into pontoon tanks.

Listening to – Gillian Welch’s ‘Red Clay Halo,’ Billy Bragg and Wilco’s rendition of Woody Guthrie’s ‘Airline to Heaven,’ Badly Drawn Boy’s ‘A Minor Incident’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Shelter from the Storm.’

Quote to Consider – “Nothing happens when you sit at home. I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times … I just shoot at what interests me at that moment.” – Elliot Erwitt

Its Next Turn

Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Christmas, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Summer, Sunrise, Sunset, Weather, Winter

Sunset Cloudburst – Valleyview, Alberta – Canada

Vermillion Lakes – Banff, Alberta – Canada

2015 is here. It has arrived. Christmas has come and been, presents have been shared and received, family has been enjoyed, rest has been had. An emphasis on creating images has been more absent during this time.

The time has offered the chance to explore/research the photography of others and Google Circles has been a key venue for doing so. It has been an excellent venue for sharing images. What I am impressed by is the speed and rapidity by which new images are added to one’s home stream. And, it is entirely too easy to reach out and access the camaraderie of other photographers and genres of photography that you or I define. Google Circles is a marvelous means of gathering inspiration for photography by way of witnessing what others manage to create – ideas for what I or anyone might try are right there, in front of you. With Google Circles it has been necessary to pare down distracting and unintended kinds of images; but, it can be done in an easy way that can serve your photographic interests. What I did not anticipate was that it would surface significant interests for next steps in photography.

What this exploration has also surfaced is that good photographers are always in touch with their world; they are familiar with current affairs; they have a good sense of what’s going on in terms of the Arts; they are current with literature and the intentions behind such narrative. They are in step and in sync with their world. And, they create images with intention.

So, this blog, takes its next turn. What will I photograph next? What skills will I aim to grow? What influences will I find in this next year? These are likely your questions too. Good! Let’s see what images we can bring into being.

Gratitude – thank you, to all who have been a part of these three years of ‘In My Back Pocket – Photography;’ thank you for your interest and encouragement; thank you for those times when you’ve steered me to a next idea or skill; thank you for the camaraderie (or, perhaps better stated, solidarity) associated with a common pursuit. It ‘all’ counts and I am grateful.

The images presented here are some fun with black and white and selective colorization, images from this summer’s travels.

Listening to – Chopin’s Nocturne No. 14 in F Sharp minor, Opus 9, No. 1; a recording by Amir Katz.

Quote to Consider – “The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed.” – Anne Geddes

Inside the Watchtower

Best Practices - Photography, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Summer

Medicine Wheel – Grand Canyon Watchtower 1

Medicine Wheel – Grand Canyon Watchtower 2

A park ranger greeted us as we entered Grand Canyon National Park. He asked where we were from and knew some of our home terrain from personal experience – as a younger man he and a fellow ranger cycled through British Columbia (B.C.) on a two week break; he’d been from Prince Rupert and through Quesnel and into southern B.C.. They’d also been chased by a bear in that adventure.

Our Grand Canyon ranger advised us to stop in at the Watchtower, the first lookout we would encounter in the park. As a structure, the Watchtower was built by Mary Colter in 1932, the same year in which my father was born (eighty-two years ago). Inside, the walls are painted with Navajo art in earthy, vibrant tones. One image, here, is a high dynamic range (HDR) photograph in natural light of a Navajo Medicine Wheel. Another, also an HDR photograph shows the interior structure of the Watchtower looking up through its center. The door to the roof was locked shut, but there were windows to look through, out and over the Canyon. I met a fellow Canon Camera shooter and showed him he could use his 60D’s optical zoom to create tack-sharp images … some camaraderie, there. Good, good. 😉

Listening to – Matthew Perryman Jones’ ‘Unknown.’

Quote to Consider – “[Photographs] … still want, first of all, to show something ‘out there.’” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Road as Frontier

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer

1The Road – Arizona

2 The Road – Arches Nat’l Park

3 The Road – Arches Nat’l Park

4 The Road – Arizona

The road – some value the swift movement of traveling from point of origin to established destination; here, travel is not about what you encounter along your distance – travel is about getting ‘there.’ Robert Frost and Scott Peck, on the other hand, each refer to the road less traveled for what the road can reveal of the world and for how that road can grow us as we encounter new frontiers. Jack Kerouac, in his novel, ‘On the Road,’ refers to a life orientation of meeting, new, upcoming road – what we discover moving over it and how we grow as the road challenges us. That road and what we do along it becomes our narrative, our less traveled road.

Images from the road ….

Listening to – Chuck Berry’s ‘Route 66.’

Quote to Consider – “If photographs are messages, the message is both transparent and mysterious.”

