Last weekend I attempted to make a trip down to the remote badlands of Southern Alberta. I met up with my friend Rob Michiel, who had travelled out from his home in Vernon, BC. Rob and I have been friends for about a decade now and have very similar interests photographically. He and I put together the Procession West exhibition, which has been touring galleries in Western Canada for about three years now.
I left work a couple hours early on Friday September 30th and headed down to the shop in East Coulee. Rob met up with me there. The weather forecast was not great for the weekend and in fact it rained a lot that evening and overnight. We stayed in my trailer, with plans to head further south the next morning. When we got up in the morning it was heavily overcast and raining yet more. We decided it was not worthwhile to consider driving several hours further south, with the potential of not being able to get out and do any hiking. We agreed that it would be better to stay at East Coulee and explore the Red Deer River badlands instead.
I was planning on putting my trailer in my shop for the winter at the end of the weekend. So, that morning we backed it in, hooked up to power, and used that as our base for the weekend. I had a couple of extra days booked off work so we had ample opportunity to get outdoors and were hopeful that the weather would improve.
That first day, Saturday October 1st, it was still raining, with waves of showers passing through the area from the south west. We decided to take a drive out onto the prairie to the east, as the badlands were just too wet and muddy to consider any hiking. We drove around hoping to find some old farm buildings or something, but eventually had to settle on a corn field. In the soft overcast light the textures of the cornstalks would hopefully yield some interesting detail shots.
The next morning dawned clear and sunny and we set out with the cameras after breakfast. Everything was still pretty wet and muddy from all the rain, but we set out nonetheless. Our first stop was a few miles up the road at the Hoodoos Recreation Area. Despite the late time of the season there were still quite a few tourists around. We set up and photographed some of the badlands a short distance away from the Hoodoo viewing platforms. The formations were being nicely modelled by the clear morning light. We spent the better part of the day here before eventually heading further up the valley. We checked out the badlands at the Morrin Bridge and then eventually made our way back south to Horse Thief Canyon. Although it was clear, there wasn't a lot of wind, and the temperature was pretty cool. The badlands just weren't drying off all that much and we had to be really careful about where we walked. We spent the rest of the afternoon shooting in Horse Thief before heading back to the trailer in the evening.
The next day was Monday and Rob needed to be on his way, so he hit the road after breakfast. I still had a couple of days off work so I stuck it out on my own. I ended up shooting down in the Cottonwoods along Willow Creek for the better part of the day. In the late afternoon I took a drive around some backroads, just exploring and getting more familiar with the area. That evening I met up with my business partner Frank and his wife Chris and we had a nice visit and dinner together.
The next morning was basically a chore day for me. This was Tuesday October 4th and I needed to be back home that evening, and back in the office the next day. Frank gave me a hand to manoeuvre the trailer over into the back corner of the shop for winter storage. I drained the water and sewer tanks, disconnected the batteries, and unloaded all the supplies. By early afternoon everything was packed away for the season and I hit the road for home, arriving back in Edmonton just after supper time.
Now it is Thanksgiving, and I have another long weekend. We woke up this morning to snow on the ground and more coming down. It seems way too early for this so hopefully it disappears again for a while. With the poor weather I retreated down to the darkroom to work on processing some film and scanning some negatives. I have a lot of stuff from the recent trip to Mt. Assiniboine that I am anxioius to see, and a backlog of a lot of older stuff as well. I dug through my notes today and discovered that I still have over 40 sheets of film, exposed in 2014, that requires processing. As I worked on a few batches of negatives this weekend I threw in a couple sheets from the recent trip down to East Coulee. These were both taken on Fuji Neopan Acros 100, exposed at 80 iso and processed in Rodinal 1:50. The first is an over view of Horse Thief Canyon taken on the afternoon of October 2nd, with a 400mm lens and a #25 Red Filter. The second was taken a couple hours later and is a detail of some sand patterns in Horse Thief Canyon. This one was taken with a 150mm lens and no filter. In the coming days I will download a few snap shots from this trip and post them as well. After that I will return to more of the images from Mt. Assiniboine.
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