Totally an interesting day, yesterday – to post and then to return later and have not just Gina from The Regina Chronicles nominate my photoblog for an award, but also to receive nomination from Jeremy of 365 photos by Jeremy for the Versatile blogger award. Thank you Jeremy for this nomination and for the intrigue and interest you present the In My Back Pocket – Photography photoblog. More than you know the tribute/nomination hits home well. I am grateful.
The weblink above is an animoto of images posted on In My Back Pocket – Photography; have a look. 🙂
The Fifteen Blogs to Recommend and Explore
Teklanika Photography Field Journal
To A Dusty Shelf We Aspire
Subtlekate
A Traveller’s Tale
The Regina Chronicles
Leanne Cole’s Blog
Niltsi’s Spirit
Rubicorno
Ramblings
Blue Line
Not Yet There
Skymunki
Not Yet There
Greenford 365
Mars Black Vintage
Seven Things About Me
An audiobook listener since 1981 – Emma by Jane Austen was first, Shakespeare’s Hamlet was second, then Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Castorbridge; all were audiocassettes put out by Listen for Pleasure and used on a variety of Sony Walkmans.
I’ve completed two half-marathons – the first in two hours, fifty-one minutes and the second at age forty-nine in two hours, fourteen minutes.
My middle brother introduced me to the Canon T70 SLR camera I bought somewhere around 1985-87 and I’ve two framed pictures of Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia on our kitchen wall, twins to the pair my father has hanging on his bedroom wall in his retirement home.
I was made a school administrator, one-hundred and forty days into teaching. My teaching has all been north of Latitude 54.
In terms of my love for vehicles, I aspire one-day to help in the beginning-to-end, front-to-back restoration of a rusting relic – just to be a part of the transformation.
In terms of vehicles and vehicles I feel safe in – we’ve owned three Nissan Pathfinders (same series 1991-1995), a Dodge Dakota, a Dodge Colt, a Dodge Spirit, a Jeep Grande Cherokee, two Toyota Camrys (1991 – 2010), an Aries K-Car, a Hyundai Santa Fe and Nissan Altima; all are good vehicles. In terms of handling muck, cold, snow and ice, I’d go with the Nissan Pathfinder (with manual transmission and good tires, SE if possible).
Our Dogs – we’ve had a wolf-Lab cross (Chrissy), a Siberian Husky (Katya) and currently have a Cocker-spaniel (Shadow).
Listening to – John Cougar Mellencamp’s Rumbleseat and You’ve Got to Stand for Something, Dire Straits’ the Bug and U2’s When Love Comes to Town.
Quote to Inspire – “I always thought good photographs were like good jokes. If you have to explain it, it isn’t that good.” – Anonymous
I have an uncle, my Dad’s younger brother, who was in his career a beloved literature professor at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. As a professor he was well-liked by his students and he knew what students were about and was able to direct them profitably and constructively in their academic careers. At lunchtimes in Edmonton growing up, Dad would read us letters in which his brother would own to his chagrin in the matter of occasionally having to borrow cigarettes from his students. His students esteemed him enough to forego this trespass – he got along with his students that well. What’s brought him to mind tonight is that he was someone who when sitting still at a task for too long got himself up out of his chair or away from his desk and out into his car and go for an hour’s drive and have a look about at his world; the last car of his that I road in was an early eighties Volvo sedan that he had had repainted a metallic green. He loved a drive as did his mother (my grandmother), his wife and daughter. A good drive was always a means to unwind from a day pressing obligations to capacity; he’d arrive back and he would have shifted his state … the world was better for having gone for a drive.
Yesterday, at day’s end I found that I had been sitting at computers, at school and at home, for more than twelve hours combined. And, I found that there was still more to do, more obligations to students and staff and their various undertakings … the work of the work was to stay at it and complete it. But, I wasn’t being productive, more a body realization than anything else … sitting down and sitting still from my day into my evening was not to be had. I pulled my uncle’s trick, I grabbed my camera bag, tripod, down-filled jacket, gloves and hat, and, I got into my car and steered it east from High Level. Twenty minutes from High Level, yielded the opportunity to photograph Canada geese, cranes, swallows and reflection upon water. The evening also yielded the good fortune of stumbling into a former colleague whose career path has mirrored my own; we probably haven’t chatted meaningfully for about five or six years. In half an hour I heard much about her world – her daughters, her husband and their next steps. I finished out the evening with another hour of photography and returned home.
