Vehicle

Lingering Photos, Their Treasure

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Farm, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration
Nampa - Grain Truck 1

Nampa – Grain Truck 1

Nampa - Grain Truck 2

Nampa – Grain Truck 2

Lingering, those photos remain, the ones I would not at first glance think of returning to – the scouting eye’s first glimpse and first understanding of subject, the first impression of subject captured through the camera lens by my eye. Editing’s go-round exposes each photo’s possibility, the ‘where’ of where the story is within the image. Editing is about exposing the story held within the visual narrative of the image. If a photograph is akin to description, editing is about drawing emphasis to that narrative. Remaining photos, those receiving their second and third glance, have yielded the treasure of narrative through editing.South from Nampa, Alberta, a June summer’s day finds this dormant grain truck now sporting an advertisement for Mike’s Sandblasting and Painting.

Listening to Klaus Schulze’s Captivity on the Magnetik album, ambient schtuff (double plus good).

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

Nampa - Grain Truck 3

Nampa – Grain Truck 3

Nampa - Grain Truck 5

Nampa – Grain Truck 5

Nampa - Grain Truck 4

Nampa – Grain Truck 4

Nampa Grain Truck 6

Nampa Grain Truck 6

To the Orthopod, Jeeves …

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Fall, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Podcast, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Weather, Winter

Travel is my day’s task. The orthopedic surgeon who will review my arm’s recovery and next step’s in rehabilitation is some five hours away. Instead of piloting my own vehicle with one good arm, I’m electing to travel on the Northern Express, a passenger van that will take me from High Level to Grande Prairie. Running off the road at -25C and having one weakened limb might produce an unwanted and perhaps conclusive result. So, a better idea is to leave the driving to another, today. So, with podcast-crammed iPod and point-and-shoot Canon at the ready this day will roll on.

The photos presented here convey some of what Alberta’s weather can be like; there’s also a fifties Ford from a show and shine … yes, driving is more fun that being a passenger.

Listening to – The Police, Live in Buenos Aires … Message in a Bottle, Don’t Stand So Close to Me and Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic.

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

Innovation’s Ah-hah, Restoration and Reminiscence

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Journaling, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

Quality vehicle restoration receives appreciation for its thorough undertaking (or perhaps its state of completion) – front to back and from the ground up the vehicle is brought back to strength and often is improved through innovation. Often the vehicle restored is re-engineered to handle innovation – a different engine is accommodated, the frame is adjusted toward a tighter or softer suspension, the vehicle’s shape receives alteration for aesthetic reasons. Always, the most distinctive design elements remain; the restoration’s innovation only improves upon previous design. And it’s the recognizable attributes of the vehicle that draw people to it.

For those who appreciate what is found in the vehicle restored, dialogue quickly falls into the car or truck someone also had many years ago, the times and memories associated with it, its performance and its idiosyncrasies, and its cost … back then (buying a two or three year old vehicle for $300). Reminiscence is to be found.  But, so too, are the ‘ah-hah’ moments found when people consider and appreciate the how and why associated with each innovation encountered in the restored vehicle – what one dreamed of doing to his or her vehicle so long ago, has been breathed into Life in the vehicle restored, the vehicle before them.

Chevrolets of the fifties are the subject of these photos – more than other vehicles Chevrolets tend to be the ones restored, perhaps because of their abundant shape and form, perhaps because of their use of chrome and colour, perhaps because of the memories they associate with the glory days of good former times.

Listening to ‘Somewhere in Your Heart’by Isaac Guillory from The Days of Forty Nine.

Quote to Inspire – “A photograph is the pause button on life.” – Ty Holland

Pairs Paired

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration
Paired FOMOCO Trucks - Vavenby, British Columbia

Paired FOMOCO Trucks – Vavenby, British Columbia

Paired – Mercurys paired, power poles paired, pairs of headlights and missing headlights paired.  The image presents some wide angle distortion amid its experimentation mixing colour with black and white.

Listening to – U2’s Gone and reminiscence regarding Michael Hutchence (Hutch) from INXS, … ‘going, going but not gone,’ … from the Popmart Tour video.

