Vehicle Restoration

Where Are You Going …?

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The images I present in this post remind of a time when as a young Dad, I read stories from the Thomas the Tank Engine series to my son and my/our doing so was an enjoyable way to close out each day. Thomas, Percy, Rusty, James et al each had an engineer, each had a conductor, all worked for Sir Topham Hat – each set about to complete a task each day. At the end of each day each engine returned to the engine shed for maintenance and rest. In Sangudo, Alberta, there’s a museum celebrating the vehicles and machinery that were used in the building of the Alaska Highway. Some are scattered within the museum’s yard and some are housed in a roofed shed without walls. The museum has closed and is no longer open to tourists. All vehicles seem to look onto the Alaska Highway they once had a hand in building. The scene is one you might find in a Thomas the Tank Engine story –  vehicles dormant and apparently waiting for a time when they can be re-tasked with new purpose and new life. Curiously, two songs I’m listening to tonight almost personify a state of mind that could lurk, here. One is Dave Matthew’s song Where Are You Going and the other is a Hank William’s song, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. Both songs are sung by Martyn Joseph and are found in his Passport Queue album Pq35.

Listening to: Weight of the World, Invisible Angel, Kindness and I Will Follow from Martyn Joseph’s Pq35.

Quote to Inspire: “A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.” – Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. essayist. “In Plato’s Cave,” On Photography (1977).

Collected, Not Yet Discarded – Other Photographs from the Week

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Farms, farm buildings, farm equipment and the occasional treasure of a rusting relic have surfaced within this week’s compiling of photographs.  Rather than let them fall into the discard pile it may be good to give them their due, cluster them into photo gallery format and allow you a look at second, third and even seventh choices.  Below, because this week’s photographs have dealt with farming images, I’m posting the lyrics to Murray MacLauchlan’s Farmer’s Song, a treat to sing and a song that you can find yourself singing with others also around a campfire. Lyrics as found on Lets Sing It http://artists.letssingit.com/murray-mclauchlin-lyrics-farmers-song-2s98rgh#ixzz1nMbsXNcE

Farmer’s Song – Murray McLauchlan

Re-released 9 October 2007 in Songs from the Street: The Best of Murray McLauchlan

Dusty old farmer out working your fields

Hanging down over your tractor wheels

The sun beatin’ down turns the red paint to orange

And rusty old patches of steel

There’s no farmer songs on that car radio

Just cowboys, truck drivers and pain

Well this is my way to say thanks for the meal

And I hope there’s no shortage of rain

 

Straw hats and old dirty hankies

 Moppin’ a face like a shoe

Thanks for the meal here’s a song that is real

 From a kid from the city to you

 

The combines gang up, take most of the bread

Things just ain’t like they used to be

Though your kids are out after the American dream

And they’re workin in big factories

Now If I come on by, when you’re out in the sun

Can I wave at you just like a friend

 These days when everyone’s taking so much

There’s somebody giving back in

 

Straw hats and old dirty hankies

Moppin’ a face like a shoe

Thanks for the meal here’s a song that is real

From a kid from the city to you

Quote to Inspire – “Light glorifies everything. It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects. The object is nothing, light is everything.” – Leonard Misone

Listening to – She Walks on Roses by Bill Mallonee & Vigilantes of Love from Audible Sigh, then Mercy of the Fallen by Dar Williams from Beauty of the Rain and then finally Red Clay Halo by Gillian Welch from Time the Revelator.

Parked – Not On the Road

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Chevrolet - Parked, Not on the Road

A parked mid-fifties, Chevrolet four door sedan from 1955 or 1956, a Chevrolet that would have been ‘on the road’ in an era Jack Kerouac writes about in his novel with the same title – On the Road.

In the novel, a young World War II veteran, Sal Paradise, newly based in New York embarks on a career as writer, a writer in search of experience just at a time when America wrestles with new identity as world power and war victor. In one sense the book documents the restless, youthful spirit of a nation discovering identity as it moves into an era of prime economic stability.

