Window

I believe that I previously posted another version of this image.  This one was just recently developed.  It was part of the batch of 21 sheets of 4"x5" Ilford FP4+125 that I ran on July 25th.  As the subject was rather uniform in tone, I exposed this sheet with the intention of increasing contrast in development.  The film was processed in Kodak HC-110 Developer, dilution B, for 14:20 minutes at 20C.  The film was exposed at 160 iso.  This combination yields a contrast increase of 1 stop, or N+1.

I was out on a day trip with my brother-in-law Shawn last spring and we found this old house up in Lamont County.  I shot this with my Ebony SV45TU view camera and a Nikkor 300mm lens.  I took the photograph on May 26th 2025 at about 4:00 in the afternoon.  The exposure was for 1/30 second at F20.0.  This showed just a little motion blur in the tattered curtain that was flapping in the wind.

High Voltage

This is another scan from the batch of FP4+125 sheet film that I processed on July 25th.  That day I ran a batch of 21 sheets of 4"x5" film.  All 21 sheets in the batch were exposed at 160 iso, and designated for N+1 development.  This is extended development to expand constrast by one stop.  I processed the film in Kodak HC-110 Developer, dilution B, for 14:20 minutes at 20C,

This particular image was taken on July 5th of 2025 at about 2:00 in the afternoon.  This is a now retired stripping shovel that used to mine coal in central Alberta.  Today it sits in retirement at the Reynolds Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin.  Arturo and I spent a few days photographing there in the summer of 2025, in the hope that we could capture some images for our Apparitions project.

I shot this with my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Nikkor 210mm lens.  The exposure was for 1/4 second at F20.0.

August Calendar Image 2026

This is the image I selected for the August page of my 2026 Fine Art Photography Calendar.  I also used this image on my David Thompson Country calendar for September of 2026, so it will be posted here again in a month.  In fact I've previously posted this image as I think it is one of my better ones from last year.  The remains of this old car, sit up at the Nordegg Historic Minesite.  The site is open for public tours over the summer months.

Piano

On July 25th I developed a batch of film.  This was twenty one 4"x5" sheets of Ilford FP4+ 125.  All of these sheets were exposed at 160 iso with the intention of giving N+1 development.  This is extended development to increase contrast by one stop.  I processed the film in Kodak HC-110 Developer, dilution B, for 14:20 minutes at 20C.

I took this shot way back in the late fall of 2023.  It was a very mild December and we had no snow, when I went up and visited an abandoned monastery with my friend Steve.  This old piano was left in the woods at this site some years ago.  I imagine that by now, it has probably completely disintegrated.  I took this photograph on December 6th of 2023, at about 12:30 in the afternoon.  I used my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Fujinon 125mm lens.  The exposure was for 1/2 second at F22.0.

One Million

Today my Blog hit One Million page views.  My first post was almost exactly sixteen years ago, on July 29th 2010.  Viewership was very low at the beginning, gradually increased, and now has seen exponentially more traffic.  It took until March 7th of 2026 for me to hit Half a Million page views.  Here we are under five months later, and another half million people have had a look.  It blows me away that so many people are interested in the mindless shit I write about...!

BP40.0 - Rockyview Hotel - Lesley

Our first Beer Parlour Project outing of 2026 was back in late February.  I stayed at a short term rental belonging to Connie and Chris' son Will, and we visited the Rockyview Hotel in Cochrane, Alberta.  It was winter, and pretty cold and snowy as I recall.

There was a decent crowd out that evening and we enjoyed visiting with everyone.  One of the guests, Trevor, specifically came out to visit with us.  He had also been out at Edgerton for his nephew's graduation, when we visited there back in 2025.

I took this portrait of Lesley and I quite like the way it turned out.  In typical female fashion she was concerned about the best angle to shoot from.  I obliged and took this frontal portrait as she requested.

This is yet another sheet of Kodak T-Max 400 that I developed in the batch on June 20th.  The twenty sheets of 4"x5" that I processed on that day were all pushed to 1250 iso. I ran them in T-Max Developer, 1:4, for 8:35 minutes at 24C.  I took the shot with my Ebony view camera and a 210mm Nikkor lens.  This was on February 27th at about 6:20 in the evening.  The exposure was for 1/2 second at F9.0.

Monday Day Trip

On July 27th Helena and I headed out for a day trip.  All three of my girls are really keen to join me on my photo outings as they seem to have inherited my love for exploring, particularly old buildings and abandoned stuff.

