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I haven’t withdrawn from my blog so much as I’ve been presented with the separation of vacation from the routines of daily life – sort of a forced withdrawal that’s likely to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
Sunset & Plant – Fort Vermilion Turnoff, Fort Vermilion, Alberta
On lunch break between summer tasks, I play tunes my daughter has had us download in iTunes – Smash Mouth songs, Megan & Liz songs and songs from the Glee Cast. She’s had me track down the original of The Zombies – She’s Not There, a song sung on Glee. Another song from the Glee repertoire is Tears for Fears’ Mad World; we find the Michael Andrews and Gary Jules version of the song that encapsulates the theme within the Donnie Darko movie; it contains a straightforward set of lyrics about Life’s absurdity in being there but not there, almost a ghost within a world where you can be seen but not known, recognized but not affirmed, speak but not be understood. Our listen through with iTunes two nights back brought out several songs by The Who which we download – Won’t Get Fooled Again, I Can See For Miles, Behind Blue Eyes, My Generation, Pinball Wizard and Baba O’Riley. My daughter recognizes Pinball Wizard, a song she’s heard, and I wonder where she would have heard it – questions to ask. For now she’s happy to have our downloads and to have the songs loaded on her iPod.
One lingering photo is this, taken at sunset, a plant with maroon and gold stem and shoots; it sways in the breeze as I try a macro shot. I’m liking the colours despite its movement.
Quote to Inspire – “No, the camera can’t steal the soul. But it can occasionally hold it hostage.” – author unknown
Listening to – The Who andMy Generation. Also listening to Smash Mouth’s Walkin’ on the Sun and All Star.
Homestead Amongst Canola 4 – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Canola & Stacking Clouds 3 – High Level, Alberta
Homestead Amongst Canola 3 – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Canola & Stacking Clouds 2 – High Level, Alberta
Homestead Amongst Canola 1 – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
Canola & Stacking Clouds 1 – High Level, Alberta
Homestead Amongst Canola 2 – Fort Vermilion, Alberta
One use for photography is as a means to revisit the past, to investigate the reality of former times and to hold up to scrutiny the mind’s eye view of significant events held in memory against the reality that photography reveals. Former times often become focal point for memory; we attach meaning and narrative to what has happened to us in significant events and memorable moments. Reaching back to former times with a camera allows for the investigation of visual information within scenes and settings surrounding Life events. Distances, depth, architecture, shape, colour – the visual information within a photograph allows for extrapolation, to see more of the story that was at play. Such camera investigation with editing of images has a settling aspect to it; it establishes more of the facts surrounding events and moves past glory day’s nostalgia to clearer recognition of what comprised scene and action. In doing so, photography locks in the visual information within a scene. While I tend to think of Edmonton, the home I grew up in, and, the events and happenings of years ago, the process is the same when I consider our northern seasons. The dark of winter will bring longing for warmth and breeze of summer’s blue-sky days with clouds stacking and fields in greens, yellows and gold; intensities are there, too – heat, lightning, convection, weather. The photographs here are of such summer days and for those winter days.
Listening to – Alison Krauss/Union Station’s When You Say Nothing At All.
