Badlands Hike

That recent batch of Bergger Panchro 4" x 5" film that I processed included two shots from a recent hike in the badlands.  After we had cleaned up from the premiere showing of Forgotten Prairie at the East Coulee School a couple weeks ago, Chris, Connie, Rueben and I went for a hike out into the badlands to try and find this old house.  I had a pretty good idea where it was, and sure enough we eventually found it.  It was down in the Red Deer River Valley bathed in beautiful clear, fall light.  I did three set ups with my big camera and exposed a number of negatives.  These are the only two that I have processed so far.  Initially I'm quite pleased with these images...

Last Weekend

On the day trip last weekend, Nigel and I explored the Industrial site that was detailed in a previous blog post.  On our way back into the city we stopped at an abandoned Russian Orthodox church.  We parked the truck on the nearby road and walked a short distance in.  The last time that I was here, back in 2008, there was a beautiful altar screen with religious icons painted on it.  I included an image of the interior of the building in the Procession West show that toured western Canada from 2013 to 2017.  When we checked inside the old church today, we found that it was almost totally empty, with the exception of an old worn-out mattress tossed in the corner, and a bunch of dried plants hanging on the wall inside the door.

I decided that the building was more photographically interesting from the exterior now, and set up out there to take a shot.  I'm not sure what the proper term is, but there was once an ornament... not really a dome... more of a finial on top of the main peak of the church.  There was a similar one on the smaller domed cupola in behind.  The main one had fallen off and was laying in the grass beside the building.  I remember it being in the same spot on my previous visit 9 years prior.  I set up a composition with this fallen ornament in the foreground, with the old building and the trees as a backdrop.  While I was attempting to shoot this we were approached by a man that seemed more than a little irritated.  He was the priest from the nearby church that had been built to replace this old one.  I struck up a conversation with him and showed an interest in the history of the building and he was quickly at ease.  He offered up a little information... that there had once been a sawmill on this location, and a prisoner of war camp across the road.  He also spoke about some of the restoration efforts being undertaken at the nearby "new" church.  It turns out that those altar panels that I had previously photographed had been removed from the old building just that morning.  How ironic is that...!!  Nigel and I were wishing we had stopped here on our way out, rather than on our way back...!  They were being sent to another church to be restored and preserved.  What a coincidence and somewhat of a shame that we were a few hours to late.  

Here are a couple of snapshots taken during our recent visit, as well as a scan of the image that I shot here in 2008 and included in Procession West.  I have some even older images of the same building that I need to locate in my negative archive.  Another neighbor stopped by and visited with us while we were there and showed an interest in seeing my images.  I also need to process the image taken on this day with my view camera and see if it turned into something worthwhile.

Morning Mist

This is another image from the recently processed batch of Bergger Panchro 400 4" x 5" sheet film.  This film is a dual emulsion film that is supposed to be similar to multigrade paper.  One emulsion records the harsh blacks and whites for contrast, while the other records the subtle greys of the middle values.  It was only released, at least to the North American market, a couple of years ago.  I have been experimenting with it processed in Ilford Perceptol developer, and so far I am quite pleased with the results.

In the fall of 2016 my friend Rob and I met up down in East Coulee.  We had plans to take my trailer and travel down to the badlands and prairie of southeastern Alberta.  But, it had been raining heavily for several days, and everything was very wet and muddy.  We thought better of the idea and decided to stay at East Coulee and explore and photograph nearby.  On our first day we headed east out onto the prairie and photographed mostly in a cornfield.  The next morning, October 2nd 2016, it dawned warm and sunny.  The warmth of the sun was causing a mist to rise off of the rain saturated badlands soils.  We stopped by the Hoodoos Recreation Area to photograph and the rising mist all around us was pretty spectacular.  It was most evident when backlit against the morning sun.  This presented some photographic challenges in trying to record the scene without any flare resulting from direct sun on the front element of the lens.  I think this shot worked pretty well and records the mood of what it felt like to experience this.

