Holiday Day Trips

While I was off from work over the Christmas break I was able to twice get out for a short afternoon drive.  At this time of the year, just a few days after the winter solstice, there is "evening" light all day long...  But, the day is pretty short...!  The sun really doesn't get up high enough to start lighting and warming things up until around 10:00 in the morning and by 3:30 in the afternoon it is beginning to fade.

On New Years Eve I took a drive out west of the city in the afternoon.  I wanted to check out an old church near Manly.  I had seen a photograph of this church before, taken in 1975, by local photographer Orest Semchishen.  Orest used to live a few blocks away from me, and if he's still alive, would be over 80 years old now.  About 10 years ago I bought a bunch of his darkroom equipment from him as, at the time, he was selling his house and moving into a senior's residence.  In 1976 he published a book called Byzantine Churches of Alberta, and it included an image of St. George's Church at Manly Corner.  I had little trouble finding the place and surprisingly it has not changed much in the 40 years since Orest photographed it.  Some new siding and a sign, but otherwise the building looks pretty much the same as it did four decades ago.

Then the next day, on January 1st, I headed out again.  This time I headed out to the east of the city.  I had no particular destination in mind.  I was just driving back roads, hoping to find something cool to photograph, in the limited time that I had.  I was fortunate to stumble upon this really fascinating stone house, and I spent an hour or more here taking some digital snapshots and photographing it with my view camera.  I had the luxury of beautiful clear winter light and fairly mild temperatures, with only a mild breeze.  After finishing up here I drove around for a little longer before eventually making my way back into the city.  I stopped and took snapshots in a couple other locations but nothing else was worthy of dragging out the big camera.  I made it back home by late afternoon, in time to get together with some friends that were coming over for a holiday visit that evening...