Listening to – the Steve Miller Band’s Rock’n Me, Take the Money and Run and Mercury Blues; Murray McLauchlan’s Farmer’s Song and Hard Rock Town have featured as has Ryan Adams’ Chains of Love. The morning’s walk featured U2’s Magnificent, Eddie Vedder’s Hard Sun among other songs.
Quote to Inspire – “I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find the drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.” – Ken Burns
Charles Dickens once wrote a novel about an Old Curiosity Shop, a shop much like that of current second-hand stores or thrift stores in which a store owner collects collectibles, curiosities that satisfy our need to discover things that fit the environment we wish to create for our lives. Tonight, day-long, spring snow flurries bring about a look-back through photos. This photograph surfaced as one provoking the curiosities that rusting relics are at that point before restoration in which appraisal and consideration of possibility occurs – questions stir about what needs done, what the vehicle can become, what it will be like to drive and who will drive it. Possibility is leveraged as much by reminiscence as by future anticipation. Something of this imaginative aspect regarding a curiosity to be purchased is what Dickens explores in his novel The Olde Curiosity Shop – the nature of how we choose what we will put into our lives. Rusting relics in this rag-tag, makeshift auto-yard have me wondering about the curiosity that these older vehicles hold and highlight the necessity of imagination in investigating the possibility of what any of these vehicles can become. For me, the teal blue 1959 or 1960 Chevrolet reminds of a car that my grandfather drove when I was three or four. I can only recall being transported in this vehicle two or three times in and around Edmonton and then back to their home on Strathearn Drive – a memory that requires some reaching back.
Listening to – Snow Patrol’s Lifeboats, Radiohead’s High and Dry, Coldplay’s Don’t Panic and Kings of Leon’s Closer; the song that’s been on my mind throughout the post has been The Tragically Hip’s As Makeshift As We Are.
Quotes to Inspire – (1) “Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” – Bernice Abbott (2) “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” – Diane Arbus
Hood Ornament 11, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 10, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 9, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 8, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 7, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 6, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 5, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 4, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 3, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 2, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Vehicle Grill Work, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Hood Ornament 1, LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
Vehicle Grill Work 2 , LeMay Car Museum – Tacoma, Washington
I’ve just checked. It is still around, that thing that catalyzed so much of the work and time I’ve invested in cars I’ve owned and cars I’ve worked with. I happened on it by chance and by the end of that first day I had received an education in using it. On a Saturday morning in early summer 1982, I drove a green 1969 Pontiac Parisienne to a good friend’s house to see what we were up to that day. He had a project going, a task fueled by his father’s expertise in restoring and rehabilitating old cars.
I found him compounding (using rubbing compound on) the maroon paint of his two-door Dodge Aspen, a new acquisition – his first car. The idea was to remove paint that had dulled and oxidized and then add a layer of glazing resin to seal and maintain the maroon paint in pristine condition. As many things were in those days, this was a Tom Sawyer experience – a project he was engaged in was something I wanted to help with and he had the grace to allow me to do so. In two hours, our combined elbow grease brought out evenly the car’s true maroon colour in the paint. Then we added the glazing resin, something called TR-3 Resin Glaze; we rubbed it into the paint. We let it powder up and dry. And, then we used terry-towel rags to remove swirls of resin glaze residue.
What happened was remarkable. Our elbow grease, our use of rubbing compound and resin glaze according to instruction produced transformation – a previously dull, tired looking Dodge Aspen now looked new, even better than new. We’d seen this once before and talked about it. An older gentleman in the house next door, a man confined to a wheelchair had brought about similar transformation to his late sixties Dodge Dart. His candy apple red Dodge Dart was emaculate, the result of patient application of intelligence, initiative and diligence toward visual result.
In terms of photographs, not many vehicles these days sport hood ornaments. Hood ornamentation tends to be associated with higher-end cars … perhaps they always have been. Hood ornaments accentuate the forward most part of the vehicle and perhaps in their being sculpted remind owner and driver of their vehicle being art, something crafted by others. Hood ornaments seem to have started out primarily as skilfully fashioned radiator caps; others serve to mark the hood’s center allowing drivers to position the vehicle on the road in relation to designated space between lines. Hood ornaments from several vehicles at the LeMay Car Museum feature as subject for this post’s photos.
