New Film

It never ceases to amaze me that manufacturer's continue to introduce new products to the traditional film based photographic market.  Granted, for every new product that comes a long, a number of old ones go the way of the Dodo bird.  Yet in this era of digital photography there are a few niche market suppliers that continue to support artists working with traditional materials.  Kodak continues to discontinue all sorts of things, originally black and white paper, and then several films.  Yet, they recently introduced a new color negative film, Ektar 100.  Ilford has recovered from bankruptcy and continues to support the black and white market maintaining their offering of film, paper and chemistry with only a few casualties.  Perhaps they are only new to the North American market but several European manufacturers have made new product available.  This includes Efke, Maco, Adox, and Rollei.  I recently experimented with Rollei ATP 1.1.  This is "advanced technical pan" film that is supposed to be very similar to the old Kodak Technical Pan film that was discontinued a number of years ago.  This film features extremely fine grain, and depending on the developer used, can be developed to provide continuous tone negatives for pictorial applications, or very high contrast negatives.  I chose to process my two rolls in highly dilute Rodinal, with minimal agitation.  I extended the development, and increased the processing temperature a little, thinking that I didn't give quite enough exposure to the film.  It was my goal to acheive some smooth toned pictorial images.  The resulting negatives were a little too contrasty for my liking so I need to scale back on development a little.  The first roll was taken at the Crooked Trees in Saskatchewan with my Gaeorsi 625 Panoramic Camera...

The second roll was shot with my Hasselblad, partly on day trips around Edmonton, but also at the family reunion trip to Jasper a couple weeks ago...

Summer Hockey - Game 7

In light of the complaints that they were getting about divisional placement of teams for the summer season, the Edmonton Recreational Hockey League re-aligned the divisions once again.  Division 5 was eliminated and the Renegades find ourselves in the lowest Division, number Four, with nine other teams.  The Raccoons, who throttled us twice in recent days, have been moved up to a higher division.  The Renegades played a game last night at Millwoods Arena verses the Ice Hawks.  I was unable to play as I have a very sore and swollen foot and was unable to even get it into my skate.  So the team played with somewhat of a short bench, but managed a decisive 5-0 victory.  It was nice to get back to a winning role, and even nicer to see our goaltender get the shutout.  This was small consolation for the 14 and 12 goals against in the previous two games against the Raccoons.

Triple Bypass

A few weeks ago my Brother-In-Law suffered a heart attack.  This was another in a series of them that he has had over the past few years.  This one was pretty serious, and he was admitted to hospital for a bypass operation.  On May 17th he had the surgery, a triple bypass.  The surgeons had to split his sternum and deflate his lungs in order to do the surgery, after which he was patched back together.  He has been doing well and was released from hospital this past weekend, on May 22nd.  He came to stay with us at our place for a couple of days as he needed to be monitored in the event of any complications.  All has gone well and he has since returned to his own place, although it will be a while before he returns to work.  These studio portraits were taken on May 23rd.  These events have convinced him that it is finally time for some lifestyle changes.  He has quit smoking and vows to improve his diet and get more exercise.  I intend to make a large print of one of these portraits which will hopefully serve as a reminder if he ever feels tempted to slip back into his old lifestyle.

Saskatchewan Panoramas

On the long weekend I processed a few rolls of medium format film.  This time around it was Fuji Neopan Acros.  Most of these were shot with the Gaeorsi 624 Panoramic Camera.  I've scanned and attached a few images taken a couple of weeks ago at the Crooked Trees in Saskatchewan.

May Long Weekend

I think this was the first May Long Weekend in about 20 years that I did NOT go away camping.  It was somewhat depressing!  We were so busy last week that I just didn't have time to get our trailer out of winter storage and ready to go.  And, with the recent dry windy conditions there was a province wide fire ban in place.  The forecast for the weekend was OK, but rain was forecast for Monday.  So, we stayed home.  I did manage to get out and do some shooting one evening at Clifford Lee Natural Area.  And I processed some film.  My brother-in-law was released from hospital after triple bypass surgery last week and came to stay with us for a couple of days.  I did manage to get the trailer out of storage on Monday, so that we can have it ready to go for next weekend.  Next weekend is the annual "Dad and Kids" camping weekend so we need to be ready for that one.  I can't get stuck at home again next weekend!