Another New Old Image

From the recent batch of Bergger Panchro processed in Perceptol.  This images was taken up in Lamont County back in September of 2016.  I used my Ebony SV45TE Camera and a Fujinon-W 125mm lens.  In consideration of the flat overcast light no filter was necessary.  I liked this composition with the old abandoned house perched on the hilltop amidst this field of canola.  If those wall could talk, what stories they might tell...

Bergger Panchro 400 in Perceptol

As I make plans for the upcoming Fall Photo Weekend with the Monochrome Guild, I came across this image.  Every fall for the past 17 years the group has made a weekend trek out somewhere to photograph.  Most years we have visited Jasper National Park and this year we are making plans to return.  This image was taken on the fall trip last year... a year ago almost to the day.

Last weekend I processed a batch of Bergger Panchro 400 4" x 5" film in Ilford Perceptol developer.  The dilution was 1:1 and development was for 20:00 minutes at 24C.  The images was taken at Medicine Lake in Jasper National Park with a 110mm lens and a #25 Red Filter.

October Day Trip

This past week has been really busy....  On Thursday evening Margarit and I went downtown to the Winspear Center to see a show by The Mavericks.  The sound in that building is exceptional as it was designed for the symphony.  The seats are comfortable and well spaced and it was a great experience.  The Mavericks are a rather eclectic band, starting out in the 1980's as a country band.  Later, the latin infleunces of the leader Raul Malo's Cuban background came out and their style changed.  They had the mostly older crowd up on their feet for most of the show.

On Friday it was back to the rink to play a hockey game with the Renegades.  We were pretty rusty and the Trojans took it to us early on.  We quickly found ourselves down 5-1...  We rallied in the third period and made it a little closer at 5-3, but an empty net goal sealed the score at 6-3 and secured a loss for my team.  All this despite out-shooting our opponents 30-22.  We had a lay off of about 10 days between our sixth and seventh games of the season.  That seventh game was on Sunday morning last weekend, while I was down in East Coulee.  Our backup goaltender didn't show up for the early morning ice slot and the team was forced to forfeit the game.  As a result none of our guys have been on the ice for almost two weeks... and it showed.  Hopefully we've blown the rust off and can do a little better in our next two games coming up on the 25th and 29th.

On Saturday, with great weather in the forecast, I set out on a day trip.  My friend Nigel from the Monochrome Guild decided to join me.  We left the city moderately early, at about 9:00AM.  We headed west to an abandoned industrial site.  I understand that this was once a cement plant, mining limestone from a nearby deposit.  It has obviously been inactive for quite some time.  The local grafitti artists have found it and use it as a canvas for their art... so to speak...

I've been out to this site a couple of times in the past and knew what to expect.  But, in the past it had been just a quick stop on the way home from other locations.  This time around it was my destination and I had made plans to spend as much time as I needed to visually document the place.

It was sunny and pleasant and the low autumn light at this time of year is spectacular for photography.  The temperature peaked at about 10C.  We spent the better part of the day here at the site making photographs.  It was also a great opportunity for Nigel and I to visit, during the drive out to and back from our destination.  Nigel is new to the Monochrome Guild and he and I have not had much of an opportunity to connect before this.  After a brief lunch stop we continued on to a second destination for further visual exploration.  That will be touched upon in a later blog post...

Night at the Museum - Recap

The "Night at the Museum" show in East Coulee last Saturday went really well.  Over 30 people made the drive out to East Coulee... most from Red Deer, Calgary and other parts of central Alberta.  Most had to drive at least an hour to get there, which I thought really showed a great level of support and interest.   Rueben showed two of his other short documentary films with our "Forgotten Prairie" show being the feature of the evening.  We collected enough donations to cover the cost of renting the venue, and a little extra.  I donated all of the refreshments.  The evening was very well received and we were all quite pleased with how it turned out.  All of those that had taken part in the original trip to film the documentary were able to attend and it was nice to get together again with Chris and Connie, as well as with Rueben and Byron.  I was invited to attend another showing of this film in January at the Foothills Camera Club in Calgary and would like to take them up on the invitation.  On this night our show wrapped up at about 9:30 and a bunch of us headed over to my shop for the night.  We had a lot of beer and refreshments left over so we proceeded to tie into those.  Most of those that hung around turned in about 2:00AM, but Rueben and I kept going until a little after 4:00.  Needless to say I was pretty tired when I got up around 8:30.

