Winter

A Good Squeeze Out of Life & Entering Death

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Cemetery, Home, Still Life, Winter
Final Resting Place

Final Resting Place

Skaha Lake - Beach Rentals - Penticton BC 1

Skaha Lake – Beach Rentals – Penticton BC 1

Skaha Lake - Beach Rentals - Penticton BC 2

Skaha Lake – Beach Rentals – Penticton BC 2

Skaha Lake - Penticton BC - 1

Skaha Lake – Penticton BC – 1

Skaha Lake - Penticton BC - 2

Skaha Lake – Penticton BC – 2

A Blessing – Entering Death

For Ivan, who took an enormous, enjoyable squeeze out of Life … a blessing from many to accompany your passing. Ivan passed away in Penticton, BC last week at the age of 74 leaving behind many good friends and family. The words are that of John O’Donohue but the sentiment and blessing contained within them are shared and offered by many.

I pray that you will have the blessing
Of being consoled and sure about your death.

May you know in your soul
There is no need to be afraid.

When your time comes, may you have
Every blessing and strength you need.

May there be a beautiful welcome for you
In the home you are going to.

You are not going somewhere strange,
Merely back to the home you have never left.

May you live with compassion
And transfigure everything
Negative within and about you.

When you come to die,
May it be after a long life.

May you be tranquil
Among those who care for you.

May your going be sheltered
And your welcome assured.

May your soul smile
In the embrace
Of your Anam Cara (that radiant source of wisdom, that link between the human and the divine).

~ Entering Death, To Bless the Space Between Us (A Book of Blessings), John O’Donohue

Barbed and Anchored

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farmhouse, Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Winter
Fence Post and Homestead

Fence Post and Homestead

December winter scene – homestead and trees, land that once was broken, now fenced in – protected, reminding and reminiscent of lives and the work of living. Snow blankets dormant land and caps a fence post, one among many anchoring three strands of barbed wire used to hold animals to this area of land while they graze. Horizon, sky, former home, snow and wood’s texture, softer muted colours – all hold my eye and attention.

Listening to – Madeleine Peyroux’s J’ai Deux Amours, Kenny Gamble’s Me and Mrs. Jones, Toni Sola’s Night Sounds Blues, and Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close to You, recognizable songs among others that form the From Paris With Love Soundtrack.

Quote to Inspire – “Emotion or feeling is really the only thing about pictures I find interesting. Beyond that is just a trick.” – Christopher Anderson

December’s Shift – Past Tense

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farmhouse, Homestead, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Weather, Winter
Peace River - Homestead Starting Point

Peace River – Homestead Starting Point

A December day – my brother forwards an e-mail from a family friend, someone from the old neighborhood in Edmonton’s Ottewell community, a friend we shared the neighborhood with as kids. At eighty years, his father, a good friend of my father’s, has passed – succumbing to cancer’s disease. The e-mail conveys global or summary view of his father, a statement written by a man in middle-age, a message made more striking because of its first shift to the past tense of Life – Life has been lived well; Life lived on … beyond the passing of his wife thirty years prior; and, anticipation of how the loss will be felt and recognized. Life’s patterns will change for his family without him.

My memory is of him, his wife, his three boys and his daughter in their Edmonton home on 94b Avenue during the seventies. An accountant, he drove a chocolate brown BMW sedan way back then. My Dad and he shared wit and story. Both were sharp, intelligent people – achievers with achievements; they and their wives had travelled – our families vacationed together. Dad and he were close and knew how to share time together well. Our families may even have met at Church – Ottewell United Church. As I think him through I think of starting points, places any of us began. For him, he’d been adopted in the thirties and loved and raised well – something carried on in each of his children.

Listening to – Roky Erickson’s You’re Gonna Miss Me, Bow Wow Wow’s I Want Candy, Elton John’s Crocodile Rock, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ Crimson and Clover, Katrina and the Waves Walking on Sunshine and Bruce Springsteen’s The River.