Quotes to Inspire – (1) “Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.” – Marc Riboud (2) “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” – Ansel Adams. (3) “A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.” – Eudora Welty
1 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
2 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
3 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
4 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
5 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
6 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
7 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
8 Water Bomber – Wilson Prairie Fire, La Crete, Alberta
Savage Prairie Road Granaries – La Crete, Alberta
Wilson Prairie Homestead – La Crete, Alberta
Wilson Prairie Wildfire – La Crete, Alberta
2 Wilson Prairie Homestead – La Crete, Alberta
3 Wilson Prairie Homestead – La Crete, Alberta
Helicopter Arrival – Slinging Water – La Crete, Alberta
2 Helicopter Arrival – Slinging Water – La Crete, Alberta
Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
2 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
3 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
4 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
5 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
6 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
Field Opposite Wilson Prairie Wildfire – La Crete, Alberta
Looking On – Wilson Prairie Wildfire – La Crete, Alberta
7 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
8 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
9 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
10 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
11 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
12 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
13 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
14 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
15 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
Keeping Dust Down – Wilson Prairie Road – La Crete, Alberta
2 Keeping Dust Down – Wilson Prairie Road – La Crete, Alberta
16 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
17 Water Slinging from Dug-outs – La Crete, Alberta
1 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
2 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
3 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
4 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
5 Wilson Prairie Fire (from the South) – La Crete, Alberta
Day 3 of the Wilson Prairie Wildfire – Friday, July 6th, 2012. In contrast to Thursday evening in which residents were able to move freely into the fire area, Friday saw Alberta’s Ministry of Sustainable Resource Development (SRD) controlling road access so that firefighting equipment could be moved around with greater ease on Wilson Prairie Road. I arrived in the early afternoon to find access to Wilson Prairie Road being controlled. I couldn’t use my vehicle on Wilson Prairie Road. But, I could walk in, staying to the ditches when equipment was being moved through. Two-and-a-half hours walking in and out allowed me to see more of what was going on and how the blaze was being controlled. Dozers were creating breaks/cut-lines and pushing piles of brush together so they’d burn more easily/quickly. Areas of intended burn and back-burn were being created. One home was in harm’s way and helicopters were being used to sling water (from local dug-outs) to saturate the area in the case that the fire’s path changed with the winds. Air tankers had been tasked to other fires within the region; but, lead planes and Martin Mars water bombers (or the like) were being used to keep a consistent supply of water on the fire. On dust-ridden, gravel roads water trucks moved slowly dribbling water to keep dust down for vehicles moving in close proximity to one another. Later, I was able to drive around behind the fire to two other points to catch the more dramatic perspective of hot, billowing smoke moving upward into the atmosphere and the water bombers flying into fire area to release water on flames below.
Listening to – Adele’s Set Fire to the Rain, a tune played throughout last year’s forest fire that consumed Slave Lake, Alberta (spring 2011).
Quote to Inspire – “I enjoy traveling and recording far-away places and people with my camera. But I also find it wonderfully rewarding to see what I can discover outside my own window. You only need to study the scene with the eyes of a photographer.” – Alfred Eisenstadt
Fence Posts – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Flower 2 – Northwestern Alberta
Daisy – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Daisies – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Flower – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Fence Post 3 – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Fence Posts 2 – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Cattail 3 – Northwestern Alberta
Cattail 2 – Northwestern Alberta
Cattail 1 – Northwestern Alberta
Pond – Northwestern Alberta
Fire Aftermath 2 – Northwestern Alberta
Fire Aftermath – Northwestern Alberta
Buffalo Airways DC 3 #2 – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Buffalo Airways DC 3 – Alexandra Falls, Northwest Territories
Our school year is complete. Mandated and extracurricular tasks and obligations have been seen through to good conclusion. I continue to be amazed at all the work all teachers engage in in moving students onward in their academic learning as these same students move into, through and from of the hormone jungle. Our final days at school have been about pushing through, getting what needs done, done and sharing in celebration and play with students.
Our year-end school riot, outdoors, held so much fun – a supremely significant high point to the year – water pistols, pies in the face (for staff and students), izzy-dizzy, wet/slippery tug-of-war, shin cracker, fire engine pull, music and more music and most fun was the make-shift water slide (a rubber 100’ x 50’ tarp with fire truck pumper and two fire hoses soaking students and staff in summer sun); staff and students shared laughter and smiles abundantly … what an extraordinary day! Stats on the Animoto of the event are sitting at 180+ viewings within one week – our year-end riot was a hit and definitely memorable.
Beyond the riot, the final days were about pushing through, getting year-end tasks done; then, there was a sacred congregational task to be completed last Sunday at Hutch Lake, Alberta. Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis also wrote a book about his teaching life in New York City. In his book, Teacher Man, he references the acronym ATTO, meant to mean ‘all that time off’ that non-teachers look at as the perk to teaching and as something perhaps as an ill-gotten-gain. The reality is that there really is all that time off. But, for me and any other teacher the time is something used to catch one’s breath mentally and physically. It’s a time to move the teacher’s self from back burner interest and to step out and seize hold of Life and to breathe Life into interests, intentions, goals and endeavors.
