vacation

325 – 152nd Street East, Tacoma, Washington

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Journaling, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Still Life, Vehicle, Vehicle Restoration

One of the bigger treats for me in visiting Seattle, Washington this Easter was something my wife and daughter allowed me to do on the Thursday before we returned to Canada, something that they joined me in. That Thursday morning, we drove from Seattle an hour south to Tacoma and using our TomTom GPS were able to navigate to 325 – 152nd Street East to arrive at the LeMay Car Collection/Museum at Marymount.

Imagine a former convent/school resurrected to become storage and showing site for the LeMay collection of cars and trucks, vehicles of the last one hundred years. At the museum, a docent will lead you through each collecting point on the Marymount property. Not only do rusting relics inhabit these spaces, but you also find that the majority of vehicles within these confines will have received restoration or would have been kept in their original pristine condition throughout their years. Beyond this, imagine that your docent has heart and understands well your connection to cars and knows each car’s history intimately. He’s able to tell you all that you didn’t know about each car. Our docent, Mr. Pierce, led us, this way and that, through the maze of cars parked end to end in each of three buildings, a means to house them all. He was introducing each car to us – what the car was about practically, what had been each automaker’s intentions for the vehicle conceptually and how the car came to reside within the LeMay collection.

And, Mr. Pierce allowed me a kind of grace that only a fellow gear-head would ever let you have … he allowed time to photograph the vehicles and for that I will be forever grateful. At two hours in to my tour my wife went to be with my daughter out in our rental car while I rounded off the tour with Mr. Pierce looking up close at some of the first-ever self-propelled vehicles to transport people around the Americas. In terms of next steps, I’m considering becoming a member at the LeMay museum – they may be able to make use of this old-time car jockey who used to dust and polish cars at Edmonton’s Waterloo Mercury.

Listening to – U2’s Magnificent, Coldplay’s Yes and Radiohead’s All I Need.  In terms of audiobooks, the last two morning walks have been a listen through D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover; it’s been more than a couple of year’s since I’ve been through the book and this audio-recording has a good reader –  Maxine Peake.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.” – Andre Bazin (1918-1958), French film critic.

Broad Strokes – Three Dimensions

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Light Intensity, Night, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Sunrise

Visually, Seattle clusters in broad strokes among three dimensions. There’s the up and down of tall, tall buildings. There’s the Seattle you find more of to your right and to your left, more buildings, more streets, more sidewalks. Seattle extends in front of you, behind you and way over in every direction – bridges curve with the landscape and cross huge expanses of land and water. Seattle is a walker’s city. Distances around the city core are manageable walking distances. Navigating the downtown core is straightforward. The terrain offers up and down, a good walker’s workout. And, fresh air blows up from the ocean through the city. Movie-wise I recognized the city watching an eighty’s movie only last weekend; Seattle is the setting within the movie, An Officer and A Gentleman. And, during our time in Seattle, we were able to see the Lake Union lake cottage set of the house used by Tom Hanks’ character in the movie Sleepless in Seattle; we’d taken the Ducks’ tour and saw many of Seattle’s highlights. The Seattle night photos remind much of U2’s music video presentation of their album No Line on the Horizon and specifically to City of Blinding Lights, a reference more directly referring to Paris, France; the appellation could just as easily refer to the Seattle that I’ve seen at night.

Listening to a preview of Jack White’s Blunderbuss album; it’s holding true to Jack White sound; it’s good and it’s fresh Jack White.

Quote to Inspire – “There will be times when you will be in the field without a camera.  And, you will see the most glorious sunset or the most beautiful scene that you have ever witnessed.  Don’t be bitter because you can’t record it. Sit down, drink it in, and enjoy it for what it is!” – Degriff

Moonrise over Elliot Bay

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Home, Night, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Sunrise

Coming to Seattle from just south of the 60th parallel, I had expected the earth’s sunrise and sunset to be more in tandem with what happens for us in our north. I was surprised to find the sun rising much earlier than it was back home. On Saturday, our travel day home from Seattle, Washington to Edmonton, Alberta I was able to gather photo gear quietly without disturbing my wife and daughter and head out quite early to snap photos. While I captured images from Seattle’s downtown, two of the shots I’m liking deal with the moonrise at sunrise across Elliot bay. And, while there are five images presented there are only two images dealt with.  One image plays with different lighting presets and composition while the other, the final one is pretty much straight out of the camera. Our waitress at the Andaluca restaurant caught the sight on her early morning jaunt to work. The sight was rare, something to see.

