Dad and Daughter Weekend II

A couple of weekends ago my eldest daughter and I went out camping together.  Not to be outdone, my middle daughter Anna decided that she needed to go camping with her Dad too.  This weekend we set out together, just the two of us.  The weather was less than ideal... it was cool, windy, cloudy and sprinkling rain.  The daytime highs only got up to around +13C.  We left the city on Saturday afternoon and made our way to Elk Island National Park.  The wind was very brisk all day but in the evening it died down briefly, and the sun even broke out for a bit, while we were out for a walk.  The wind picked up again overnight and by morning the foam and froth blown up on the beach of Astotin Lake was obvious evidence of the poor conditions.  We went on a guided nature walk on Sunday morning, after sleeping in and having a relaxing breakfast together.  In the afternoon we headed over to the Ukrainian Village and checked out all the cool old buildings.  The weather was better, and the wind had died down, but the temperature didn't really improve.  By late afternoon we made our way back home to the city.

A Couple More...

The batch of film I processed last night also included a couple of images from a spring camping trip.  The first shows [sort of?] a tipi ring in the grass near our campsite, and the second some star trails that were captured with a 30 minute exposure at around 2:00AM, back in late May.

Ammonite Cast

Last night I processed a few rolls of B&W film that I shot in Drumheller last weekend.  These are studio shots of the Ammonite cast project.  The film was washed and dry enough to scan tonight, so I chose a few of the best images to share.  This project is now complete and the casts, along with an interpretive panel, are about to be delivered to the Natural History Museum in Courtenay, British Columbia.

Palcoprep Shop Visit

I just returned from a weekend trip down to Drumheller with my girls.  It was a nice mix of camping, visiting, sightseeing, with a little business thrown in.  We checked out the school museum in East Coulee, as well as the Antique shop.  We stopped in Drumheller on Saturday afternoon and I checked out all the things that were going on at Palcoprep.  While I was photographing some of the ongoing work, the girls went and saw the World's Largest Dinosaur, and the Homestead Antique Museum.  At Palcoprep we are near completion on two casts of a large Ammonite fossil from British Columbia.  There is also an  articulated Hadrosaur that is nearing completion.  And, work continues on Paleo Panels and Paleo Plaques.  These are available for purchase on the Palcoprep website...   www.palcoprep.com   as well as at landscaping supply centers in Calgary, Red Deer and Edmonton.  On Saturday evening we headed up the valley and camped for the night along the Red Deer River at our favorite ranch.  Frank and his daughter joined us.  On Sunday the girls went for a trail ride before the rain sent us packing for home.  We stopped for lunch in Trochu and checked out the Arboretum and Gardens before heading for home in the evening.

Rob and Rob

My friend Rob has spent most of the last couple years working on a construction project down in the Cayman Islands.  From time to time he gets a break long enough to allow him to travel back home to Edmonton.  Whenever that happens we usually make time to get out on a day trip and do some shooting.  This time around a full blown day trip didn't fit in to our schedules, but we found time to get out for an evening of photography.  We travelled south of Edmonton to an old railway siding and photographed an abandoned Snow Plow and some really old railbed ditching equipment.  We both spent the evening finding interesting compositions and shooting black and white film with our 4x5 cameras.  I plunked off a few color shots to share.  When I get time to process my negatives I will post some of the "real" shots.

Contest

Just entered three of my images in "The Unexpected Canadian Badlands Photo Contest".  The grand prize is a Motorhome rental, including gas, groceries, park passes and some camera gear.  We have the 5th Wheel, and head out almost every weekend, so the prize is not the motivating factor.  But the challenge of a competition was too much to pass up.  The contest closes this week, so we'll see what happens.  

