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
Derelict Service Station – Southern Alberta 2
Derelict Service Station – Southern Alberta 3
Derelict Service Station – Southern Alberta 4
Derelict Service Station – Southern Alberta 6
Derelict Service Station – Southern Alberta 10
Derelict Service Station – Southern Alberta 11
Derelict Service Station – Southern Alberta 12
Derelict Service Station – Southern Alberta 14
Beyond the Banff National Park gates, moving east toward Calgary, near the Stoney Reserve a service station with restaurant that had been a thriving business in the sixties, seventies and even eighties is now dormant. An abandoned structure, without windows and gyprocked walls, it now provides temporary and limited shelter from the elements to travellers or hitchhikers or people seeking ‘off-the-grid’ status. The building reminds of characters, scenes and happenings within the ramble of Jack Kerouac’s novel, ‘On the Road,’ of people driven and on the move, of stories shared between travellers that may or may never meet again, of place and places where seedier things can occur. On an adjacent theme, the building reminds of the Life of Chris McCandless in Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction work, ‘Into the Wild,’ and any would-be traveller who aims to explore and take-on the world on their own terms – that traveller could find refuge in this building. Graffiti tags tattoo this building, the building paper to the quill of the traveller’s spray paint. Expressed, here, are the dominant issues confronting each traveller, assertions about justice denied, of perspective not being valued and rejected, of the irony within all that makes the world tick. In all, graffiti’s colour, shape and form pull the witness to the resilient voice of the traveller expressed upon these walls. Here, ‘the writing is on the wall’ about the state of their/our world. Most telling about these travellers and their living so close to the land is the assertion ‘The Desperate Came’.
Listening to – Eddie Vedder’s ‘Hard Sun’ from the soundtrack to ‘Into the Wild.’ Then it’s Ray Lamontagne’s ‘Hold You In My Arms,’ Radiohead’s ‘All I Need,’ the Counting Crows with ‘Omaha’ and Jack Johnson’s ‘Rodeo Clowns.’
Quote to Inspire – “I don’t care so much anymore about ‘good photography’; I am gathering evidence for history.” – Gilles Peress
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
1949 Chevrolet Grain Truck – Donnelly, Alberta 1
1949 Chevrolet Grain Truck – Donnelly, Alberta 2
1949 Chevrolet Grain Truck – Donnelly, Alberta 3
1949 Chevrolet Grain Truck – Donnelly, Alberta 4
1949 Chevrolet Grain Truck – Donnelly, Alberta 5
Dented and worn, pitted and cancered (rusting), the hood of a 1949 Chevrolet grain truck continues to hold its shape – lines and curves created some sixty-four years ago.
Listening to: Imagine Dragons’ ‘Radioactive.’
Quote to Inspire: “Take a moment. What was it you saw when you were moved to pick up the camera? I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you mutter something about thinking “it looked cool.” Dig deeper. Was it a thought, a feeling, a simple moment when your eyes did a double-take at the intersection of two lines? Was it a lick of light, two blocks of color?” ― David duChemin, Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Grain Bins – Dixonville, Alberta 1
Grain Bins – Dixonville, Alberta 2
Grain Truck Box – Manning, Alberta 1
Grain Truck Box – Manning, Alberta 2
Grain Truck Box – Manning, Alberta 3
Grain Truck Cab – Manning, Alberta 1
Grain Truck Cab – Manning, Alberta 2
Mercury Grain Truck – Manning, Alberta 1
Mercury Grain Truck – Manning, Alberta 2
Mercury Grain Truck – Manning, Alberta 3
Mercury Grain Truck Badge – Manning, Alberta 1
Mercury Grain Truck Badge – Manning, Alberta 2
Mercury Grain Truck Badge – Manning, Alberta 3
Mercury Grain Truck Badge – Manning, Alberta 4
Images this morning are from a farming community in the region that lies between Manning, Dixonville and Blue Sky, Alberta. Grain bins done in HDR with swirling, heavy clouds above and a set of HDR photos of an early fifties grain truck at the pioneer museum minutes north of Manning.
Listening to the Candid Frame – an interview of Niel and Susan Silverman, a husband and wife photographer duo who provide photography workshops around the world; also, Sheryl Crow’s ‘Riverwide,’ U2’s ‘Wire’ and ‘Promenade,’ Roxy Music’s ‘India’ and Christine by Siouxsie & the Banshees.
Quote to Inspire – “On the odd days Auto Tone gets it right I assume it’s using some kind of voodoo.” ― David duChemin, Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Hawk – Valleyview, Alberta 1
Hawk – Valleyview, Alberta 2
Hawk – Valleyview, Alberta 3
On the long drive home to High Level from Southern Alberta I chanced upon a hawk, sitting on an aged farm fence post alongside the highway north, the hawk gazing out to the road – resting and surveying. I drove further, doubled back and parked my truck twenty metres from the hawk. Outside my truck, I was able to get several shots. Because the hawk had not moved and was not disturbed by me snapping photos at the truck I took a few steps toward the hawk, aiming for close-up. At five steps in, the hawk lifted from its perch and flew by me and across the road. These images were taken perhaps ten minutes north from Valleyview, Alberta near the old Valleyview road.