Quote to Inspire – “Ultimately photography is about who you are. It’s the truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit.” – Leonard Freed

Re-tasking a Vehicle – Its Promise

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Home, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration
Re-tasking A Vavenby Ford, Vavenby, British Columbia

Re-tasking A Vavenby Ford, Vavenby, British Columbia

Perhaps the most interesting feature of vehicle restoration is the re-tasking of a vehicle and its parts. Fenders, engines, radiators and transmissions are swapped out as one fails and another usable one is found to be used in its place. A three-quarter ton truck with a rusted out box may have the box removed to be replaced by a new one or perhaps the truck is now made into a flat deck. Here, an old Ford no longer has its hood or box; yet there are still the active working parts that point to its future potential and that define what history it has had and its former purposes. I find solace, here, with one arm in a sling as muscle fibers fuse/grow back together following a bicep/tendon tear. Now, six weeks on, I’m impressed that this body continues to repair its fifty-one-year-old self. For a time, just like this truck, I’m having to remain stationary before I will move in more substantial ways. I can see the promise that this truck still holds.

Listening to U2’s Stay (live from Toronto).

Quote to Inspire – “A photographer is an acrobat treading the high wire of chance, trying to capture shooting stars.” – Guy Le Querrec

The Cargo – A Book or A Ford’s

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Ford Among Fords - Vavenby, British Columbia

Ford Among Fords – Vavenby, British Columbia

A truck has as its intended purpose that of providing its owner with the opportunity of carrying or moving a payload from point of origin to an intended destination. A book does something similar, transporting its reader from point of origin or initial setting through the twists and turns of plot through to a closing destination. The cargo is human in imagination’s resemblance and there is something the author proposes to be learned/understood as one participates in the book’s movement of mind to its conclusion and denouement. This Vavenby, British Columbia truck does have me consider how it was used and the peoples and cargos it has transported. I appreciate its owner having given me permission to photograph it – thank you, Marvin Ritchie. The photographic respite you allowed helped make the long westward drive more doable.

Quote to Inspire – “If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.” – Eve Arnold

Listening to – U2’s With or Without You, Mysterious Ways and Elevation (as viewed from the Live at Boston DVD).

Reflection – Rain-soaked and Waxless

Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Flora, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration
One Ton Truck - Edmonton, Alberta

One Ton Truck – Edmonton, Alberta

Of the renderings considered, this image of the one ton grain truck (or perhaps utility truck) from the fifties intrigues by way of its waxless reflection brought out by its being rain soaked.  The image’s colours are late summer’s end-of-day colours.  Night isn’t too far off, the shot taken within evening’s Golden Hour in Edmonton.  John Grisham wrote A Painted House, a growing up novel written about a boy’s witnessing America’s move from the farm (a cotton plantation) to its cities in America’s fifties; this is the kind of truck that might have been found within Grisham’s narrative.  I hadn’t thought his narrative (as autobiographical as it is) might be considered sibling narrative to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road until now.

Listening to – what is seemingly a rural truck reminds of Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

Quote to Inspire – “The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer.” – Anonymous

Carpe Diem, Conundrum & Mosquitos

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Conundrum – how to manage a photo-a-day blog when away from home, computer, software and the Internet. Is it a matter of taking a computer with you? Or is it about caching photos taken during vacation for presentation later on, in look-back fashion? I’m only now sitting down at my computer to review photos, some three weeks later to discover this present gem of an image, a one-ton, late fifties truck that pops noticeably because of the wet reflective surface provided courtesy of the rain. Reflection is a neat thing for adding light to a subject and in so doing, highlighting the subject’s lines and shape. Here, an extraordinary combination of clouds, sun and rain at day’s end allows the opportunity to explore textures, shape, reflection and background. In taking this photo, there was the scramble to the scene (a reasonable distance) in order to make use of the setting, light and background.  And, in this same scene while there has been that aspect of Carpe Diem, there too were the mosquitos within the wet, warm weather to contend with. But, a gem is a gem and I like each of the four renderings of this photo.

In truth, though, it has been hard to sit still at day’s end, the household asleep and to find that I’m awake without the tools for editing photos, writing a post and blogging. The issue is about workflow and what I really value doing with my/our time on vacation.  Photography is intended to assist vacation recall … not what the vacation should be about. Next year, perhaps a laptop … perhaps not.  Perhaps focus will remain on enjoying and capturing our vacation with my camera.

I haven’t withdrawn from my blog so much as I’ve been presented with the separation of vacation from the routines of daily life – sort of a forced withdrawal that’s likely to bring benefits with regard to energy and perspective.