Dad and Daughter Weekend

My eldest daughter Hailey [nearly 8 years old] and I spent this past weekend together.  We left Mom and two younger sisters at home while we went off exploring.  We didn't get a particularly early start on Saturday, and ended up running a bunch of errands before we eventually got out of the city.  But, we took the trailer along so that we could make a weekend of it.  We ended up travelling along Highway 45 to the east of Edmonton and explored some old towns.  We eventually found ourselves in Beauvallon, which we had explored briefly on a previous day trip last summer.  We set up camp on one of the side roads in town and proceeded to explore the townsite.  We found a number of interesting things.  An old stone building that was once an auto service shop.  And, a really cool old playground that fit right in to my "playground ghosts" photo series.  We lived on pizza and hot dogs and snacks while we spent our time poking around.  We met "Doug" an interesting gentleman who had moved there from the Okanagan with his family in the early 1990's.  Doug was a fellow artist who painted many of the things that were of interest to me photographically.  He was happy to let us wander about photographing some of the old junk on his property.  Doug told us about an old schoolhouse that had been moved to a site northwest of town and converted to a dance hall back in the 1940's.  Of course we had to check that out on our way back home.  We also made a brief stop at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village, near Elk Island Park, on our way back home on Sunday evening.   We arrived late, so we were admitted to the Village free of charge, 45 minutes before closing.  It was interesting to see all of the costumed interpreters quitting for the day at 5:00PM.  I've included a number of images from our weekend together, including three in my "Playground Ghost" series that I shot on large format film with my 4x5 camera. These were taken with Polaroid 55 film, which I processed when we returned home on Sunday evening.  I also included a shot of the prairie sunflowers that are now in full bloom in our backyard in the city. 

More New Negs

I processed another batch of Efke PL25M negatives on Wednesday.  These are now washed and dried and there are several good ones.  I've scanned a few of my favorites for all to enjoy.  This includes a couple more in my "Playground Ghosts" series, three from long weekend trips out into southeastern Alberta, and a couple from a spring trip to the mountains with the Monochrome Guild.

Last night Margarit and I attended the opening of Open Photo 2010 at the Jubilee Auditorium.  It was very well attended, with great catering and an open bar.  There were some wonderful photographs on display, but some that I felt weren't up to par.  It was interesting to bump into a number of fellow photographers and friends, but for the most part I didn't know most of the other participants.  I guess that's what happens when technology takes over and divides those working with traditional materials [like myself] from those who grasp on to the new technology.  I can't help but feel like technology has changed things for the worse.  It seems to me that a lot of the skill involved in capturing a great image is now gone.  Today's cameras focus themselves and make decisions on behalf of the "artist" that the artist is not even aware of.  Aside from the capital cost of equipment and software, the cost of actual image capture has been drastically reduced.  It seems to me that many of today's "artists" simply wander about with their finger depressing the shutter button and shoot for shear volume.  Even a monkey will end up with a few good images culled from the thousands that can now be economically shot in an afternoon.  I relish the challenge of being in the right place at the right time, finding the best composition, and then using my skills to record the image on film.  I don't have the luxury of taking that file into my computer and using modern software to "salvage" an image from what the camera was able to record.  Rather I have to utilize a negative composed and recorded by the skill of the photographer, and go into my darkroom to nuture the best possible print that I can from the original piece of film.  Times they are a changing!!

New Images

A couple of days ago I processed a batch of Efke PL25 4" x 5" sheet film.  It is manufactured in Europe...  Croatia, I believe.  Surprisingly it is still available, and very economical.  I process it in highly diluted Rodinal developer and it yields sharp edge definition, and a smoothness of tone that I find very unique.  It has become a favorite of mine.  This is a wonderful fine grained black and white film that is very slow.  I rate it at ISO 10.  It is so slow that with moderate filtration and small aperatures, exposure times are measured in seconds or even minutes, even in broad daylight.  It allows for long exposure times that record a scene as our eye simply can not see it... with a blur of movement.  A few nice negatives in this batch.  The first shows a blur of motion on the Red Deer River during my camping trip there last weekend.  Two more are images for my "Playground Ghosts" series.  The final image is a collapsed old barn, taken earlier this spring.

Western Giant

Palcoprep is involved in an interesting project...  We are preparing a mold of the second largest ammonite ever discovered in Canada.  An ammonite is a spiral sea creature related to modern squid and octopus.  This 150 million year old specimen, dating back to the Jurassic period, was found in a coal mine in Sparwood, British Columbia.  It presently resides at a museum on Vancouver Island.  The actual fossil is too heavy for public display so we have been contracted to prepare a cast of the original, to be displayed in the Courtenay Museum.  See the full story, as reported by Philip Round of the Comox Valley Echo at...

www.canada.com/Western+Giant+emerge+from+museum+shadows/3368002/story.html