Fifteen Years...!

Today is my 15th Wedding Anniversary.  Margarit and I met in 1999, moved in together in 2000, and got married in 2001.  Our first daughter Hailey came along in the fall of 2002, and then two more daughters in 2005 and 2008.  It has been a wonderful 15 years.  To celebrate I am going to play hockey tonight... that's just the kind of girl she is...!!

We will go out together for an anniversary dinner in a couple of days when it better fits our schedule.

Nordegg

Back on April 30th the girls and I decided to take a day trip out to Nordegg.  We are interested in purchasing a piece of recreational property out there and wanted to check it out.  Property in the National Parks of Banff and Jasper is restrictive and unaffordable.  Canmore is too far away, and too expensive.  But we can drive to Nordegg, and be in the front ranges of the Rockies, in under three hours.  We took a look around the subdivision and made some notes on a couple of the properties that we are interested in.  Before heading back to the city we decided to head over to the historic site at the nearby Brazeau Collieries.

During the summer months the historic site is explored by guided tour.  At this time of year there was no one around so we just wandered in and respectfully checked it out.  I've been up here photographing a number of times, but the girls had never seen it.  We followed the old rail line in to the base of the mine site, and then wandered in.  The date spikes in the railway ties were from 1929, and the mine operated until the 1950's.  I took a couple of shots with my view camera, and a bunch of snapshots with my digital.  By late afternoon we wandered back out to the truck, and made the drive back home.  We stopped for pizza in Rocky Mountain House and made it back home by evening.  

We gave some serious consideration to the idea of investing in some land in Nordegg.  We eventually ended up making an offer on one of the lots, which was recently accepted.  We are now committed to building a cottage on the lot within three years.  It seems as though we will be spending a lot more time out here in the months and years to come...

Renegades - Summer Hockey - Game 7

The Renegades played last Thursday, on June 16th, against a team called the Shootin' Blanks.  Our regular goalie was still recovering from a minor knee injury sustained about a week and a half prior, so we had a backup playing for us.  Mark is a pretty respectable goalie and did a decent job stepping in for us.  The Shootin' Blanks quickly scored 4 unanswered goals and we found ourselves down by a 4-0 score relatively early in the game.  But then something changed... we bore down, dug in, and started to not only play better, but also to defend our end of the rink.  The first goal we scored, with less than 5 minutes remaining in the first period, not only broke the shutout, but also seemed to break the ice.  We went on to score five more unanswered goals and found ourselves leading by a score of 6-4 late in the second.  The Shootin' Blanks got one back later in the second to make it close.  We came back late in the third to add an insurance marker and found ourselves ahead by a 7-5 score, with less than 6 minutes remaining.  

Late in the game, one of my defenseman caught his skate in a rut in the ice as he was fighting for possession of the puck against one of the opposing players.  It was a clean and innocent play but his body got spun around and his foot didn't follow him.  He went down in agony, with his skate pointing off at a stomach churning angle.  The game was stopped and we had to call in an ambulance.  It took a while for them to arrive.  Steve was taken to the Royal Alexandra hospital where he eventually had his dislocated ankle re positioned, and underwent surgery for a broken fibula.  He is home and resting now, but will not be able to get back on skates for at least 4 to 6 months.  We wish him all the best.

We were awarded the win given the fact that we were leading by two goals when the game was called.  Not exactly the way that we hoped to win and we would much rather have lost and not had our player sustain the injury.  In any event this puts us, at least temporarily, into first place in our division with a record of 5 wins and 2 losses.  We have two games coming up this week so we will see if we can hold that position.

Day Trip with Jeff

I remain way behind in editing my photos and putting together blog posts from all my activities this spring.  Way back on April 23rd I went out for a day trip with my friend Jeff.  I am just now getting around to putting this post together.

It was a cool, overcast and rather blustery day.  Jeff and I met at the north gate of Elk Island Park and headed off to the north.  We didn't expect to be able to do a lot outside due to the poor weather, but were hopeful we could find some old buildings that would allow us to work some interiors.

Our first stop was at the old railway trestle near Waskatenau.  This is by no means a really large bridge, at least not compared to some others around the province.  All the same we stopped and explored for a bit before continuing on our way.  

We stopped again a short distance down the road where the same rail line came to an end.  There was an old abandoned flat deck rail car sitting at the end of the line.  We noticed that the date spikes in the railway ties were dated 1944 and 1946.  We marvelled that this was over seventy years ago, at the end of the Second World War.  

After finishing up at the rail line we continued on for quite some distance, hoping to find some other photographic subjects.  We eventually came to an old abandoned house and spent quite a bit of time photographing the interior.  I didn't really take any photographs here with my digital camera, but did get a couple of good images with my 4x5 view camera on black and white film.  Some of those will be scanned and shared in future blog posts.

By mid afternoon we decided to call it a day.  Jeff headed back to his place in St. Albert and I made my way back in the general direction of home.  I noticed that north of the town of Lamont there was the smell of wood smoke in the air.  I had heard in the news that there had been a grass/brush fire in the area that for a time was out of control.  I drove the backroads for a while and eventually came upon the burned areas.  The fire was still smouldering in places.