Listening to – Shawn Colvin’s All Fall Down.

Quote to Inspire – “A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second.” – Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Perseverance Required

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Fall, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Podcast, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Shuttertime with Sid and Mac, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration
Muddied Mudder

Muddied Mudder

This morning’s wee hours saw the completion of two day’s detailing our 2006 Nissan Altima, a task completed without anchored schedule and with all that time off. The task first involved trekking around the Altima with Autoglym Super Resin Polish with orbital buffer and polishing bonnet or buffer and buffing bonnet. The task next involved applying by hand Autoglym HD Wax, a paste wax, in sections and letting those sections cure for fifteen minutes at a stretch. In applying the HD paste wax I caught myself up on several podcasts.

Storing digital images was the subject of one podcast of Shuttertime with Sid and Mac;  I’m in need of a new external hard drive and need to investigate back-up solutions.  The podcast introduced me to Drobo and to Carbon Copy Cloning and much more. In another Shuttertime with Sid and Mac podcast the ‘why’ of the photographer – her or his motivation for shooting – was considered. A truth that surfaced is that good photography is something that serves the photographer first before her or his audience. It was noted that photographer burnout (meaning their interest or desire in photography is extinguished) occurs when the images created tend to be ‘for’ others. Ideally a photographer needs to manage the balance of work for others with work for themselves.

Two days detailing allowed for breaks when they were needed. Tuesday evening presented the opportunity of summer’s quietude along our street.  Near midnight I was able to sit outdoors in the sun’s dusk, in the absence of activity and mosquitos to enjoy an evening breeze – a time to be, a time to sit still and enjoy. Within these two days I’ve been able to watch at various times most of the 2010 film of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre with Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, an allegory of spiritual development and of finding soul mates. Wax on, wax off – words from the Karate Kid, words akin to meditation, an activity slowing you down, a means to gather thoughts and loose-ends; the activity involves sight and seeing and perspective; section by section the activity moves toward the whole of an outcome completed. Perseverance is required – you and the car are better for it.

The photograph presented here is the first rendering of an image using the Snapseed app with my iPad – a truck that’s been used for mud-bogging.

Listening to – Over the Rhine’s Spark, Dar Williams’ Mercy of the Fallen and Radiohead’s High and Dry; the other song that’s been in my thoughts and hearing is Robbie Robertson’s Sweet Fire of Love.

Quotes to Inspire – (1) “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” – Diane Arbus; and, (2) “To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.” – Ansel Adams

Threshold’s Threshing & Winnowing

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Flora, Night, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Weather

Forest grows dangerously dry with summer heat. The matter of our region being a tinderbox is an expression used to describe this state in which forest can become prey to lightning strike and neglect by people working with fire. In this setting, rain becomes a welcome visitor calming and cooling our world. Photographically rain serves to reflect the world in unusual ways – doubling what is seen and placing the doubled image in unusual contexts. At night, it is the rain’s reflection of light on surfaces that draws interest.

Life is busy just now. Students in their final year of education anticipate graduation and ceremony and future departure from friends, family and that place that’s been home for them through so many years. Angst is there. Worry is there. Disillusionment about what the world holds is about to occur in more broad and more true strokes than these students have ever encountered before. And, time pushes them and us forward and through different thresholds. It’s totally interesting that the term threshold comes from the act of threshing; the threshold was the place where the act of separating husk from seed occurred. Threshold is that place where former and newer state are in close proximity – what was and what now is. Action is that other important ingredient – the lifting, colliding and splitting, all are percussive, energetic acts that in time yield the seed from the husk that’s held it. Winnowing is the other term, here – the separating and sorting of husk (the now dead, former shell) and seed (the new life holding element). The seed is ready for further use.  How will it be used?

The photographs presented here are culled from the last week.  There’s the green of Buffalo Head Prairie; there’s the woods between La Crete and Blue Hills.  There’s the Peace River and the Tompkins’ Landing Ferry.  There’s rain slicked streets of High Level and there’s images from Footner Lake. There’s even an image of a flower from a flower bed on our front lawn.

Listening to – U2’s Mysterious Ways, Coldplay’s God Put a Smile Upon Your Face, David Gray’s Babylon and Radiohead’s High and Dry.

Quote to Inspire – “I didn’t want to tell the tree or weed what it was.  I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature.” – Wynn Bullock