Listening to a genius playlist starting from Over the Rhine’s Sleep Baby Jane; it moves on to Patty Griffin’s Mil Besos and then to Dar Williams’ Fishing in the Morning. In terms of audiobooks, I’m continuing to walk and listen to Lady Chatterley’s Lover; what struck me this morning is commonality of era. After all that the first world war was, the world my grandfather and grandmother would have shared as a young married couple was this same period as that of Constance and Clifford Chatterley, except that my granddad’s wounding at Vimy Ridge led him to become a military instructor for the remainder of the war and then back to Canada to marry the woman who would become my grandmother. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was a book most likely banned in their time because it dealt with physical sensuality and challenged mainstream morality; I wonder about their take on the book … was it a book not to be read if you were a person of integrity?
Quote to Inspire – “There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept.” – Ansel Adams
Pike Place Market - Neon Signs, Seattle, Washington
Street photography is something described as an audit of an environment that the photographer places him- or herself in. What’s there? What’s around you? What’s happening? All are questions that receive answer within the images produced and the street’s narrative is built and understood. If you’re actually photographing what’s happening in the street you’re bound to capture people in the act of whatever it is that they do. The street photography that I’ve looked through most recently is that of the Edmonton photowalk led by Darlene Hildebrand back in October 2011. The cluster of pictures from several photographers on that first Saturday afternoon in October present an audit of Life along Edmonton’s Whyte Avenue in Edmonton’s Old Strathcona area. Everything is captured – architecture (doors, buildings, windows); modes of transportation (cars, buses, trucks, bicycles); there’s a sense of space (that within the street and that which surrounds people, their personal space); there’s the colour and weather of the afternoon. Within most of it there’s the art of human endeavor. Conversely, there’s the defeat of endeavor no longer strived for; there are people broken and lost and at wits-end, the down and out. They too are captured in street photography. The photograph presented here is one taken from within the Pike Place Market in Seattle. To a certain extent it qualifies as street photography as it presents information about the environment of the market place – what you’ll find and what people are doing. What is surprising is the participatory element – people are tolerant of photographs being taken; it’s a touristy thing to do. Good. Maybe that’s the thing to think about in street photography – investigating the street by way of participation.
Listening to Bill Mallonee & Vigilantes of Love with She Walks on Roses, Patty Griffin’s Tomorrow Night and Over the Rhine’s Jesus in New Orleans, all from a genius playlist starting with Pierce Pettis’ Everything Matters album.
Quote to Inspire – “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” – Dorothea Lange
Fifties Grain Truck - South Side toward Nampa, Peace River, Alberta
In a Canadian literature course at the University of Alberta in the late eighties, Professor Bruce Stovel had us reading Canadian literature – Margaret Laurence’s Stone Angel, Upton Sinclair’s As For Me and My Houseand Hugh MacLennon’s Two Solitudes. I was coming to Canadian literature in my last year of an Arts degree after a tour through the literatures of the world, a literature decidedly English in its understanding of the world. We began the course with short stories about the Canadian experience of living in a young Canada. A young Canada could still be taken advantage of and Stephen Leacock wrote more than a few stories aimed at exposing a need to be more wiley and aware as a country among nations. One of the experiences written about was the matter of being sold something. Sales and selling were about creating something called the soft solder, an electrical analogy sales people understood to mean the means by which they connected the would-be, hinterland buyer to a commodity he or she didn’t really need.
The effective salesperson would work to leave the commodity, something such as a clock, in the care of the prospective Canadian buyer to let him try it out and to ascertain that the clock worked beyond expectations. For perhaps two weeks or a month the clock would remain fixed in the prospective buyer’s home. And, after two weeks or a month, the seller would return to review the merits of the clock with the prospective buyer and to collect the commodity, a clock which had worked its way into the habits and routines of the buyer. Removing the clock was something akin to removing a tooth from one’s mouth; it had been possessed and the threat of removal brought with it the uncertainty associated with luck and promise. The unsuspecting buyer would grapple with improved luck and situation that the clock affixed in the life of the buyer would provide. The clock would be kept and terms of sale agreed to.
