Rain – Opportunities

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 50mm, Canon 50mm Lens, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Prime Lens, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration, Weather
Ford & Challenger - High Level, Alberta 1

Ford & Challenger – High Level, Alberta 1

Ford & Challenger - High Level, Alberta 2

Ford & Challenger – High Level, Alberta 2

Ford & Challenger - High Level, Alberta 3

Ford & Challenger – High Level, Alberta 3

Ford & Challenger - High Level, Alberta 4

Ford & Challenger – High Level, Alberta 4

Ford & Challenger - High Level, Alberta 5

Ford & Challenger – High Level, Alberta 5

A 1948 Ford F-100 and my neighbor’s mid-seventies Dodge Challenger sit side-by-each in the Northstar Chrysler car lot – room has been made for them. I’m interested in this Ford. With previous image edits of this truck, I have grown familiar with shape and colour – I know this vehicle visually, a modified Ford, artfully and skilfully crafted by someone who understands possibilities for shape, line and colour, someone who has been able to bring about what he envisioned accurately to a pleasing end state. This Ford is one that could easily find a home among California cars. For me, the Show and Shine has presented the opportunity to meet the owner again, even if briefly, an interaction in which I am able to direct him to older images of his truck on this blog.

Rain is the challenge for photography at this show in shine – my point of learning; rain falls and as the shutter opens and closes however briefly the result is that I’m capturing droplets of rain as they fall – the image looks excessively grainy. I’ll be thinking through how to work with rain in photography. Perhaps precision and detail are not to be aimed at in rain. Or, perhaps the learning is to recognize that rain will present white bits of contrast against darker colours in such images. Wind also featured with the rain, water droplets blowing onto the lens filter creating points of blur within images.

Listening to – U2’s ‘With or Without You’ and ‘Point of Surrender.’

Quote to Inspire – “Success is what happens when 10,000 hours of preparation meet with one moment of opportunity.” – Anonymous

53 Ford & Window Shopping

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration
Ford F-100 1

Ford F-100 1

Ford F-100 2

Ford F-100 2

Ford F-100 3

Ford F-100 3

Ford F-100 4

Ford F-100 4

Ford F-100 5

Ford F-100 5

Ford F-100 6

Ford F-100 6

Our landscape, just south of Canada’s 60th parallel, grows brighter as sunlight’s intense intensity intensifies, day by day. Today has been our first real glimpse of the spring we are moving into. Graders, snow blowers and huge dump trucks have been hauling snow away each day this past week to limit the water and ice that will be dealt with in spring’s thaw. Today, on February’s last day of 2013, we have a three week wait until spring arrives. The images presented here are a celebration of colour even in when most dismally discovered. Colour is celebrated in each image of the 53 Ford that continues to hold my attention. I might have to drive one one day. At present I have my eye out for a green, Canadian built, 69 Pontiac Parisienne … still window shopping, but one day I’ll find one.

Listening to – Alan Jeffries’ ‘John Hardy’ from the Coffee Til Midnight album.

Quote to Inspire – “I fell in love with taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance.” Alec Soth

Step In

Backlight, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Journaling, Light Intensity, Lookback Photos - One Year Ago, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration
Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 1

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 1

Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 2

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 2

Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 3

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 3

Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 4

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 4

Ford F-100 - High Level, Ab 5

Ford F-100 – High Level, Ab 5

I’m not sure. But, this image’s perspective looking towards this 1953 Ford F-100 is that which likely is the perspective previous owners would have walking to it, something seen regularly through the Ford’s years of service. The image orients the eye to the driver’s door becoming the glimpse the owner/driver would take as he or she thinks through next actions and destination walking to this F-100. You could almost step into the image, open the driver’s door, start the engine and drive away.

Listening to – Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah,’ played on our Heintzman Grand Piano in vertical form by my daughter.

Quote to Inspire – “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” – Oscar Wilde

Tasking New Purpose

Canon 30D, Canon Camera, Night, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Summer, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

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