Sunday Day Trip

I felt rather crappy all weekend as I had been stricken with a bad cold.  I went to my hockey game on Saturday night, hoping that a hard skate would sweat it out of me.  We won the game, but I didn't feel much better.  The next morning I decided to head out with my camera.  This time around I took out my old Sinar F1 4x5 view camera, for the first time in quite a while.  I have been shooting almost exclusively with my Ebony since I bought it in the fall of 2012.  It is much more compact and lighter to carry when hiking.  But, the Sinar is a more precise technical camera with a longer bellows draw.  This allows me to use a different selection of lens, mostly longer focal lengths.  Since I knew it would be just a day trip that did not involve any amount of hiking, I chose to take out the old Sinar.  Hailey decided to come along with me for the day.  We got a late start because I had slept in.  So we made a lunch stop and then hit the road.  It was mid afternoon before we got up into the area of Two Hills and Smoky Lake.  

We stopped and checked out an old yard that I had driven past previously.  I thought that these buildings looked rather barrack like and thought it might have been an old harvest camp or even a Hutterite colony.  But, on closer inspection I found that it was just a regular old farm yard with a number of similar sized building arranged in a somewhat regular pattern.

We continued on and eventually found an interesting old house in a stubble field.  This was the first opportunity for the big camera to come out.  It didn't take me long to gain some familiarity and comfort with this camera.  It was like getting back together with an old friend.  While we were shooting here a flock of Sand Hill Cranes clattered over, riding the thermals in a generally southward direction.

After finishing up here we back tracked to another abandoned farm yard that we had passed just up the road.  This one had an old abandoned easy chair sitting amongst the rubble of an old building.  We pulled off the highway and set up the camera to shoot over the fence.  While we were there a truck zipped by on the highway, screeched to a halt, and backed up to where we were set up.  I'm pretty used to my big camera drawing a lot of attention and I was prepared for the usual questions.  We were set up outside of the property so I knew that trespassing would not be an issue.  I was expecting to here... "what are you surveying"... "what is that thing"...  "can you still buy film for that"... all the usual questions.  Instead I was asked... "you know there's a bear over there?"  I looked up and saw a black bear across the field about 100 yards away.  I replied... "I do now, thanks very much for the warning".   I managed to get one snap shot of the bear with my digital camera before it wandered off into the bush.  That was the last we saw of him, though we kept our eyes open the rest of the time we were here shooting.  After finishing up this shot we packed up and headed for home.