Easter Long Weekend

I had a nice break from work for the Easter Long weekend.  I closed the shop for Good Friday as well as for Easter Monday, so I had a very relaxing and enjoyable four day long weekend.  On Good Friday we had 17 people over for Easter Dinner.  This was all direct relatives, adults and kids, on both sides of the family.  On Saturday we cleaned up, rested and recuperated.  On Easter Sunday, after the spoils from the Easter bunny were divided, and the egg hunt was wrapped up, I headed out for a day trip.  My friend Gerald and I went back out to the Battle Lake area.  This time the spring run off was in full swing.  Finally the temperatures were spring like and the snow was disappearing quickly.  By afternoon the temperature peaked at +17C.  Quite a change from a week ago when I was in the same area with my friend Rob and there was fresh snow and a daytime high of -5C!!

I was shooting mostly with my 4x5 on this trip, and these images were captured on Polaroid 55.  I really like these shots, especially the one of the boiling eddy beneath the culvert.  This kind of stuff we are only able to photograph for a couple of weeks in years when there is a heavy run off.  I just had to take advantage of the heavy snowpack and unusual runoff and get out and photograph this stuff.  I also took a few shots with my new panoramic camera.  

On Easter Monday I went out again, this time with all the girls.  The temperature was even warmer, peaking at +18C, but it was quite windy.  We ventured northeast of the city, traveling through Elk Island Park up into Lamont County.  We explored a couple of old abandoned farm yards.  It was a little more stressful than the trip the day before but all the same it was nice to get out with the girls.  I've given one of my old 35mm camera bodies to Hailey and Annelise and provided them with a somewhat unlimited supply of black and white film.  I'm encouraging them to take an interest in traditional film based photography.  Not only the shooting part, but I also want to get them into the darkroom to process their film and to print it.  We'll see how that goes...