Summer Hockey - Game 6

The Renegades played a re-match against the Raccoons at Millwoods Arena on Wednesday night.  We didn't fare much better than the first game, this time losing by a score of 12-5.  We brought out our best spare, and he scored all five of our goals, but it just wasn't enough.  The Raccoons started the summer season in Division 5, just like us.  They were moved up to Division 4, after the fifth game, along with the Renegades, The Chiefs and Papa John's Pizza.  We are lobbying the league for another divisional move.  They don't necessarily need to move us back down, but they certainly need to move the Raccoons up.  The Raccoons roster is very different from the team they iced last year, when we were competitive against them, and now includes a group of highly skilled players and fast skaters.  The league has agreed to look into it so we hope for things to be balanced out and the hockey to become fun again.

Saskatchewan Polaroids

These images were captured last weekend with my 4x5 view camera on Polaroid 55 film.  This is always the first film that I get around to processing because it is so quick and easy.  That's not my reason for choosing it.  I really like the rather unique tonal range that it possesses.  I don't know what I'm going to do when I use up the last 50 sheets or so that I have in stock.  Polaroid discontinued the production of this film a few years ago, and it is no longer available.  I definitely going have to ration the last few sheets that I have left.

These shots are from the Crooked Trees in Saskatchewan.  The last few shots were taken back in Alberta, at Heinsburg.

Saskatchewan

For quite some time I have known of a place called "The Crooked Trees" in Saskatchewan.  I have been planning a spring trip there for the last few months.  I wanted to photograph these trees when the weather had warmed up, once the snow was gone, and before the leaves were fully out.  Last weekend I set out to find them, and my friends Jon and Rob came along.  This is a grove of aspen poplars that have a genetic defect that causes them to grow all contorted and twisted.  I knew of them from a couple of different Saskatchewan guide books that I had read, and as a result of seeing the paintings of Ken Dalgarno.  He referred to them as "The Twisted Trees of Alitcane".

We left Edmonton on Saturday morning at about 6:30AM.  We were easily out into Saskatchewan before noon.  Of course none of us remembered to bring a map.  It turns out that the trees were not at Alticane.... this may have been the result of artistic license on the part of Mr. Dalgarno.  We stopped in town and asked one of the locals... he cursed at the lack of signage and grumbled that he had lived here all his life and had never seen the F***ing things!!!  The trees were also not "15km NW of Hafford at the Redberry Lake Biosphere" as our guidebook said.  It turns out that they were further west and north than we expected.  After spending three hours driving around we finally stopped for a beer, and some directions, in Hafford.  We were given directions to the site, which should have been easy to find given the signs right along the main highway.  Of course the signs were not on the right side of the highway, and they referred to the site as "Crooked Bush".

I was surprised at the size of the site... or more accurately the lack of size of the site.  Once again, our guide book referred incorrectly to the site as 1.5 hectares.  In actual fact it is about the size of a city lot... much less than an acre.  It was very cool, but difficult to photograph.  The trees are so twisted and contorted that any composition is visually very busy and hard to create any concise order out of.  It was very interesting that only a few yards away, across a very small gravel parking area, similar aspen poplars were growing straight and normal.  Something has genetically influenced these trees.  They seem confused and intent on sprouting up out of the ground and then bending down, and then back up again, and then down....

On Saturday evening we stayed in North Battleford.  When we got up in the morning we debated whether to return to the trees, or explore elsewhere.  We all agreed that we had captured the compositions that we were looking for, and didn't want to return, until perhaps in a different season.  So we set off to the northwest, back into Alberta.  We found a couple of interesting old abandoned farm yards, and a couple of dying townsites. We spent the day driving back in the general direction of home, and photographing as we went along.

These images are all just snap shots taken with my digital point-and-shoot.  Mostly I was shooting my serious work with my 4x5 large format camera.  The camera itself is visible in one of these shots.  I also shot a few panoramic shots with my 624 medium format panoramic camera.  It will probably be a while before I get around to processing all of this film.  I did process a few sheets of Polaroid 55 that I shot with the large format.  These are currently being dried.  Once the negatives are dry I will scan and post them.

Summer Hockey - Game 5

A rather rude awakening on Monday evening....   The Renegades were moved up from Division 5 to Division 4.  We played a game against the Raccoons at Terwillegar Arena..  We had a short bench, I was nursing a sore foot, and a few of our better players were unable to make it.  The Raccoons throttled us and brought us crashing back down to earth.  The 3-0 record that we started out the season with looks a lot less impressive at 3-2.  We lost by a score of 14-2...!!!   We have a rematch against these guys on Wednesday evening so hopefully we can make a game of it and finish with at least a respectable score.  Things don't look good as a number of our full time guys will be unable to make the game.