Quote to Inspire – “To me, photography is an art of observation.  It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place … I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliot Erwitt

Listening to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album following a documentary on Pink Floyd that explored their reunion for the global Live 8 Concert;  they’d been apart for some twenty odd years … two of those members have passed on. In the song Wish You Were Here that I’m listening to, Stephane Grappelli accompanies Pink Floyd. Interesting!

Seattle’s Pike Market Place

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Sunrise

One feature of our Seattle trip was we were active throughout each day walking, travelling and walking some more. Being active helped us maintain body rhythms and daily routine. We were usually up at seven and on our way somewhere by eight. Breakfast, most mornings, was at the Andaluca Restaurant, a restaurant attached to Seattle’s Mayflower Park Hotel. These morning meals were sumptuous – Brioche French Toast, Hazelnut Waffles, Steel Cut Scottish Oats and Banana Pancakes; a side of pepper bacon was added twice. Coffee was made as coffee should be and our orange juice was fresh. From this restaurant we’d head out to Seattle, its sights and attractions.

And, we always seemed to return to the Pike Place Market at day’s end, from up above, street side or from down below from the harbor. We seemed to arrive each day within the market’s last hour of hustle and bustle as vendors went about closing up shop – a flurry of activity, enthusiasm, good-natured banter with customers and the mingling and flow of people in movement into their evening. The photos presented here capture the Pike Place Market at day’s beginning and at its day’s end.

Notable among the attractions in the Corner Market (across from the Pike Place Market) is the original Starbuck’s (established in 1971) named after Starbuck in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. In terms of the novel’s whaling adventures, this setting for a coffeehouse Starbuck would frequent is appropriate.  The coffeehouse is a short twenty-minute climb up from the harbor piers of Elliot Bay to its location above the harbor, looking out onto the bay. This original Starbucks is the point from which the Starbucks’ empire has grown and it’s a company that has grown equally by way of its service provided as well as by the quality of its coffee. In It’s Not About the Coffee, Howard Behar (former Starbucks vice president) writes about the act of growing Starbucks by way of good leadership that emphasizes the relationship sustained between coffee consumer and service provider (Starbucks’ worker) – the human side of business.

Not only has good leadership and good business grown from this location, but, right across the street the Pike Place Fish Market has become a model for ‘cultural transformation and self-generative learning for organizations of all kinds.’  Their model for transforming an organization from within focuses on empowerment, transforming vision into reality and the conception that any organization has as one of its primary purposes that of making a difference in the world.

And, the business of the day continues, each day … in this very rich starting point … for many good things.

10 Principles of Personal Leadership (from Howard Behar in It’s Not About the Coffee – Leadership Principles from Life at Starbucks)

  1. Know Who You Are: Wear One Hat
  2. Know Why You’re Here: Do It Because It’s Right, Not Because It’s Right for Your Resume
  3. Think Independently: The Person Who Sweeps the Floor Should Choose the Broom
  4. Build Trust: Care, like You Really Mean It
  5. Listen for the Truth: The Walls Talk
  6. Be Accountable: Only the Truth Sounds like the Truth
  7. Take Action: Think Like a Person of Action, and Act like a Person of Thought
  8. Face Challenge: We Are Human Beings First
  9. Practice Leadership: The Big Noise and the Still, Small Voice
  10. Dare to Dream: Say “Yes,” the Most Powerful Word in the World

Quotes to Inspire – (1) “To photograph is to confer importance.” – Susan Sontag (2) “To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.” – Ansel Adams

Listening to – Counting Crows Omaha and Ghost Train; also listening to David Gray’s Shine.