Listening to – the Imagine Dragons’ song ‘Radioactive’ with my daughter, driving her to her dance workshop this morning.
Quote to Inspire – “The cliché comes not in what you shoot but in how you shoot it.” ― David duChemin, Within the Frame: The Journey of Photographic Vision
1 Wind Turbines – North Shore, Oahu 1
2 Wind Turbines – North Shore, Oahu 2
3 Wind Turbines – North Shore, Oahu 3
Fine Ass Coffee Mill – Oahu, HI 1
Fine Ass Coffee Mill – Oahu, HI 2
More than a few times my daughter, my wife and I drove northward exploring Oahu’s North Shore and Haleiwa. We had rented a blue Ford Fusion so that we could explore and see the island. Using our Tom Tom GPS we found that both the GPS as well as traffic signs encouraged the use of U-turns along highway intersections as the best means to handle road to road transitions.
Our first excursion was a scouting endeavor, a drive northward that became our first trek around Oahu. As we moved toward Haleiwa we stopped at a locally grown coffee mill, its name cheekily playing upon Hawaiian dialect, Fine Ass Coffee resembling the words Finest Coffee. We took a tour and were introduced to live, growing coffee beans – usually coffee beans grow in dyads within one shell and occasionally are found on their own (one coffee bean within a shell). Singleton coffee beans (called peaberries) produce a potent coffee as they receive the nutrients that would feed what should have been a dyad.
What was also striking as we moved past Haleiwa was encountering wind turbines juxtaposed against big sky, cloud work, volcanic rock and farms. On our second drive to North Shore, we had done some shopping along the old Haleiwa road and came out of one shop to discover that a farm building one kilometre away was on fire – a brown-white plume of smoke rising into the air. And, just as in our remote communities distance to the blaze from fire departments determines rescue time and determines what physical assets can be saved. We followed our curiosity toward the fire but gave up on the endeavor realizing that the gas was toxic and that we’d likely be clogging the route toward the fire.
At that point along the roadway, I got my camera and tripod out and in directing the camera back to the way we had come discovered the wind turbines from a new angle … an extraordinary sight; I was able to catch the wind turbines within a rainbow. There were other shots in the Golden Hour where sun, landscape, cloud work and rainbows did culminate into extraordinary compositions, but being able to stop the car safely for a shot limited the possibility in the endeavor. Still, I saw what I saw – that’s good too.
Listening to – Bill Cutler’s tribute to Jerry Garcia with ‘Starlight Jamboree’ on CKUA Radio (streaming online).
Quote to Inspire – “Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.” – John Berger
1 North Shore Surfing 1
2 North Shore Surfing 2
3 Along the Way – North Shore 1
4 Along the Way – North Shore 2
5 North Shore – Highway
6 Strong Current – Haleiwa, Oahu 1
7 Strong Current – Haleiwa, Oahu 2
8 Surfing – Across from Diamond Head
9 52 Ford Panel Van – Haleiwa, Oahu
10 Waves – Sandy Beach, Oahu
11 Surfer – Sandy Beach, Oahu
My wife and daughter are very gracious about accommodating me and the opportunity of a photograph. On my side, what is balanced is seeing a possible photo from the vehicle against the need to proceed onward with the journey with my family. My daughter and wife are avid readers. So, in stopping for a photograph, they usually have had a book going that they are eager to delve into. Over two weeks on Oahu my daughter read ten books (at the beach, in restaurants, in the car and late at night) – something you’d not have caught me doing at her age; I’d be out doing … something. Over the two weeks, we circumnavigated Oahu perhaps three or four times seeing the island fresh and then growing more and more familiar with the landscape and getting out for a few photographs. The following images are from Oahu’s North Shore and from southern Oahu at Sandy Beach and Diamond Head.
Listening to: John O’Donohue’s Greenbelt interview with Martin Rowe (August 2007).
Quote to Inspire – “Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.” – Henri Cartier Bresson
Catholic Church – Waikiki
Waikiki Beach At Night
Waikiki Beach At Night
Waikiki Strip 2
My wife, my daughter and I chased-down a never-done in July. On the road, with our out-of-town doctor’s visits complete, bags packed – a task from several days before, and no pressing obligations, the challenge set before me by my wife was to get my daughter, my wife and me to Hawaii (any of the five islands), to gather some summer rest, to explore new sites/sights, to try out some new things and to photograph the visual treasure among the islands; the challenge broadly – rejuvenate. Honolulu on Oahu is where we landed after being bumped flights and arriving five hours later than intended (it’s totally interesting that United Airlines found us new flights and provided us tickets for another flight to use within the next year … as we entered our plane we were later than planned, but ahead financially); we stayed at a Waikiki hotel, minutes away from the Waikiki beach, surfing and lazing in the sun. The images, here, are starting point images Waikiki, in the evening.
Listening to: Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds work through several tunes from their Live at Radio City Music Hall recording (2007) – Daniel Lanois’ ‘The Maker,’ ‘Sister,’ ‘Old Dirt Hill,’ and ‘Crush’.
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” — Elliott Erwitt
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
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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