The house that needs fixing, the taxes that need submission, the mail that needs opening … all those things that have been put off so that a rich school year may be had by students – these are the things that now must get done. Yesterday, summer’s reward was there. On his Soul Surmise website, Steve Stockman (Stocki) provided the world with his top ten album picks for the first half of 2012. The reward specific – Stocki pointed me to Matthew Perryman Jones and his Land of the Living album, intelligent, well-crafted lyrics with a voice richly reminiscent of David Gray; truly manna.
The photographs presented here are ones taken on a drive northward from High Level, Alberta towards the Alexandra Falls just on the other side of the Northwest Territories border. I had freed myself for an afternoon and got into the car with my Canon 60D. Most shots are macro shots of colour amongst greenery. Two shots are photos of the aftermath of a forest fire that had raged on North of us a few weeks before.
Listening to – Matthew Perryman Jones’ Land of the Living album – The Angels Were Singing, Cancion de la Noche and I Won’t Let You Down Again; the melody from Stones From the Riverbed catches my interest.
Quote to Inspire – “Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.” – Matt Hardy
Tompkins’ Landing Ferry – Tompkins’ Landing, Alberta
Aboard the Tompkins’ Landing Ferry 2 – Tompkins’ Landing, Alberta
Aboard the Tompkins’ Landing Ferry – Tompkins’ Landing, Alberta
Sunset at Midpoint of the Peace River – Tompkins’ Landing, Alberta
Footner Lake 1, Alberta
Footner Lake 2, Alberta
Footner Lake 3, Alberta
Footner Lake 4, Alberta
Cattails 5 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Footner Lake 5, Alberta
Footner Lake 6, Alberta
Cattail 1 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Cattail 2 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Cattail 3 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Cattail 4 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelions – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelions 2 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelions 3 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelions 4 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Dandelion – Footner Lake, Alberta
Grass & Flora – Footner Lake, Alberta
Flora – Footner Lake, Alberta
Flora 2 – Footner Lake, Alberta
Elektra Air Tankers – High Level Airport, High Level, Alberta
Flower – High Level, Alberta
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
Saturday – new horizons await a friend, a colleague and a mentor as he moves on from our school. He is the person who hired me into our school division. And, he’s someone who in action, thought and approach is a character developing leader worthy of Goethe’s quote (below) because he’s able to encourage and bring forth the best contribution people have to offer among our team. He lives this out in practice, “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. And, his farewell party – a remembrance and celebration of the impact he’s had on people’s lives – is something I’ve had to miss being a Dad who has needed to bring home his son and his son’s gear from University. My contribution to my colleague’s farewell was an Animoto slideshow, a collection of images taken from various points in his thirty-year career – memorable, memorable times (like the fun we had skidooing and coming upon a saucy lynx that wouldn’t be bothered about getting out of our way). My wife went in my stead with our friends to the farewell celebration.
That was Saturday night, a night memorable also because I wasn’t there yet was thinking about all its goings-on. The photographs, here, are taken roughly at the same time of night that this colleague’s farewell celebration would have been in full swing. I stopped in my drive to look around with my camera lens because I know my friend and mentor would want me to. This week has been about offering photography as a contribution to the school’s dinner theater. The Northern Actors’ Guild, our school theater troupe, is presenting the musical, Grease. It’s been fun working with students and staff to create a visual record of rehearsals and headshot portraits for foyer display. Students in high school are at the tail-end of adolescence still metamorphosing into adult form – photography, here, along with the actor’s costumes acknowledges state of change, a step closer to or perhaps into adulthood. It shocks and surprises – the new state does not always assimilate easily in terms of understanding one’s identity.
Perhaps that is something else that photography is – a record of threshold moments.
Listening to – Over the Rhine’s Spark, Patty Griffin’s Tomorrow Night, Mindy Smith’s Train Song and Dar Williams’ Mercy of the Fallen. I-Nine performs Same in Any Language and Ryan Adams, his She Wants to Play Hearts. Then there’s Bruce Cockburn’s Pacing the Cage and David Gray’s Tidal Wave which rounds out into Over the Rhine’s Born.