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

Shandy & Molson Signage

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Home, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Winter

Molson signage, atop the former, now derelict Edmonton Molson brewing plant anchors Edmonton to a nostalgic, retro-feel of former days. Next door is the former Crosstown Motors’ Dodge Chrysler dealership site. Blocks away from Edmonton’s Waterloo Mercury dealership on 107th Avenue and 114th Street, the Molson Brewery site is perhaps most appropriately considered part of Edmonton’s Oliver community. Beer was made here, and through each year brewer after brewer was bought out by the larger Molson corporation, each good beer being subsumed into Molson’s menu of beer. The Molson building and brewery site is now in the process of being dismantled. It’s in the way of what now could be. There’s a great gash in the earth in front of the brewery building – what had been basement to a portion of the brewing site is being removed. The older, more aesthetically pleasing portion of the building still remains, behind chain-link fence. Architecturally, this regal, ornate building dates back to the 1920’s or thirties … perhaps the forties. Design, texture and colour all comprise what the building is about … but you do have to look around to see what is there.

I’m reminded of a summer, two years back and of combining a quality ginger beer with a dark lager, making something Dad called a Shandy for Dad and I – a couple of good, summer sips.

Listening to – You Can’t Buy Shoes in a Painting, by Jill Osier (read by Eliza Foss from poetryfoundation.org) on CKUA.

Quote to Inspire – “A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny moments in a person’s life that reveal greater truths.” – Anonymous

Common Road – Common Talking Point

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Winter
Twin Lakes 2 - Twin Lakes, Alberta

Twin Lakes 2 – Twin Lakes, Alberta

Twin Lakes 3 - Twin Lakes, Alberta

Twin Lakes 3 – Twin Lakes, Alberta

Twin Lakes 1 - Twin Lakes, Alberta

Twin Lakes 1 – Twin Lakes, Alberta

A common road travelled becomes common talking point, especially in terms of those travels upon that road that challenge you. Two kilometres receive representation in this photo from the photo’s bottom-most edge to the crest of the Twin Lake’s hill. On your way to Edmonton from High Level (or on your return journey) this part of the road is the tricky bit – the section of the road that requires finesse. Traveling northward, from the hill’s crest the descent (behind the camera) is some five kilometres. And, weather within the air mass covering this hill can change drastically in winter. A driver may encounter fog or several inches of snow. The long road surface can be glazed with ice and you may be driving upon it before a sanding truck is able to add surface grip. And, with the rolling hills of incline/descent it is possible to be surprised by an oncoming vehicle passing another in your lane. This Twin Lakes hill demands a driver’s alertness, calm and skill. Usually once you’re past Twin Lakes traveling north or south the drive regains steady and anticipated progress.

So, this photo may be the one, as common talking point the photo may be the one to try as a large canvas print. We’ll see.

Listening to – Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, a song played on our Heintzman piano (bright sounding piano) by my daughter – good, good schtuff.

Quote to Inspire – “Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform it by photographing it.” – Morley Baer

Image Design, Picture Perfect – Prints Printed

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, Homestead, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Weather, Winter
Chevrolet Grain Truck 1

Chevrolet Grain Truck 1

At day’s end, cold yet indoors, changing tack on the day’s direction – printing two or three images, ones that I might have done as canvas prints. I chatted with Image Design Pros in Grande Prairie – cost and size of the image that can be produced are both attractive elements within my decision. Shutterfly is another option, an option my wife has talked around with her colleagues.The Picture Perfect Frame and Gallery in Grande Prairie may also serve as framing point for prints.  I discovered that Dan Kameka who has photographed many retrospective farming tribute photos as well as the Dunvegan bridge has been former owner of this same Picture Perfect Frame and Gallery. Upstairs the gallery contains two or three remaining prints of Dan Kameka’s – farming tribute … black and whites with selective colorization (retro greens and reds from the forties, fifties and sixties), nostalgic prints holding memories for people within and around Grande Prairie. There are artists from within the regions – Klaus Peters, Robert Guest and Frank Martel. I bought a Martel work for my son for Christmas – there’s an intensity in the use of colours that is vibrant and energizing.