It was cloudy all morning and by noon some showers were rolling in.  As Helena and I were about to leave the city, another thunderstorm hit.  This one didn't have hail, or particularly heavy winds, but it dumped a lot of rain in a very short period of time.  It absolutely poured, and water was running everywhere.  I understand that we got another half inch of rain in about half an hour.  This is not what we need as the ground is already very saturated with the excessive rainfall we have experienced over the past six weeks.  When we returned home later in the evening we found our patio was a lake, and that a little new water had entered the basement.

Our original intention was to head to the northeast, but that was the direction the storm was tracking.  We changed our plans and headed southwest.  It continued to rain lightly as we left the city but by early afternoon it cleared up to blue skies.

We stopped and photographed an old farm hard, and explored a couple of abandoned rural service stations.  Both had been closed for at least a year or two and both were heavily vandalized and looted.  Helena really enjoys checking out stuff like this and took a few photos both with her phone, and with a 35mm SLR.  We also found an old abandoned stripping shovel, left over from some coal mining operations in the area.

I managed to pull my view camera out a few times and ended up exposing around ten sheets of film.  It turned out to be a pretty good day, except for the heavy rain part.  If this doesn't come to an end soon I'm going to have to start building an ark.  Then the rains came... for forty days and forty nights... now I know what Noah must have felt like.

BP41.0 - Carstairs

This is a scan of another recently processed T-Max 400 negative.  This was part of a batch of 20 sheets that I ran back on June 20th.  The film was pushed to an ISO of 1250 and given extended development in T-Max developer, 1:4, for 8:35 minutes at 24C.

This is a portrait of Jerry, one of the locals that was visiting Barley's Pub in the Dominion Hotel in Carstairs, Alberta.  The Beer Parlour Project visited for our outing number BP41.0 back on February 28th of 2026.  I took this portrait at about 5:00 in the afternoon with my Ebony view camera and a 210mm lens.  The exposure was for 1/2 second at F11.0.

Friday Day Trip

Margarit, Hank and I went out for a drive on Friday.  It was an escape from all the chaos of dealing with our flooded basement. 

I brought along my view camera, with the intention of taking a few photographs.  I really haven't done much photography yet this year, and am way behind my normal pace.  After passing through Elk Island Park, as I detailed in an earlier post, we headed further northeast.  Eventually we ended up in a small town in Two Hills County.

It isn't really a ghost town, as there are still a number of people living there.  There is also a post office and a county shop and a couple other commercial buildings, some abandoned.  There are a number of badly deteriorated buildings and I photographed a few things.  By the end of the day I had exposed ten sheets of film, though this included a couple that I took in Elk Island.

The air was heavy with wildfire smoke blowing down from the Northwest Territories.  It created a very unusual light with a very orange color to it.  That is evident in some of the phone snapshots I have posted here.

It was very hot with the temperature peaking at 30C.  Margarit and Hank had a tough time with it and spent a lot of time looking for shade or sitting in the air conditioned truck.  I found it hot as well, but I seem to handle heat better than the rest of my family.  I had long pants and a hoodie on all day, to mitigate the mosquitos, which didn't really seem necessary as their weren't many.  We expected them to be out in hoards due to all the recent rain but there weren't very many.  Perhaps it was too hot for them too.

By late afternoon we made our way back to the city and on the way we picked up a few groceries to make supper with the kids.

Elk Island National Park

On Friday July 24th Margarit and I decided we would make a short term escape from the woes of dealing with our flooded basement.  It has been over a month since the water first began to flood our basement as a result of all the heavy rain in central Alberta.  A month later and we have most of our stuff cleared out of the basement, and demolition underway, but not much else.  We still have no answers from our insurance adjuster or the contractor.

So we decided to take a break and escape out of the city for a couple of hours.  We made a quick lunch stop at the Burger Baron, and then headed east.  The air was heavy with smoke from forest fires up in the Northwest Territories.  It was difficult to imagine anything burning as everywhere we looked there was mud and standing water.  But the severe rains were actually somewhat limited to a relatively small area in central Alberta.  Park entry is again free this summer, so the annual pass that I paid full price for in the spring of 2025 remains irrelevant.  I understand that its validity will be extended until at least the end of 2026.

The light had a rather orange pall to it as a result of all the smoke in the air.  The sky was smokey gray and like a light blanket over everything.  We saw a number of bison along the side of the road and took a couple of snapshots.  There was evidence that there had been a fairly significant tent caterpillar infestation earlier in the summer as many of the aspens trees were stripped partly bare.  We stopped at the Hayburger trail head and every nook and cranny on the interpretive sign had a cocoon spun into it.  

