Sunlight & Mountain Cloud Work

Backlight, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Summer, Sunset, Weather

Volcano Weather – Guatemala City 2

Volcano Weather – Guatemala City 3

Volcano Weather – Guatemala City 4

Volcano Weather – Guatemala City 5

Two weeks ago, students, parents and staff travelled to Guatemala to engage in a service learning project with another school. Leaving Canada’s frigid boreal temperatures we made our way south into ever warmer temperatures. The endeavor saw our students working with local students and their community on a variety of projects. And, we had the opportunity to learn Spanish, understand some culture, travel and see the locale with our Canadian eyes. On our third day out, on horseback or by foot, we had the opportunity to climb high above Guatemala City to the summit of a volcano, a volcano that had last been active in 2011. The images here are looking out from the volcano and our catching glimpses of sunlight within/among mountain cloud work.

Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s ‘Kiss the World Beautiful’ and ‘Sing to My Soul.’

Quote to Consider/Inspire – “… Photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.” – Susan Sontag

Song from My Youth

Canon Camera, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Sunset, Weather, Winter

Fire Tower, Watt Mountain – High Level, Alberta 1

Fire Tower, Watt Mountain – High Level, Alberta 2

Fire Tower, Watt Mountain – High Level, Alberta 3

Watt Mountain 2 – High Level, Alberta 1

Watt Mountain Ice – High Level, Alberta 1

Watt Mountain Ice – High Level, Alberta 2

A quiet Saturday, one spent mostly at home comes to a close. The Ozark Mountain Daredevils play from my iTunes account through computer speakers, ‘If You Wanna Get To Heaven’ – muted strings on a guitar are percussive, a harmonica brings in melody and other instruments, the sound preceding lyrics that consider getting to heaven – song and lyrics attract my ear, a song from my youth. The evening has involved editing images from Watt Mountain.

Listening to – Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Highway Patrolman,’ ‘One Step Up,’ and ‘Last to Die.’ There’s been ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray and the Wraymen. The Who have played ‘Boris the Spider,’ ‘I Can See for Miles’ and ‘Magic Bus.’ The Kingsmen have played ‘Louie Louie.’ Green Day have played ‘East Jesus Nowhere.’ The playlist has rounded out with Bruce Springsteen singing Pete Seeger’s Civil Rights anthem, ‘We Shall Overcome.’

Quote to Consider – “Picture-taking has been interpreted in two entirely different ways: either as a lucid and precise act of knowing, of conscious intelligence or as a pre-intellectual, intuitive mode of encounter.” – Susan Sontag, ‘On Photography’

Autumn Gold

Best Practices - Photography, Canon Camera, Canon Live View, Fall, Farm, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Night, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sunset, Weather

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.’

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

Barn, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Sunset, Winter

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

Homestead Music

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Fall, Farm, Farmhouse, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Season, Still Life, Sunset, Weather

Buttertown Homestead – Fort Vermilion, Alberta

My wife points us to music tonight. At day’s end she’s responding to both of us, each a vortex of thoughts, moving, tumbling, clustering, dot-to-dot, aiming toward productive, tangible result – saturated with the day, not here, not in the now, needing to release the grip of endeavor, to withdraw and to settle. Time away from the pursued pace is needed, time that interrupts the cycle of ‘home-work-and-back-again,’ that kind of quality time that permits fresh aspect and new grasp on perspective, a good thing. Music is our choice tonight for plying away our adhesion, breaking contact with the day that’s been. The music we turn to is longstanding legacy from BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday show at 8:00 p.m., ‘Rhythm and Soul’ hosted by Steve Stockman; it’s music that’s been on my wife’s iPod this week in and around her classroom. David Gray’s Hammersmith concert, ‘Live, In Slow Motion,’ is the concert video my wife chooses and with our daughter away at dance class we sit down to supper, downstairs, in front of our television and engage this concert, slowing ourselves, listening to a cellist, two guitarists, a bass player, a drummer and David Gray bring music to Life. Allowing ourselves to become vulnerable to lyric, melody, rhythm, sound and silence, we are drawn to familiar songs, songs I’ve fretted in former days – ‘Sail Away,’ ‘Shine,’ ‘My Oh My,’ ‘Silver Lining.’ These songs draw us out to that part of our Lives beyond endeavor. They open-out memory and memories. We move into and travel along new melodies. Engaging with these songs orients us in terms of presence and our present – where we are needing and aiming to be, a reset of sorts.

Homestead – this October exposure is one of a handful of images taken within the golden hour near Fort Vermilion in a pre-winter sunset, winter-ready clouds billowing in regular, heavy patterns across the sky. The linear clarity of homestead lines mingles with the subtle bend in its roof and the regular, yet unique line of each board. It’s old, yet it’s solid and well-preserved. Coloration and luminance chosen in editing work best with the available light and draw me to this photo, again and again.

I am definitely wanting to be out and about with my camera, perhaps with others seeing other ways of viewing the world. My Canon 60D has developed a hiccough, though – three years wear and tear has made the spring ejection of the SD card difficult; it’s also become difficult to set the card back in. Sending the camera for repair is likely to cost one-third to one-half the cost of replacing the camera with another 60D body or its next generation body the 70D. And, then I wonder if I should move to a pro-sumer camera the Canon 7D, 6D or 5D.

T h a n k y o u ‘ s

– My gratitude goes out to all who are a part of this blog, those of you who add your comments and engage in the dialogue about photos, photography and music.

Listening to – Tyler Bates’ ‘Ventura,’ one of those captivating songs from Emilio Estevez’ film, ‘The Way.’ The post reminds me of several Martyn Joseph songs – ‘The Good in Me is Dead’ from the ‘Don’t Talk About Love’ album and talking with Martyn at the Alexandra Community Hall in Edmonton, Alberta on the eve of the Iraq invasion. Other songs come to mind – ‘Wake Me Up,’ ‘Strange Kind of Friend,’ ‘Walk Down the Mountain’ and ‘Just Like the Man Said.’