In printing photos tonight I am pleased with the colour fidelity between monitor and actual print. It’s been ‘Homestead & Winter Skies,’ ‘Winter’s Wraith-like Wisps,’ ‘Rivetting – Edmonton’s High Level Bridge,’ and ‘Gorge – Englishman River Falls, British Columbia.’ The photos presented here tonight are a quartet of winter images of that Nampa grain truck, a Chevrolet three-ton from a few posts back.

Listening to – The Road Home with Bob Chelmick, CKUA streaming via the Internet … two poems by Lorna Crozier begin the show; one’s called Patience; then it’s Things to Do by Calgary’s John Rutherford.

Quote to Inspire – “A photo is a small voice, at best, but sometimes – just sometimes – one photograph or a group of them can lure our senses into awareness. Much depends upon the viewer; in some, photographs can summon enough emotion to be a catalyst to thought.” – W. Eugene Smith

Chevrolet Grain Truck 2

Chevrolet Grain Truck 2

Chevrolet Grain Truck 3

Chevrolet Grain Truck 3

Chevrolet Grain Truck 4

Chevrolet Grain Truck 4

Last Inhabitants – No Longer Tended To

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Farm, Flora, Homestead, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Weather, Winter
Grain Stocks - Fairview, Alberta

Grain Stocks – Fairview, Alberta

Under grey, foreboding winter skies, grain stocks remain – last inhabitants of this farmer’s field. Missed by the threshing blade, iced with snow and blown by every breeze they remain, still standing, no longer tended to.

Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s Cardiff Bay, Strange Way and The Great American Novel.

Quote to Inspire – “Not everybody trusts paintings; but, people believe photographs.” – Ansel Adams

Homestead & Winter Skies

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Sunset, Weather, Winter
Winter Skies 1

Winter Skies 1

Solid, well-made, a homestead house looks southwest to winter skies at dusk. Windowless, vacant and solitary now, the building did once serve as home, refuge from one’s day, shelter during one’s night, that place to regroup, rejuvenate and revive before handling tomorrow. On the crest of a hill, a farmer’s field, wind and snow blow through this former home to farmers and their families.

Listening to – Mike Plume’s Rattle the Cage;  reminds of Mindy Smith’s similar song with same title.

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

Winter Skies 2

Winter Skies 2

Winter Skies 3

Winter Skies 3

B-Side Catch-all & Round-up

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, Flora, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Weather, Winter

B-side images, ones that haven’t made the first cut reveal in their review how often I am impressed with technology’s artistry that comprises what becomes a vehicle. A veritable used car lot, these images display resurrected lives of vehicles, being breathed into new Life through the artistry of a would-be car crafter. Winter grain stocks hold interest in their various settings.

Listening to – Aqualung’s Strange and Beautiful (I’ll Put A Spell On You), the Volkswagen Beetle tune from a few years back.

Quote to Inspire (or draw one toward reality) – “Photography cannot do much. It provides some level of information, yet it has no pretensions about changing the world.” John Vink

Upon that Unprofitable Land

Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Combine (Farming), Farm, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Weather, Winter
Massey-Harris Combine, Peace River, Alberta – 1

Massey-Harris Combine, Peace River, Alberta – 1

The back forty is a farming phrase taken to mean the untended area of a farm, land not in public view, land not regularly or productively used by its farmer. The back forty may be difficult to navigate with farm machinery. It may contain a slough or the water table may be high enough making the work of land use unprofitable. Such land, untamed, untrammeled and unused is often best used as a place for storing farming machinery that you might need for parts in future days. North from Peace River, Alberta, this Massey-Harris sits on the steeper slope of a field, an area of land that its farmer has found difficult to use, part of what might described as the back forty.

Listening to – Snow Patrol’s Those Distant Bells, Matthew Perryman Jones’ Keep It On The Inside, Murray McLaughlin’s Hard Rock Town, Liz Longley’s Unraveling and Shawn Colvin’s All Fall Down.

Quote to Inspire – “My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.” – Steve McCurry

Massey-Harris Combine, Peace River, Alberta – 3

Massey-Harris Combine, Peace River, Alberta – 3

Massey-Harris Combine, Peace River, Alberta – 2

Massey-Harris Combine, Peace River, Alberta – 2