Family Reunion

Here are some more images from the family reunion in Jasper a couple weekends ago....

Summer Hockey - Game 4

The Renegades played hockey on Wednesday evening, an early game against our old rivals, The Chiefs.  The winning streak has come to an end!  It was a hard fought game with the lead switching back and forth through the game.  We were down 6-5 and pulled our goalie with a little over a minute left.  The Chiefs scored an empty net goal to jump out to a 7-5 lead.  We managed to get one back, with only 30 seconds on the clock, but couldn't pound in another for the tie.  The game ended in defeat by a 7-6 score.

Family Reunion and Mountain Panoramas

Every spring my family heads out, usually to the mountains, for a family reunion.  The past couple of years we have been renting adjacent cabins at Alpine Village Resort in Jasper National Park.  The group includes myself, my wife and three daughters, my two brothers and their wives and kids, and my parents.  My Dad is going to be 82 years old in a couple of weeks.  He has Alzheimers and his mental condition is worsening.  We all want to get together with the whole family, at least once a year, as long as he can still do it.  While we were enjoying our family time in the mountains, I managed to wander off a couple of times to make some photographs.  There was not the time to get too serious about it, and mostly I played around with my Gaeorsi 624 Panoramic camera.  I processed three rolls of T-Max 100 when we got home.  I've attached scans of a few of the best images...

Summer Hockey - Game 3

The winning streak continues.  Last night we played "Papa Johns Pizza" at Terwillegar Recreation Center.  This was a battle of two of the three teams that were tied for first place in Division 5.  We jumped out to an early 4-1 lead and hung on for a 6-4 victory, despite being slightly outshot.  Our goaltender has been away on vacation for the last two weeks and our backup has played exceptionally well.  We play again on Wednesday.

Summer Hockey - Game 2

Summer hockey season is now underway.  The Renegades played our second game of the season last Wednesday.  We faced off against the Green Hornets, a team of really young guys of mixed skill levels.  Although the score was a little close at one point, we shut them down and managed a 10-5 victory.  We once again find ourselves at the top of our division.  It remains to be seen whether we can stay there....   There is a chance that we could get moved to a higher division.  Or, it is possible that there are some stronger teams that we have not yet played.  Summer hockey is a little more relaxed, and there are not nearly as many teams signed up as in the winter.  There are only five divisions in summer, as opposed to this past winter when there were twelve divisions.  We are starting the season in Division Five.  We play our third game tomorrow night, and our fourth on Wednesday.  After those games we will have a much better idea how things will shape up.

Short Day Trip

Last weekend my friend Rob and I went out for a very brief day trip to do a little shooting.  It was a very busy weekend with household chores, soccer practices, hockey games, etc.  I managed to squeeze in a few hours on Sunday morning to get out and do a little shooting.  I previously posted some color images from this trip.  I've now had time to process, dry and scan a few sheets of Polaroid 55 that I shot that day with my view camera.

Another Favorite Film...??

I have a lot of films that I really like...   But, I can't really say that any one of them is my favorite.  Film is like your children... you love them all, but they all have different personalities.  My friends scoff at me that I shoot too many different films and jump from one to the next.  But, I've shots thousands of images on around a dozen different films and after all these years I'm beginning to gain a good understanding of which ones are suited to what subject matter, and what lighting conditions.  Another of my favorites is Agfa APX25.  Agfa went out of business a few years ago.  There are a couple of films still on the market that are rumored to be the same emulsion, including Adox, Rollei and Efke.  I've tried them all, and although the jury is still out... and they are very close... I don't think they're quite the same.  APX25 was never made in sheet film and my fondness for it was acquired in shooting medium format roll film.  I recently purchased 50 rolls of the stuff that had been safely stored in a freezer since the 1990's.  Yet another film shooter that has gone digital and is selling off surplus inventory.  This guy made a sizable profit as I paid $10 a roll for film that I used to buy for about $3.  But, my own personal inventory is down to a handful of rolls...

Last week I processed three rolls of this film that were shot in 2010 and this spring.  I've scanned a few images and attached them...

I also shot a roll in the Gaeorsi 624 Panoramic this spring and scanned and attached those as well...