Key among the era’s cultural entities is the independence of movement brought about by owning and driving a car. A car allows you to see the world.  And, there’s always a car going by; so, if you’ve had a mishap with yours you can thumb a ride from someone else.  Or, you can take a bus.  Again, there’s the idea of a vehicle being something where all riding within it, all have their eyes fixed on the road ahead.  Perhaps that’s part of what Kerouac aims at with message in all the travel – he might be pointing to the road ahead for the nation.  Perhaps the car and occupants image is also about riding along with shared ideologies and intentions … but this is extrapolation.

Needless to say, a variety of vehicles – cars and trucks – move Sal Paradise and his cohorts across the nation from New York to San Francisco and back again … two or three times. A friend with a car is the force initiating Sal into a road trip.  There’s the within vehicle narrative – what’s going on – and there is the travelogue narrative of Sal making sense of the America he finds along the way.  By the end of the book Sal has ridden in and driven many vehicles … he’s been more a passenger than driver, though – one able to observe the goings on rather than being the driver compelled to get where he’s going.  Perhaps there’s something there about stances that can be taken in living life.

Jon Foreman of Switchfoot got me to read Kerouac’s On the Road because of a section of stream of consciousness writing embedded into the novel’s narrative – the ramble and rant of thought-life shared, somewhat soliloquy, somewhat monologue, expression utilizing meter and curious placement of rhyme usually halting abruptly with quirky insight into the issue at-hand – Life and living. Here’s the quote Jon excerpted and placed within a Switchfoot concert that led me to consider a serious read of On the Road: “… the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” ― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Listening to – Lucinda William’s Can’t Let Go from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, The White Stripes’ 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues (Live) from Under Great White Northern Lights (Live); it’s also been Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie (Live) offered by Bob Dylan from The Bootleg Series Vols. 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) 1961-1991.

Quotes to Inspire – (1) “Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.” – Edward Weston; (2) “You don’t take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it.” – Pentax Advertisement.

Success and All Concerned

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Winter

“Coming together is a beginning. Staying together is progress.  Working together is success.” Leaders use this quote often to enhance organizational teamwork.  Counselors use it to bolster and sustain forward movement among people in relationships who stumble and tumble. The words derive from Henry Ford and their analogy to the work of Life quite likely is taken from first automobiles produced on an assembly line. These words describe that dynamic of steady, determined, hope-directed forward movement towards goals through trial and error and improved performance. The statement articulates the manner of work involved in achieving a productive end through full investment into each learning curve we encounter. We work to understand what’s to be done and how to improve. We act, we work and we utilize feedback about current progress, tweaking action toward better, future performance.

Photography has its learning curves, too.  Good photography is about you learning subject and context and about you working to see them well through your camera’s lens.  Working together is about you and the camera, it’s about you and the subject, and it’s about you and your environment. The vehicle that serves as subject to these photographs is a 1930’s rusting relic, a sedan with wooden spokes that could be a Chevrolet or a Ford or another make. I saw it last Wednesday in my return journey to Sunrise Beach, near Onoway, Alberta, a trip I was making with a friend to investigate the integrity of a second-hand 2000 GMC Yukon as a possible vehicle to replace my written-off 2000 GMC Sierra.

In photography, it may seem at first glance that it is appropriate to point the camera at anything that is in front of you. However, what is also at play is context and environment. The reality is that context and environment are associated with being property and with ownership. Beyond this, context and environment have intention; people identify what each are to be used for. Here, you’d assume that a vehicle put out for public display would not have any issues associated with it if one were to photograph it. Well, in photographing anyone’s property, there’s the matter of what will the photograph be used for and in this case there was perhaps something more akin to rural crime watch being what was at play, something that should have been anticipated. And, the curious owner who questioned me about my actions was both gracious and concerned. In this instance, I knew better … I could have lessened anxieties and awkwardness by introducing myself, stating my photographic intention and asking permission to photograph the vehicle. Working together, in this best practice for photographers and as one whose been influenced by a lineage of photographers would have had and will now have me working proactively to avoid discomfort and uncertainty for others and myself and work toward ensuring good, productive photographic outcomes … even to the point of accepting the possibility of ‘no’ being an answer to my request to photograph a subject. Proactively seeing things through well for all concerned is a key best practice in photography.  This may see me creating a business card that will contain the assurance of contact information for people I deal with.  It may even be worth going further and providing them with photographs of the subject as thank you or to create a calendar with my photographs (as bona fide) for this aspect of public relations and good business practice.