In and around Peace River, Alberta the means of sale are not so subtle and no longer deal with affixing service or commodity to the buyer. The connective tissue (soft solder) at present seems to be that of using vehicles of a former era to attract retrospective view and attach it to a billboard affixed to the side of the grain box of an older grain truck. Retro grain trucks have become portable billboards regarding services found at location. On Peace River, Alberta’s west side a sixty-four (1964) GMC three-ton grain truck connects passersby with Luxliner services transporting them to Edmonton at fair price while this Chevrolet three-ton grain truck connects passersby with sandblasting services on Peace River’s south side.
Listening to: Radiohead’s Go to Sleep from The Best of Radiohead, a cool tune in terms of minor key melody; then it’s Ryan Adams’ Starting to Hurt from the Demolition album. Next is Pete Yorn’s Pass Me By from the Day I Forgot album. Later it is 5/4 by the Gorillaz from their album of the same name.
Quote to Inspire – “You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.” ― Ansel Adams
Distances travelled within Canada’s vast landscape are huge. Travel along its roadways demands commitment to best use of drive time between point of origin and destination so you get where you are going and so you enjoy where you got yourself to. Within this travel predicament kinaesthetic awareness of the road counts as much as visual presentation in terms of road familiarity. Curves, drops, bumps and inclines inform you in your travel along the road. Artists depicting the predicament of Canadian travel often poke fun at vacations enjoyed from a car’s interior as the terrain passes by as much as it is something enjoyed at the destination’s endpoint. A better way to see more of Canada’s landscape is accomplished looking through a camera lens; doing so requires you to stop your vehicle, stow it safely along the roadside, get out of it and interact more substantially with the environment you encounter.
An iconic rendering of Canada’s roadscape is what the image presented here is about. I’ve photographed a portion of the up-and-down incline leading up to Twin Lakes along Alberta’s Highway 35, one hundred and fifty kilometres south from High Level en route toward Edmonton. In distance, the incline covers five kilometres of road surface and rises onto a land mass noted for the temperature change that occurs from bottom of the incline to its crest. In winter a double-digit temperature change can occur and is accompanied by a marked change in weather travelled through. Ascending or descending, driving this incline is a tricky endeavor in winter, something compounded by snow. While one aspect of this image favours the artist’s tongue-in-cheek take on ‘Windshield Time’, the manner in which most Canadians see their Canada rolling past them, the image also recalls lives of former students who as new (and perhaps impatient) drivers were trekking through this bit of terrain on second- or third-ever tries; one bright future ended in a vehicle roll-over. Another life was impacted by partial paralysis. It’s this portion of road in this image that seems to surprise drivers … even experienced ones. Last November, descending the incline in snow was an activity more akin to skiing than rolling forward in a half-ton truck.
Listening to: Gillian Welch’s I Dream a Highway from her Time – The Revelator album, Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road from her album of the same name and High and Dry from Radiohead’s The Best of Radiohead.
Quote to Inspire: “No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” ― Ansel Adams
Playground Equipment – Spirit of the North Community School, High Level, Alberta
Bog Runner Project Vehicle … In Development – High Level, Alberta
Curbside – Quality Motors, High Level, Alberta
Extra Foods – Gas Bar, High Level, Alberta
A busy week has me posting photographs almost a week beyond date of image capture. Last Friday’s photowalk took us through High Level’s southern side, a slippery, melting world, a world of water splashing and flowing and soaking through. Photographers captured freeze-frame splashing, the results of big chunks of ice being thrown into puddles. Others’ photographs were more about water’s ripple and reflection, water moving and water that’s settled. Beyond this, water misted in the spray generated by vehicles traveling among wet, wet High Level roads.
I used my Sigma 10-20 mm in two ways, first to distort line and shape of subjects close by and secondly to photograph landscape traveled through. The subjects photographed include an RCMP three-quarter ton truck, playground equipment at Spirit of the North Community School, a bog-runner truck … in development, the curbside view of Quality Motors (our local Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge Dealer) and the Extra Foods Gas Bar (part of the Canadian Superstore chain).
