Frogs...

Almost two weeks ago I took the girls out for a day trip to Elk Island National Park.  I was still reeling with dizzy spells and a fever related to the virus I was fighting.  But, we needed to get away, and since the long weekend camping trip didn't materialize, this was the next best thing.  I took my Hasselblad along and took a few photographs.  The four of us went for a walk along one of the cutlines in the northern part of the park.  As the trail dipped down into a low area, near a slough, we noticed all these little baby wood frogs hopping about all over the place.  The girls just had a blast catching them, letting them go, and then catching the next one.  I tried to convince Hailey to kiss one of them... just to see if it would turn into a prince.  She wanted to do it, then chickened out, then wanted to do it, but ultimately couldn't bring herself to do it.  But it was a really fun afternoon with the three of them.

Back to the Rink - Summer Hockey Game 7

After missing the last three hockey games with the Renegades, two due to illness and one due to the family weekend in Jasper, it sure was good to get back to the rink last night.  I was more than a little rusty after having been away so long but I don't think I caused too many problems.  As has been the norm this summer, we did not have a full bench.  We played with six forwards, four defense and a goaltender.  The game was against the division leading Gators, who showed up with pretty much a full bench.  We jumped out to an early lead, then fell behind in the second period, before eventually mounting a comeback in the third period.  We ended up winning the game by a score of 10-6.

Catching Up

Wow... life has been really busy lately.  Lots of little tidbits to update.  The girls have continued with their weekly riding lessons and are really enjoying being able to get outside with the horses.  I need to download a few snapshots from my digital camera and share them.  

We went for our annual family trip to Jasper last weekend and stayed in the cabins at Alpine Village.  Both of my brothers and their families, as well as my parents, were out for the weekend.  It was a pretty laid back weekend with everyone just relaxing and visiting.  The girls had a blast hanging out with their cousins.  I managed to get out for a morning walk along the Athabasca River with my Hasselblad and did a little photography.  We also went on a trail ride with Jasper Stables, through the forest and up onto the bench overlooking the townsite and the Athabasca valley.  Once again, need to download some snapshots and share them.

I have missed the last three hockey games with the Renegades.  First because I was sick, and then because we were away for an extra day for the Jasper trip.  The team was beaten badly, both times by a score of 9-3.  First by Papa Johns Pizza and then by the Raccoons.  Last Friday we played the Raccoons again, but this time, despite a short bench and a backup goalie, the guys managed a 10-7 victory.  I look forward to getting back on the ice with the team tomorrow night.

I've also been trying to catch up on processing my significant backlog of film.  This past week or so I processed several batches of Fuji Neopan Acros 4x5.  This is one of the standard films that I will be continuing to work with and I just need to finalize my preferred developer.  This older stuff was all exposed for processing in Kodak D-76 Developer, so that's what I had to stick with.  I haven't had time to scan all the good shots yet, but here are a few that all date back to 2010 and the first half of 2011.

The annual Dad and Kids camping weekend is coming up this week.  So between hockey games, dance classes and riding lessons, we are trying to find time to pack up the trailer.  Margarit is looking forward to having the weekend to herself so that she can continue with her home renovation project.  She is repainting the walls in our living room, dining room, kitchen and hallway.  She also removed a short section of wall between the kitchen and dining room, and an ugly old shelf unit at our front entrance.  Once the painting is all done, then some of the ceilings will be re-stippled, after which the old flooring... a combination of carpet and lino, will be replaced with new laminate, followed by new baseboards.  A very ambitious project and she is quite excited about it.  I have helped her out with a few little odds and ends, but for the most part she is doing this all on her own.  So the girls and I will be away camping, down to the ranch in the badlands.  A little trail riding, some fishing, hopefully a little photography too.  The forecast is not great, but hopefully that changes before the weekend.  At this point we are expecting around four or five dads and about a dozen kids.

Open Photo 2012

I received a letter in the mail today from Visual Arts Alberta in response to my submission to their 2012 Alberta-wide Open Photo Call.  The exhibition is scheduled to run from late September in the lower gallery of the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Calgary, and then in October at the Kaasa Gallery in the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton.  Once the selected work is hung for the show in Calgary, the special guest juror will select the overall winner from the work presented plus the other award winners and honourable mentions.

"Congratulations!  On behalf of Visual Arts Alberta I would like to thank you for submitting your work for consideration in the 2012 Alberta-wide Open Photo/Open Digital Call for Submissions.  I am pleased to advise you that you have been selected by the jury for the Open Photo/Open Digital exhibition...

The quality of work submitted and the extremely positive response, combined with the fact that Alberta photographers and digital artists are an often overlooked and under-appreciated group of artists, means that this has definitely become an annual event for Visual Arts Alberta.  70 artists submitted a total of over 300 images to this call.  33 images were selected by 27 artists to be shown in the exhibition.  I am pleased to advise you that the jury has selected the following image from your submission...   ANNA'S SWING"

Go Figure...  the landscape photographer gets accepted for a portrait!!!

Snapshots - Spring Photo Weekend

I've been sick all week with the flu.  My middle daughter Annelise came down with tonsillitis and a touch of pneumonia... so we've cancelled our long weekend plans.  This is now two years in a row that we have not been able to go camping on the May Long weekend and it is more than a little depressing.  But I did find time to finally download all the snapshots from the Spring Photo Weekend.