Quotes to Inspire – (1) “A definition of a professional photographer: A ‘pro’ NEVER shows anybody the mistakes.” – Anonymous; (2) “The progress of a photographer can often be marked by the accumulated number of mistakes he or she had made along the way.” – Catherine Jo Morgan (3) “Don’t be stupid and remember where you come from.” – Fr. Tony Ricard, NETCA Teacher Convention 2012

Listening to – Patty Griffin’s Long Ride Home, a song about losing a loved-one from the music-filled movie, Elizabethtown, a song followed by You Can’t Hurry Love, by The Concretes from the same movie soundtrack.

Tasking New Purpose

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1953 Ford F-100 - High Level, Alberta

Someone’s project, this mauve and mint green 1953 Ford F-100 resides in the industrial area lot across from the Viterra grain elevator, a vehicle waiting for its next drive, more utility upon pavement. The mood of this photograph attracts. Its subject waits upon an earthly creator with abundant resources to transform ‘what was’ into ‘what will be,’ a creator who will set new purpose for this vehicle – breathing life into it, again. What this vehicle will become depends upon the creative imagination of those who will bring restoration.

Listening to U2 sing about INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence in Gone, from Best of 1990-2000 [B-Sides]; then it’s Gillian Welch singing Revelator from her Time – The Revelator album; finally it is Dar Williams singing Mercy of the Fallen from her album The Beauty of the Rain.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography can only represent the present.  Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” – Bernice Abbott

Norpine Show and Shine

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One technical aspect of William Faulkner’s novel, The Sound and The Fury, is that one narrative is investigated through active eyes of four different people associated with the story. The story receives telling from the perspective of and with the perceptive capability of each character grappling with what occurs as the narrative unfolds. Something similar occurs with perception when editing one photograph and altering minor elements of brightness, saturation and hue – what is seen and what one experiences in response to each configuration is different.

This evening, I’m looking back to a Friday in June, 2011.  It’s after school and a Show and Shine is being held in High Level, Alberta in the Norpine Auto Industrial Supply Retailer parking lot. I’ve got my Canon 30D with me as I depart from school and drive past these pristine vehicles – vintage and current – that someone has enhanced with different rims and tires, that someone has restored and painted, that someone has taken the time to find and connect with memories of a former time. I pull ahead, past Norpine, turning in at the High Level Home Hardware store and park my 2000 GMC Sierra, there. The next three-quarters of an hour is spent photographing cars and trucks from different angles to find good and best shots.

I dialogue with vehicle owners, unleashing  narratives associated with each vehicle we look to. Former students, in their first jobs following high school, show me their acquisitions – a Chrysler 300M and a GMC Sierra half-ton, both decked out with rims, fat tires and glossy shine. There’s room in our dialogue to sort through how I used to present cars in my post-high school days at Waterloo Mercury in Edmonton and what could be achieved with different McGuiar’s waxes for paint and a bottle of brake fluid for tires. I share with them that Autoglym Waxes are what I use these days and that Queen Elizabeth II has given royal warrant to the company because the waxes are used on Royal vehicles; while Hondas and Toyotas use the wax, so to does Aston Martin.

Mounted on my Canon 30D is a Sigma 10-20 mm wide angle lens … with it there’s the opportunity to distort vehicle form in terms of lines and curves … to add the wow factor. One vehicle I come across is this late fifties Ford half-ton painted bittersweet orange and waxed to full gleam to reflect June’s late afternoon sun, clouds and sky.  Editing reveals this image in different ways … see which you enjoy best.