It was very hot, with the temperature peaking at about 30C.  We had Hank along with us, and despite his recent haircut, he doesn't handle heat very well.  When we went for a short walk Hank managed to investigate the edge of a beaver pond, only to find out that it was very deep and he was quickly swimming.  We saw a few wildflowers and some beaked hazelnut bushes along the trail.  Later we headed out of the park and did some exploring to the northeast.  

By late afternoon we made our way back to the city and crossed through the park once again.  I stopped to photograph a grove of dead birch trunks that had caught my eye on the way through earlier.  It was a relaxing day and a nice escape from everything that has been going on recently.

Plumbing Demolition

The demolition part of our drainage repairs is now pretty much done.  We just have to break away a little more concrete to make a sump.  The plumber is away for a couple of days on other projects, and we need to let things dry out a bit before they can cut in and remove the old cast iron fittings.  Everything will be replaced with new ABS plastic including two backflow vales with proper cleanouts, and a sump to collect groundwater from under the slab.  I've already bought a sump pump and I'm using it now to get rid of the ground water that is accumulating in the excavation.  Once the repairs are done that pump will be placed in the new sump and excess groundwater will be pumped away to the exterior.

BP41.0 Dominion Hotel - Wendy and James

This is another negative from a Beer Parlour Project outing last winter.  This was to Barley's Pub in the Dominion Hotel, in Carstairs, Alberta.  This was our outing number BP41.0.  This is Wendy and James, some regulars to the pub.  They were there for dinner with their kids, and allowed me to take their portrait.  Chris also interviewed them and got some information for our research.

This is a scan of a 4"x5" sheet of Kodak T-Max 400.  I rated the film at 1250iso and processed in T-Max Developer, 1:4, for 8:35 minutes at 24C.  This was part of a batch of twenty sheets that I ran on June 20th.

I took this portrait on February 28th at about 7:45 in the evening.  I used my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Nikkor 210mm lens.  The exposure was for 1 second at F8.0.

Hank's Haircut

The weather for the past six weeks or so has been very wet and rainy, most of the time.  In the Edmonton area we have received over 16 inches of rain since early June.  Hence all the flooding issues in my basement.  The normal total annual precipitation for Edmonton, including rain and melted snow, is typically about 20 inches.

On the few days that it has not been raining, it has been smoking hot, with temperatures approaching 30C.  With all the moisture laying around it is grossly humid and pretty unbearable.  The mosquito hatch has been excessive and it is just about unbearable to be outside in the evenings.  These unstable conditions have also spawned some severe thunderstorms and yet more rain.  A couple of tornadoes touched down out by Rocky Mountain House last weekend and did significant damage.  There has been some severe hail as well.

This is turning out to be a really shitty summer, just consumed by dealing with all this mess.

Margarit felt sorry for Hank as he has been getting very little attention through all of this.  And he has been suffering with heat on the days that it hasn't been raining.  She decided to give him the first haircut of his life.  Up until now he has looked like a mop with stumpy little legs.  As of a couple of days ago he is clipped and looks totally different.  With all of that coarse guard hair cut away, he is now very soft and cuddly.

Update

We are now about four weeks since the flood started in our basement and the ordeal continues.  Edmonton received about 10 inches of rain in June, and so far in July, around 5 inches more.  We have a lot less ground water coming into the basement now, but everything is still pretty wet and saturated.  We have initiated an insurance claim for the damage, and the insurance contractor has stripped the wet carpet out of the rumpus room.

I tore out all the walls around our laundry room and part of the bathroom.  There is significant water damage inside the wall.  I brought in a plumber and they jack hammered out part of the floor in what was once our bathroom and laundry room.  We need to rebuild the main drain stack so we don't have these water backup issues in the future.  The old cast iron fittings are badly deteriorated.  

Of course the day after they started, we got more heavy rain.   Another half inch overnight.  So now the excavation is flooded and everything is a total mess.  So far the water is contained in the hole under the floor, and not flowing on top of the floor slab as it was in the past.  

I'm not sure what the next steps are as the plumber is booked on other jobs for a few days, and we have yet more rain in the forecast....  

BP41.0 Dominion Hotel Carstairs

I took this photograph of the Dominion Hotel in Carstairs, Alberta, immediately before our visit to Barley's Pub for Beer Parlour Project outing number BP41.0.

This is a scan of a 4"x5"sheet of Ilford HP5+ film.  I rated the film at 320 iso and gave it normal development in 510Pyro, 1:100, for 7:45 minutes at 24C.  This is part of a batch of 20 sheets that I developed on May 29th.

I took this photograph with my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Fujinon 125mm lens, on February 28th 2026, at about 2:30 in the afternoon.  The exposure was for 1/30 second at F22.0.