Palcoprep Update

It's been quite some time since I reported any of the goings on at Palcoprep.  I don't get down to Drumheller very often during the winter, and haven't been down since last November.  Although I maintain some involvement behind the scenes, I am not active in the day to day operation of the company.  We have remained relatively busy over the last few months, and the future looks bright.  Late last summer we were contracted to build a retractable cover for a bone bed in Dinosaur Provincial Park.  This cover was sculpted and painted to look like the badlands, and it kept the site less conspicuous, while allowing park staff to easily open it when hosting a tour.  We were also contracted to construct a parade float for Teck Coal in Sparwood.  This float outlined the formation of coal, and included a number of dinosaurs, other prehistoric creatures, right up to more modern stuff.  Some of the components for this float, including the blue acrylic wave, the framework for the storage cover, and the support frame for the text panels, were fabricated in my shop here in Edmonton.  We are presently sculpting three life size animals to be put on display at the Icefields Center in Jasper National Park.  This includes a Golden Eagle, a Grizzly Bear with Cub, and  Mountain Goat.  The sculptures will be installed later in the early summer when the site is snow free.  We have also developed another landscaping panel, this one with a Bighorn Sheep.  I've included a few photos of some of these projects...

Yet More Testing

I bought a couple of boxes of new film... at least new to me.  This stuff is Adox CHS Art 50, and is supposed to be similar to the old Afga emulsions.   Although, to the best of my knowledge Agfa never offered an ISO 50 version.  I did some exposures with a step tablet and processed the film for varying times in Rodinal developer, diluted 1:50.  I now need to use my densitometer to read the film densities and the plot the results onto some graphs.  The results will help me to fine tune exposure and development.  This will all become easier now as I recently purchased a software program that plots the graphs.  In the past I always plotted these graphs by hand, which was a very time consuming process to say the least.  While I had the developer mixed up I also ran through a small batch of Efke PL25M, developed N+1.  Although I very much like this film, I am not a big fan of the N+1 development.  I find that for most images the contrast increase is too much.

  

Summer Hockey - Game Three

The Renegades played game three of the Summer Season last Thursday.  The game was at Londonderry Arena, against the Chiefs.  This is not the same team that we have played regularly for the last few years.  Although a couple of their original players are still on the roster, they are loaded up with a whole bunch of young, fast players.  Despite the fact that our bench was relatively full, we were beaten badly, going down by the lopsided score of 9-3.  This summer is definitely a challenge as so far most of the teams in the lowest division play at a considerably higher skill level than we do....

Spring Photo Weekend Polaroids

I managed to find a little time to pull the Polaroids that I shot on the Spring Photo Weekend.  Other than that, I'm still way behind on film processing and printing.  Still chipping away at film that I shot as far back as 2009.  Slowly but surely I get caught up on this old stuff, but then of course there is all the new film that I continue to shoot as well.  A never ending process....  I just need to retire from work so that I can really find the time that I need.

Summer Hockey - Game Two

The Renegades played Game Two of the summer season last night, at KofC Arena, verses the Gators.  They came at us with a full bench of 16 players... many of them much faster and much younger than our guys.  We kept things close in the first period, but started to run out of gas in the second.  It didn't help any that we only had 11 skaters and our goaltender show up for the game.  Although the tempo of the game was much closer than the score suggested, we went down to defeat by a 9-4 score.  Not much time to feel sorry for ourselves as we play again on Thursday night.  We need to re-group and see if we can put together a more complete roster and a stronger effort.

Busy Times

Life sure has been busy the last little while.  About a week ago I processed another batch of Acros film.  This is my ongoing testing with different developers.  This time around I was processing in Kodak X-Tol developer.  Just one more batch to do in D-76 and then I can compare results and draw some conclusions.  This current batch of test film included a few other images which I've finally found time to scan and post.

The girls started riding at a new stable this month.  It is at more of a beginner level stable with riders closer to their own age, and the riding is all outdoors.  The girls like it a lot and look forward to getting more involved.  It was raining heavily during their first lesson two weeks ago, so they were restricted to some indoor instruction.  Last week they were able to ride outside for the first time this year.  Margarit had to take them to that lesson as it was the same night as the Renegades first hockey game of the summer season.

Last weekend myself and five other members of the Monochrome Guild headed out for our annual Spring Photography Weekend.  This time we went down to Kananaskis and Banff, and stayed in Harvie Heights.  I took one of my few days off from work so that we could leave on Friday morning.  It was a nice day, breezy and not to warm, but pleasant.  We did some shooting in the Bow Valley and at Vermilion Lakes.  When we got up on Saturday it was raining quite heavily and turning to snow.  As we drove away from our hotel and headed up towards the Smith Dorrien Trail, the rain quickly turned to snow, and lots of it.  A photographers delight!!  Lots of fresh snow and dark brooding clouds.  We spent the entire day shooting, and by afternoon the skies began to break and it warmed up.  Sunday dawned clear and sunny.  We checked out and headed home on a round about route through Banff, up the Icefields Parkway to Saskatchewan Crossing, and then east on the Thompson Highway and eventually home.  We stopped to shoot a couple of times at Sawback, at Crowfoot Glacier, at Whirlpool Point, and Windy Point.  

Since I returned home, it still remains very busy.  I haven't found time to download and post any of the digital snapshots from the weekend, but will get to that in the coming days.  I did process the five sheets of Polaroid film that I shot on the weekend, but once again, no time to scan and post them.  Tonight it is off to another hockey game.  Wednesday the girls have dance class.  On Thursday I play hockey again, while Margarit takes the girls riding again.  Maybe by the weekend things will settle down a little and I can take time to breath.

Oh, almost forgot... we were busy on Monday evening too.  Margarit and I were invited to attend the Crossroads Camera Club year end banquet as guests.  I used to be a member of this group about ten years ago.  One by one as the members went fully digital and dropped film, I found myself more and more of an outsider.  Eventually this prompted me to resign from the group and start the Monochrome Guild.  I was a judge at one of the club meetings during the year and this was the reason for the invitation.  It was nice to get together with old friends and see some great photographs.