Quote to Inspire: “Still images can be moving and moving images can be still. Both meet within soundscapes.” Chien-Chi Chang

Walking On

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Fall, Farm, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Sunset

1 Grain Bins – Manning, Alberta

2 Leaning Grain Bin – Dixonville, Alberta 1

3 Leaning Grain Bin – Dixonville, Alberta 2

4 Former Farm – Manning, Alberta 1

5 Former Farm – Manning, Alberta 2

6 Former Farm – Manning, Alberta 3

7 Former Farm – Manning, Alberta 4

8 Rails – Keg River, Alberta 1

9 Rails – Keg River, Alberta 2

Imagining, remembering former times of a much younger Life when the journey taken was as much as a walk to a friend’s home – ringing the doorbell, checking to see … ‘You want to come out for a walk?’ Not an appointed or scheduled time, not appointment, not a time with rigorous intention or time to be maximized, fully, just time to talk, to get beyond the four walls of our homes and explore the world, to see what’s happening and to return. My friends and I were the better for it – the fresh air, the walk and the talk enriched us.

Now, at my present age time and times are planned with others and very rarely do they involve shared journey. Getting out, photographing the world, paying attention to surroundings now involves the disciplined journey of getting away, most times alone, and the work involved is in ‘seeing’ the world. Talk and exploration occurs with photographs and now holds narrative about what each photographer has seen and experienced. Meeting and narrative rather than journey have become focal point. Here, a day’s drive has taken me south and back and photographs record fall’s early morning colours. And, my wife will be the first to recognize the association to my cousins’ Rimbey farm with the farming imagery.

Listening to – Martyn Joseph’s take on many Bruce Springsteen songs; standing out are ‘The Rising,’ ‘Walk Like a Man,’ ‘Thunder Road,’ ‘If I Should Fall Behind’ and ‘One Step Up.’

Quote to Inspire – “I love photographing. It’s that simple.” – Stuart Franklin

Buttertown Storehouse

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Summer, Sunset

Storehouse, St. Louis Mission – Buttertown, Fort Vermilion, Ab 1

Storehouse, St. Louis Mission – Buttertown, Fort Vermilion, Ab 2

The northern lights were out this morning in my pre-dawn walk around High Level – ice crystals are in the air; with last night’s heavy billowing clouds we’re nearing our first snowfall. Here, an image contains two end-points of high dynamic range editing; curiously, I’m liking the colour (tinted) version of the old, old store house at the St. Louis Roman Catholic mission in Buttertown – Fort Vermilion, Alberta. The image has me thinking to former priest, John O’Donohue and different parts of four lectures he’s presented and a journaling exercise he has people work through. The first question to work from is to articulate the seven things that are controlling ideas/elements in your Life – premises upon which your Life is founded.

Listening to – an investigation of the ‘Primitives,’ a group recommended with the ‘iambead.com’ photoblog; ‘Crash’ is the first tune I come across. Then it’s ‘All the Way Down’ and ‘Earth Thing.’

Quote to Inspire – “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough” – Robert Capa

Harvest

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Fall, Flora, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Sunset, Vehicle

Harvest – Nampa, Alberta 1

Harvest – Nampa, Alberta 2

Harvesting Implement – Nampa, Alberta 2

Farmers are harvesting in northern Alberta. A season’s few warm months, with regular rainfall, have allowed northern farmland to produce and this year’s harvest holds promise … something extraordinary in terms of quality and quantity. In the year, we are at that point where the concept of harvest illustrates something of life and lives. Here, the ‘parable of the weeds’ being used to describe the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43 stands out; what captivates is that while the farmer has sown good seed and while he and his family sleep, an enemy intentionally sows weeds among the farmer’s wheat – a premeditated, vicious act aimed at dismantling a farmer’s livelihood. For the farmer, the end-state of harvesting the wheat he’s sown presents challenge because doing so will require that he allow the weeds to grow alongside the wheat until harvest, the weeds sharing the land’s nutrients, the weeds sharing the rain, and, the weeds sharing the sun. At harvest, this careful and patient farmer gathers each weed first, burns the weeds together and then harvests the wheat. This parable is used to describe the kingdom of heaven. That kingdom, the world we presently live in, contains those moving along in Life committed to God’s purposes and those opposing God’s purposes. This kingdom parable becomes example of the lives that live alongside each other, the reality of the good and evil that is at play and the farmer’s careful harvesting hands. It points to each Life being lived out and the farmer discerning what each life has been about as each reaches the harvest.

Listening to – the Tragically Hip’s ‘Wheat Kings,’ Murray McLaughlin’s ‘Farmer’s Song’ and Ray LaMontagne & the Pariah Dogs ‘Beg, Steal or Borrow.’

Quote to Inspire – “I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.” – Trent Parke

Buttertown Moon

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Summer, Sunset

Buttertown Moon, Fort Vermilion, Alberta

Colourful streams of cloud cluster around the moon framed by Buttertown trees – a good end to a long day, a reward for taking a couple of extraordinary tasks through their next steps. The work of the evening was to move my thoughts away from an expedient drive and to a relaxed and searching drive investigating all that was happening around me. This photo was the result of seeing what else was around me in my 360 degree survey of the landscape following a photo of a Fort Vermilion homestead cabin. The colours have been amplified somewhat and the image is an HDR image. I’m liking the result.

Listening to – U2’s Bad … and a lecture on U2’s ‘Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,’ an enigmatic idea on many levels.

Quote to Inspire – “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough” – Robert Capa