Listening to Over the Rhine and Within Without from their Discount Fireworks album; then it’s on to Mindy Smith singing One More Moment from her album with the same name. Later, it’s on to Babylon II by David Gray from the White Ladder album.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing a meditation.” – Henri Cartier Bresson

Impermanent Things … and Deer

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2000 GMC Sierra - To be Written Off

Deer – three does chased by a stag crossed Alberta highway 88 as I traveled eastward from High Level to Fort Vermilion at 8:00 a.m. on January 23, 2012; the three does made it across safely between myself and oncoming vehicles.  I slowed my truck down on the icy road but not enough to miss hitting the stag.  I stopped further ahead and turned around to see about animal remains that might need to be hauled from the road.  Nothing was found.  There was a swale in the snow where the deer had drifted into the ditch on the north side of the highway. But, the stag and does had taken off.  My truck, on the other hand, received damage – the grill and light housing mainly and the radiator and transmission cooler were pushed back toward the engine.  I checked it out and watched the gauges – it held together for another 160 km and still is driveable today.  Despite being in immaculate shape, at 286 000 km, this 2000 GMC Sierra is considered a write-off as the cost to repair the truck exceeds the value of the truck.

The antlered stag, imagistically recalls U2’s Electrical Storm video, its being written about Ireland’s Easter Day Accord, and the ghosted image of the stag in the Electrical Storm video – a subject I’ve commented on on the old U2 Zoo Station (Zooropa) website.

Listening to – Impermanent Things by Peter Himmelman from his Stage Diving album.

Quote to Inspire – “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.” -Ansel Adams

To See What’s There

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I’ve been out for a 6K walk around town tonight.  It is -35C and I’ve listened to a lecture given by John O’Donohue on Imagination. After the walk, I recalled this vehicle in the High Level industrial park, a vehicle that I’ve known about but never photographed, a 1960 Mercury M 100 long box pickup truck. It’s been on my mind for the better part of a year. I’ve never photographed it because the landscape or situation it is set in seems bleak and uninteresting.  Perhaps such context draws out beauty from the vehicle’s lines and shape or perhaps through time one acclimates to beauty, form and style.

In taking this photograph, I’m using a Canon 75-300 mm telephoto zoom lens and quite literally taking the photograph to see what is there … a rusting relic awaiting restoration when time and circumstance allow.  In terms of integrity the M 100 looks more complete and useable than not.  The photograph also demonstrates the compression that happens with a telephoto zoom as you shoot more flatly toward the subject – the distance from the first snow drift to the truck is 100 m and the posts in front of the truck are actually about 6-10 feet in front of it.

Quote to Inspire – “The duty of privilege is absolute integrity; the duty of privilege is integrity to ourselves, to our possibilities and to live to the full the life that we’d love and to animate and realize everything because the time is so short and it will be soon gone.” ~ John O’Donohue

Listening to Crash into Me from Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Live At Radio City and as fretted on my Martin Backpacker.

1960 Mercury M 100 Long Box Pickup

1940 Plymouth – Deanz Garage

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Dean who owns Deanz Garage is a Mopar man.  Despite working on the Mercury Meteor and helping me establish interest in restoring a 1969 Pontiac Parisienne, his restorations photobook is Mopar as are most of the vehicles in his yard – his Plymouth Roadrunner, his friend’s Plymouth Valiant, the 1940 Plymouth (for sale) and a mid-sixties Fargo pickup-van cross-over (also for sale).  Meeting Dean and being able to photograph these vehicles was a treat and I appreciate the camaraderie he extends to all car buffs, including me – thank you, Sir!

With my photographs of the vehicles in his yard, here, I’m surprised I got the photos I did.  Being three days from home and family, with little good sleep during my travels I was itching to begin the journey homeward when the opportunity confronting me was that of spending time in southern Alberta working toward good photographs. My plan for the day following the workshop was more global than specific.  I knew that my next broad step would be a four-hour return drive to Edmonton. Without planning for what was possible in southern Alberta, before hand, travel toward Edmonton was the only next step I was focusing on. What I am coming to understand is that my practice needs to develop to more than having my camera with me wherever I am. The upside, though, is that I have a taste for the visual flavour of this area and know I would like to return to photograph these sights.

Listening to Shine by David Gray (an alternate tuning on my L’Arrivee L-03 guitar … a resonant and dissonant chording).

Quote to Inspire – “Landscape is the firstborn of creation. It was here hundreds of millions of years before the flowers, the animals, or the people appeared … In the human face, the anonymity of the universe becomes intimate … The hidden, secret warmth of creation comes to expression here.” ~ John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Thank you, thank you to all bloggers, thinkers, photographers and image-viewers for your encouragement, goodwill and comments.  Good, good schtuff!!