Listening to the Steve Miller Band – Rock’n Me, Take the Money and Run and Mercury Blues from the Fly Like an Eagle album; other songs have included Murray McLauchlan’s Hard Rock Town and Ryan Adam’s Chains of Love.
Quote to Inspire – “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”– Dorothea Lange
Mercury Grain Truck, Agricultural Display, Manning, Alberta 1
Mercury Grain Truck, Agricultural Display, Manning, Alberta 2
Mercury Grain Truck, Agricultural Display, Manning, Alberta 3
Mercury Grain Truck, Agricultural Display, Manning, Alberta 4
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 1
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 3
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 5
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 6
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 7
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 8
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 9
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 10
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 11
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 12
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 13
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 14
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 15
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 16
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 17
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 18
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 19
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 20
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 21
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 22
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 23
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 24
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 25
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup, Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 26
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 1
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 2
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 3
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 4
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 5
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 6
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 7
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 8
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 9
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 10
1961 Mercury 100 & 1980s Ford Half Ton 11
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup – Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 1
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup – Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 2
1961 Mercury 100 Pickup – Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 3
1950s Greyhound Bus – Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 1
1950s Greyhound Bus – Brock Enterprises, High Level, Alberta 2
Within this past week I have photographed two Mercury Trucks, the first, an early fifties three ton grain truck, part of a display celebrating the agricultural heritage of Manning, Alberta; the second was a vehicle that is as old as I am, a 1961 Mercury 100 pickup truck located in Brock Enterprises’ industrial lot in High Level, Alberta.
As one who returned to University to complete two degrees, one job I enjoyed for an interim year in October of 1981 was that of working with Ford Motor Company (FOMOCO) in Edmonton, Alberta at Waterloo Mercury, first as a used-car car jockey, then as showroom car jockey and later as pre-delivery inspector. Not quite a gear head, I know a good deal about how a car or truck can be driven and how a vehicle should ride; and, I am someone who enjoys BBC America’s Top Gear. Back then, in 1981, detailing vehicles was my side-business, something allowing me to put money in the bank for University and it’s something I continue to take great pride in. I value a well-turned out vehicle and my preferences for waxes include the McGuiar’s waxes as well as the Autoglym waxes that have received Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II (this is the schtuff used on Aston Martins).
On Thursday, following a long day at school, I drove through High Level’s industrial area, saw a crew vehicle parked in front of Brock Enterprises and went in to ask permission to photograph the 1961 Mercury 100 Pickup stored on this property by the Brock Enterprises owner. It was a never-done experience, that of providing my name, information about where I work and about my teaching photography at our local high school. Later that evening, the matter was one moving me from our couch outdoors to seize the opportunity of photographing the Mercury 100 pickup up close. That night I got out to the Brock Enterprises Industrial Lot and spent perhaps forty-five minutes photographing this metallic green truck and another vehicle, likely a 1950’s Greyhound bus. Photography with long exposures provided me time for looking beyond the truck around at its environment. I was working with Automatic Exposure Bracketing to create High Dynamic Range (HDR) images; so, each HDR image was taking about two minutes to create at 100 ISO. I was dressed in ski pants, ski jacket and warm head-gear; warm comfort is a part of capturing good images in winter or colder temperatures. As I looked around me I saw deer in a neighboring industrial lot moving along a path taking them to the Viterra Grain Elevator where they could feast on grain spillage.
Listening to an iTunes genius generated playlist originating from Mercury Blues by David Lindley from the El Rayo-X album; others songs in the playlist include Get Right with God by Lucinda Williams from Essence, Sweet Fire of Loveby Robbie Robertson from his album entitled Robbie Robertson; Bang a Gong [Get It On] by T. Rex from Electric Warrior, Elvis Presley Blues by Gillian Welch from her Time – the Revelator album and Bob Dylan’s Dignity from Bob Dylan: The Collection – MTV Unplugged have also surfaced as song interests. I’ve also been inspired to purchase through iTunes Fly Like An Eagle, Rock’n Me and Take the Money and Run in addition to Mercury Blues by the Steve Miller Band (good old songs from a grade 11 year … all those years ago).
Quotes to Inspire (1) “The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer.” – Anonymous; and, (2) “Actually, I’m not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I’m not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren’t cooks.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
You must be logged in to post a comment.