Windblown Veils of Rain – Across Elliot Bay

Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Light Intensity, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Season, Spring, Still Life, Weather
Veils of Rain, Elliot Bay - Seattle, Washington

Veils of Rain, Elliot Bay - Seattle, Washington

I spent most of last week on break, in and around Seattle, Washington. On Sunday, when we returned to Edmonton, my youngest brother asked me, “Why Seattle?” And, we let him know that our destination could just as easily have been New York, Cancun, San Francisco, the Utah mountains or St. John’s, Newfoundland. In any locale wherever we were our time would have been about chasing light in new and unfamiliar terrain and I could not have done any better than I have here, to look from east to west across Elliot Bay from Seattle’s Pike Place Market and to capture these windblown veils of rain as they mingle creating layers of sunlight, revealing landscape layers behind them. Seattle suits my interest because the landscape, weather and light are similar to that found on Vancouver Island where we’ve spent most of our summers with Mom and Dad, brothers, my grandparents and extended family. And, it has been years since I’ve been to Seattle with my family. In the time between visits, the nearby town of Forks, Washington has featured as location to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, a set of novels that work to establish social mores among today’s teens, something that Jane Austen was doing with her narratives – helping young adults make good decisions in their lives. While we certainly could have gone out to Forks, we didn’t. The opportunity to stay put in Seattle and chase light with camera in hand ranked equally in importance to taking in other attractions.

Listening to a genius playlist surrounding the starting song from City of Angels, Angel by Sarah McLachlan; other songs include Alanis Morrissette’s Uninvited, Sheryl Crow’s Strong Enough, Round Here by the Counting Crows and Dido’s Thank You.

Quote to Inspire – “There is only you and your camera.  The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” – Ernest Haas

The Soft Solder

Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Lens, Farm, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Winter
Fifties Grain Truck - South Side toward Nampa, Peace River, Alberta

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 House and 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

Twin Lakes – Roadscape

Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Journaling, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Weather, Winter
Alberta Highway 35 near Twin Lakes, Alberta

Alberta Highway 35 near Twin Lakes, Alberta

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

Where Are You Going …?

Barn, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Still Life, Vehicle Restoration, Winter

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).

A Slippery, Melting World

Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon Camera, Gas Station, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, School, Service Station, Still Life, Weather, Winter

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

B-Sides, Photographs that Linger

Barn, Best Practices - Photography, Canon 60D, Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 IS L Series Lens, Canon Camera, Canon Lens, Canon Live View, Farm, Farmhouse, High Dynamic Range (HDR), Home, Homestead, Light Intensity, Photoblog Intention, Photography & Conceptualizing Beauty, Project 365 - Photo-a-day, Spring, Still Life, Winter

Sunday – photographs that I’d intended to post linger on my computer’s desktop in a file of edited images.  The week has been busy with obligations taking me into my nights. The first image is one of a barn located in a muskeg bog, just south of Figure Eight Lake on Alberta Highway 737; it is out of the weather and close to a water source; no house or homestead is in the immediate vicinity.  One could have burned down. Or, perhaps the barn is associated with the homestead in the second image; this homestead is treed in and built on higher ground a kilometre further south on the west side of the same highway. In another image an inuksuk has been assembled at the southwesternmost corner of someone’s farmland alongside Alberta Highway 685, stating to all comers that others have stood right there, where they now stand. Within metres of the inuksuk, a heart-shaped wreath is fastened below a ‘no through road’ sign, perhaps inviting people to come and investigate. The next photograph presents a second rendering of the Fairview horses and lamas in spring’s sunlight; there’s a glow of sunlight from the animals. Beyond this, are the other b-side renderings of the Dunvegin bridge, photographed last weekend.

Listening to Tonic’s rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s Second Hand News, then there’s Sister Hazel’s take on Gold Dust Woman and Shawn Colvin performs The Chain, all songs are part of Legacy:  A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours’ album.

Quote to Inspire – “I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find 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