Quote to Inspire – “If your photos aren’t good enough, then you’re not close enough.” – Robert Capa
Within a busy week opportunity for travel along former routes of home permits departure from the whirring, buzzing, routinized rhythm and press of town Life. An hour upon the road gathers me to others and I listen and we talk, good, informing chatter. The gathering, done, permits time beyond meeting to slow down and attend to what I see in that dusky golden hour of half-light. My look-round occurs through the lens attached to my Canon 60D. At the Anglican Cemetery in Fort Vermilion, Alberta I begin; many of the grave markers are granite headstones. Others, painted or stained wooden crosses, seem more temporary. Perhaps maintenance of this tentative grave marker highlights practice in looking after those who have gone before us.
I point my car northward toward High Level. My drive from home out to Fort Vermilion has given me windshield time, time to look out from my car’s windows and to note the snowless earth that is warming, thawing and drying. As we move into summer, hours of sunlight will extend backward into earlier mornings and forward into later evenings. Summer solstice will see the sun dip below the horizon at 11:45 p.m. and reappear at 2:30 a.m., the time between being a protracted period of half-light that photographers refer to as their golden hour when the intensity of light drops off and the quality of light and what is lit changes. At its darkest, there will be a gray eeriness. Tonight, I’ve been able to catch cattails within our current golden hour (at about 9:45 p.m. the sun has just dipped below the horizon). Shallow depth of field permits focus and highlight of subject and the generalization of shapes that pattern into the background.
Listening to – two female voices; first, seeing Aimee Mann within my iTunes catalogue sparked curiosity toward her work with Til Tuesday – I’ve purchased two different versions of Voices Carry. Then, in relation to psalm 23, I was curious as to whether or not Sarah Masen was able to have her album, The Dreamlife of Angels, made available through iTunes. It’s been about ten years since Stocki first played it on Rhythm and Soul; at the time, a major record deal was not in the offing. But, now her album is something I’ve just found and it’s about time. Sarah is an intelligent lyricist; her song The Valley references psalm 23, making you think, and a curiously interesting tune called Hope is worth the listen. What else – The Five Blind Boys of Alabama will feature at Edmonton’s Winspear Centre along with Over the Rhine on June 10th. Good schtuff … if you’re to take it in.
Quote to Inspire – “You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” -Ansel Adams
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
On this morning’s walk I chose music over prose. The brooding plot of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in all the consideration before action seems quite bleak and maybe the story is written intentionally so that renewal in physical sensuality is highlighted against the mundane existence of day-to-day life.
Music suited me better in the initiation of the day. Robbie Robertson played first, then Bruce Cockburn and U2, then on to Roxy Music and The Tragically Hip, all on my genius playlist beginning with Sweet Fire of Love. Then, in combination with thought about this photograph Sting begins on a song called The Soul Cages. For as much as the song’s lyrics refer to our humanoid condition here on earth I was drawn to consider whether or not a camera is another soul cage. I’m thinking that a camera is a tool that cages the soul within the photograph produced in that it encapsulates a moment of time, recording Life status and history in whatever condition we or the world were in – good or bad.
The camera photographed here is a Leica. A while back, Maciek Sokulski encouraged his Shuttertime with Sid and Mac podcast listeners to purchase an older camera, one that causes you to think about photography beyond the digital means, a camera with which to use your honed knowledge/skills of photography and to exercise expertise and skill in creating good photographs without waste. This Leica is my father’s from the early sixties. It is a camera that was used technically in the production of plastic and was used as part of the process to view at a microscopic level the grade/quality of plastics at an Edmonton plastics plant. It is a Leica without a viewfinder and is something my brothers and I should try out one of these days to see how it shoots. Maybe we will give it a try this summer.
Listening to – Robbie Robertson’s Soap Box Preacher, Amanda Marshall’s Sitting On Top of the World, Jann Arden’s The Sound Of, U2’s I Fall Down, Joan Osborne’s Man in the Long Black Coat and Neil Young’s When God Made Me.
Quote to Inspire – “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever … it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” – Aaron Siskind
In My Back Pocket - Photography 
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