Snow – More

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Home, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Sigma Lens - Wide Angle 10-20mm, Sunrise, Weather, Winter

Snow – Back Deck 1

Snow – Back Deck 2

Snow – Back Deck 3

Snow – Back Deck 4

Snow – Back Deck 5

Snow – Back Deck 6

Snow – Back Deck 7

We’re there. We have more than our quota of snow … and there’s still two months to go. Within the town of High Level every place you look is contending with a snow blanket that is three to four feet thick. Driveways are framed on two sides with snow mountains five, six and seven feet in height, snow that’s been cleared away to allow vehicles to park and access to garages. Great clumps of snow hang from the eaves of houses in unusual, windblown shapes. And, our weather hasn’t broken its pattern of a once in three-to-four day solid snowfall since November. The images presented here look south from our back deck where snow is beyond four feet in depth, having drifted in.

Listening to – Mike Plume’s ‘Stay Where Yer To’

Quote to Inspire – “I don’t care so much anymore about ‘good photography’; I am gathering evidence for history.” – Gilles Peress

Last, Day-lit Images

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Lens, Christmas, Light Intensity, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Sunset, Weather, Winter

Scotford Refinery – Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta

An image of the Scotford Refinery near Fort Saskatchewan, one of the last day-lit images shot at dusk looking east towards Edmonton after a good day of looking for and finding images.

Listening to – Simple Minds’ ‘Alive and Kicking.’

Quote to Inspire – “The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.” – Robert Doisneau

Blake’s Bison

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Christmas, Fauna, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Shuttertime with Sid and Mac, Sunset, Weather, Winter

Bison – Elk Island 1

Bison – Elk Island 4

Bison – Elk Island 3

Bison – Elk Island 2

In a day that’s been bright, yet overcast, the sun shines through broken cloud as it moves towards the horizon in late afternoon, shining directly on two Bison grazing at Astotin Lake in Elk Island National Park, images inspired by Sidney Blake’s discussion of animal/nature photography and by her extraordinary black and white images of Bison in winter.

Listening to – The Von Bondies with ‘C’mon C’mon’.

Quote to Inspire – “When people ask me what equipment I use – I tell them my eyes.” – Anonymous

Ethereal, Restless – Dreaming

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

House of Dreams 1

House of Dreams 2

House of Dreams 3

House of Dreams 4

House of Dreams 5

This farmhouse image is one that I connect to moments we’ve all had – that ethereal, restless dream state when dreaming’s hallucination can draw forth what seems other-worldly connection. For me, I recall Mr. Lockwood who upon renting Thrushcross Grange ventured out on a winter walk to meet and greet his landlord, a man by the name of Heathcliff. The story, set in the late 1700s – early 1800s, sees the newly installed Mr. Lockwood walking to the property of his new landlord, a home with a name – Wuthering Heights. A snow storm brews up and makes it necessary for Mr. Lockwood to stay the night in his landlord’s home.

A place is made for him in what seems is a book cupboard or closet.

He reads a pen and ink commentary set forth in the margins of books within this sleeping closet; print books, the only source of paper available to another character, Catherine Earnshaw, are the place where Catherine journals about and considers her life – a journal that in tone and availability serves as confidante for the teen who as estate owner’s daughter is without ready access to peers her age at the Wuthering Heights farm estate. Mr. Lockwood can’t sleep – he reads and reads and reads about Catherine and Heathcliff … until in that ethereal, restless dream state he enters into dream hallucination, a state in which he encounters a young Catherine who within the snow storm outside knocks at ‘his’ window asking to be let in. The farmhouse in this image meets well many of the essential elements of what my mind imagines that Wuthering Heights could be. This house seems ready for all that Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, might hold. And, there’s more to that story ….

Listening to – Maria Dunn’s God Bless Us Everyone, Michael Hoppe’s Land of Serenity, Bill Douglas’ Irish Lullaby, Grant McAskill’s Bitter Season, Catherine Anne McFee’s I See Winter and Paul Brady’s Help Me Believe.

Quote to Inspire – “I want the viewers to be moved into the lives of the people that they are looking at, the visual experience is incredibly emotional.” Paul Fusco

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

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

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

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 3

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

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

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 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

1956 - Pontiac Star Chief 1 — 1956 – Pontiac Star Chief 1

1956 - Pontiac Star Chief 2 — 1956 – Pontiac Star Chief 2

A Car Crafter’s Dream

Ford - Show and Shine 1 — Ford – Show and Shine 1

Ford - Show and Shine 2 — Ford – Show and Shine 2

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

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