This was nothing compared to the big fire, called The Beast, that some weeks later would engulf the City of Fort McMurray forcing the evacuation of nearly 100,000 people.  That fire destroyed nearly 2500 structures and is still burning to this day.  It is contained, but not fully under control and has burnt around three quarters of a million hectares, starting south of Fort McMurray, through some of the oil sands sites, and on into Saskatchewan.  It was extremely dry throughout the prairies this spring and there were quite a number of forest fires at one time.  On this particular day though is was overcast and threatening, we didn't really get any rain to speak of.  But by early May the rains came, and we have received quite a bit since then.  The timing was just about perfect for the farmers so hopefully they have a good year that perhaps can make up a little for the poor economic conditions we are currently experiencing due to low oil prices.

Summer Hockey Update

The Renegades are doing really well so far this summer.  We are now six games into our 15 game regular season, and will continue playing until the third week of July.  At that point the playoffs will get underway.  We went through the three game pre-season undefeated.  Then we started out the regular season with three more wins.  We lost our fourth game, against a team called the Mighty Peking Ducks, and to make matters worse our goaltender was injured in the game.  While I was away in Pincher Creek the guys managed another win, with a short bench, over a team called the Crestwood Rockets.  Then, earlier this week we played a game against the Raccoons.  This team was the best opponent that we have faced so far this summer.  We played a good first and third period, but didn't do very well in the middle frame.  We ended up losing the game by a 7-2 score.  We had a backup goaltender playing in place of our injured regular goalie.  That wasn't really the problem as Mark played a really solid game and kept us in it.  This loss left us with a regular season record of 4 wins and 2 losses so far.  This is good for a tie for second place against the Raccoons.  We play again tomorrow night, so hopefully we can turn things around and stay near the top of our division.  We have two more games next week and I understand that our goalie is recovered and will be back to play in goal for us.  It seems that this season the league did a pretty good job of setting up our division and we seem to be well matched with our opponents.  For the most part the games have been pretty close.

Acros 100 in Rodinal - Vancouver Island

The second half of the batch that I processed back in April was six images taken on the recent trip out to Vancouver Island.  These were all taken at Morning Beach, on Denman Island.

Acros 100 in Rodinal - Utah Trip

On my birthday, back in mid-April, I processed a batch of Fuji Neopan Acros 4" x 5" sheet film in Rodinal developer.  I have refined a development time that yields slightly more than normal contrast.  I call this N+Half.  I use Rodinal developer, diluted 1:50, and process for 11:00 minutes, at 24C.  This combination has become one of my favorites and I tend to use it when I go on a trip and shoot in a new location.  I took this film with me to Utah last fall, and also out to Vancouver Island this spring.  These images are from that fall trip to Utah.  All of these negatives were shot in the eastern uplands of Zion National Park.  During the three times that I have travelled to Utah, I have tended to avoid the national parks, as they are just too busy.  The eastern uplands of Zion not quite so much so, and I have ventured there a couple of times now.

Procession West - Gallery Updates

The Procession West exhibition recently wrapped up a show at the art gallery in Armstrong, British Columbia.  The spinoff show, AG2, also just finished an exhibition at the Lebel Mansion Gallery in Pincher Creek, Alberta.  Last week I headed down to Pincher Creek to pick up the prints from that show.  My friend Court came along with me, as he did when I dropped off the prints in advance of this show.  My collaborator Rob Michiel was also able to meet us down in the Crowsnest Pass.  We spent a couple of days photographing in the area before I picked up the crated prints from the gallery and brought them back home to Edmonton.  My friends Chris and Connie from the "Off the Beaten Path" website were also able to join us for a day.  More to follow on this trip in a future blog post.

The current round of exhibitions for this show are now in the books.  The show that was supposed to take place in Summerland, British Columbia later this summer has been postponed.  This is due to some sort of conflict over the lease of the gallery space.  We are told that we will be re-scheduled at some point in 2017.  In the mean time we just received an acceptance from the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery for a show to be at some point in the second quarter of 2017.  A little bit of a respite for us as we regroup after a flurry of shows this spring.  But it appears that interest remains high and we will be kept busy transferring our show from gallery to gallery for some time to come.

Southeast Day Trip

Wow... Am I behind on my blog posts...!!  On April 16th, a day in advance of my 53rd birthday, I headed out for a solo day trip.  It was not that I really had any plans to be alone... just that no one was able to join me on this day, for various reasons.  I headed out to the southeast of the city.  My first stop was at the old Kingman grain elevator, relocated to a private yard some distance from its original location.  As I continued on I came across an abandoned old house down in Camrose County.  I call this one the Dormer House for obvious reasons.  There are two dormers on three of the four sides of this old residence.  Not quite sure why the fourth side lost out.  Inside, there is pretty much nothing left of the place.  The skeleton of an old sofa and the carcass of a dead coyote were all that I found.  

I continued on further south and eventually came upon the badlands of the Battle River.  These badlands more or less begin at the intersection of Camrose, Stettler, Flagstaff and Paintearth Counties and continue on to the southeast along the Battle River Valley.  On this day I saw a lot of deer, and a number of cool old houses.  One of these was spectacular, but on private land, posted no trespassing.  I will need to try and get permission to return to this one on another day.  Eventually I found an old scrap heap out in a field beside a dugout.  This pile contained the remnants of some old farm machinery, as well as the carcasses of two old cars.  Not quite sure what these are as the only nameplate that I could find was the rather vague one in my photo... Special Deluxe.  Nearby I found an old windmill beside a granary that was rather photogenic, particularly in light of the cloudy spring sky.  Finally I made my way over to a large catholic church that I had previously found out about.  After that it was a rather uneventful drive back home to the city with one brief stop to admire a large flock of snow geese resting on a small dugout.