Query – HDR Halo Removal

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer

Grand Canyon – Arizona 1

Grand Canyon – Arizona 2

Grand Canyon – Arizona 3

Grand Canyon – Arizona 4

Grand Canyon – Arizona 5

The following images of the Grand Canyon are high dynamic range (HDR) images. In editing these HDR shots the challenge has been to try and eliminate the halo surrounding edges of highly contrasted colours within images. The method experimented with this week has been to open the Develop module in Adobe Lightroom and within the Lens Correction menu to utilize the ‘Remove Chromatic Aberration’ there instead of relying only on a similar feature in the HDR Efex plug-in, on the plug-in side of merging the three (or more images). Beyond this, NiK Software’s Viveza is used to sharpen and add contrast and adjust/decrease brightness; after that Topaz Labs’ Clarity and Adjust helps adjust sharpness and saturation. With Viveza I’m finding success in editing toward what I want. I still am learning about choosing the filter/preset in Topaz Adjust and then finding optimal saturation from there.

If you are an HDR image creator I would appreciate hearing from you and the method you use to create your non-halo HDR images; this week, a software product called HDR Expose 3 (by Unified Color) has been recommended for its de-ghosting (halo elimination) capacity … do you use this?

Listening to – 16 Horsepower from their ‘Folklore’ album, in their rendering of a Nina Simone song, ‘Sinnerman.’

Quote to Consider – “In the past, a discontent with reality expressed itself as a longing for another world. In modern society, a discontent with reality expresses itself forcefully and most hauntingly by the longing to reproduce this one.”

Ragamuffin Remembering

Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Gas Station, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Winter

Chevrolet Truck – Arizona 2

Chevrolet Truck – Arizona 1

It’s Sunday, and it’s a colder kind of Sunday in early November. I’m downstairs with the computer, editing summer photos – our travels through Utah. I show my wife the following image of an early 30’s Chevrolet truck. It sits alongside the highway within a Navajo reservation. For my wife, the vehicle has personality, the kind you’d find personified in the Disney movie, ‘Cars.’ I’m liking its colour, shape and integrity. Paint peels from its fenders and body. Rust in its colour seems very close to the colour of the rocks within the landscape.

The age of the vehicle also holds my attention. As a marker of time, the vehicle would have been around in world war II, it would have been around when that war ended, it would have been witness to all that Jack Kerouac’s novel, ‘On the Road,’ would have been about. And, as I think about it, the truck would also have been around when Rich Mullins made his treks out to this Navajo reservation to minister to children and youth with his music. In music ministry, ‘Awesome God,’ is the song Rich Mullins is most recognized for writing, along with many songs recorded by Amy Grant.

This past fall, over a couple of days, I went through a DVD drama called ‘Ragamuffin’ which is an inspired chronicle of Rich Mullins’ life in which the viewer witnesses Rich’s transformation (struggles, consequences and transformation) from successful Christian musician to a life lived more and more honestly by the tenets of God set out in the Bible. 78 Eatonwood Green is a place where Rich and the Ragamuffin Band were staying in Ireland and 78 Eatonwood Green is title to another song worth the hearing, an instrumental with a dulcimer featuring within the song.

Listening to – Rich Mullins’ ‘78 Eatonwood Green’ from ‘A Liturgy, a Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band.’

Quote to Consider – ‘Photography, though not an art form in itself, has the peculiar capacity to turn all its subjects into works of art.’ – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Morning Flux

Backlight, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Sunrise, Weather

Sunrise – Arches Nat’l Park, Moab, Utah 1

Sunrise – Arches Nat’l Park, Moab, Utah 2

Sunrise – Arches Nat’l Park, Moab, Utah 3

Sunrise – Arches Nat’l Park, Moab, Utah 4

Sunrise – Arches Nat’l Park, Moab, Utah 5

Sunrise – Arches Nat’l Park, Moab, Utah 6

Summer Memory – early, early morning, warming, moving, cycling Edmonton bike trails, alone, witnessing with dawn the lighting of the earth and the articulation and colouration of shapes, the earth shrouded in mist, becoming seen, more and more vividly, with each pedal stroke. It’s the transition or flux from night to day happening each day regardless of weather – the time is special, perhaps sacred. The photos, here, capture the lighting of the earth, the articulation of shape and colouration of the world at dawn – Arches National Park, near Moab, Utah.

Listening to – Mary J. Blige and U2 sing ‘One,’ Luciano Pavarotti and U2 sing ‘Miss Sarajevo’ and B.B. King and U2 sing ‘When Love Comes to Town.’

Quote to Consider – “Insofar as photography does peel away the dry wrappers of habitual seeing, it creates another habit of seeing – both intense and cool, solicitous and detached; charmed by the insignificant detail, addicted to incongruity.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’