That morning we went back over to the museum and cleaned up everything from the show.  This included taking down the screen, putting away the projector, packing up all the display prints, and generally cleaning up.  Barb, the director of the museum had offered to show us an old miners house that was behind the museum and down the block a bit.  It had once belonged to the family of a miner at the old Atlas Coal Mine.  When he and his wife passed away, the surviving children donated the property to the School Museum.  Unfortunately the museum doesn't have the budget to relocate or to restore it.  The foundation and the floor are slowly collapsing, and the windows and doors deteriorating.  The exterior stairway to the upper level is now so rotten that we needed to use a ladder to get in.  The home is still fully furnished and it was really cool to see it and to photograph it.  We are amongst the last viewers as the Museum staff are planning to clean everything out and preserve what they can before the building further deteriorates.  It was really nice of Barb to allow us this opportunity.

It was a great day in the valley on Sunday and the temperature got up to around 20C.  After a late lunch we headed out for a hike into the badlands.  I knew of another stone house near the Red Deer River and wanted to try to find it.  It is reasonably well know with locals but not accessible by road.  I had never seen it before, but had seen pictures of it.  We hiked in for a couple of miles and eventually found it.  We photographed there for a while before eventually hiking back out.  By the time I got back to my truck and hit the road for home, it was around 6:00PM.  By the time I got back to the city it was a little after 9:00PM.

I didn't take my digital camera with me to the old miners house, or to the stone house, so I have no snapshots to share.  I also neglected to take any record shots with my phone.  When I process some of the film shots that I took I will post them to my blog.  I did take a couple during the showing of the documentary at the museum and have included those below.  I have also included a shot of the Atlas Coal Mine.  This print was presented at the premiere along with about 15 others of mine.

Preparations for "Night at the Museum"

Just spent the last few evenings getting ready for the upcoming event at the East Coulee School Museum.  I printed a few of the negatives that I shot last Easter when we were out filming the "Forgotten Prairie" documentary.  These last few evenings I have been mounting, matting and framing those prints so that I can show them at the upcoming premiere.  Most of my friends and family are unable to make the long drive down to East Coulee for the event, but a couple have promised to show up.  We are hoping that those in the Calgary area will be more committed to heading out for a day trip, as this is a much shorter commute than those considering driving out from Edmonton.  Nonetheless we are hopeful for a reasonable turnout.  

I have five new prints framed and ready.  I also have five prints from Procession West that fit the theme of this documentary which I will also include.  And I have eight additional small prints, matted but unframed, that also suit the subject and will present those as well.  Tomorrow I will pick up some of the refreshments so that we can be prepared to set everything up on Saturday afternoon.

This evening, now that most of these preparations are behind me, I'm trying to unwind a little and am working on editing some scans of older images.  This image included below is from a trip down to Crowsnest Pass in June of 2016.  I was down in the area at the time to pick up the Procession West show following it's run at the Lebel Mansion Gallery in Pincher Creek.  While I was down there I did a little shooting, including this image of Crowsnest Mountain.  This particular image was shot with my 4x5 view camera and a longer focal length 300mm lens with a #25 Red Filter on Ilford FP4 developed in Perceptol.  It doesn't really fit the context of this upcoming event, so I won't include it there.  But I have just posted it to my Flickr account and now include it here on my blog.

Cottage Construction

 Here are a few more snap shots from Thanksgiving Monday up at Nordegg.  The first couple were from the ATV ride that Hailey and I took.  The rest are from the construction site at our property...

Night at the Museum

The Premiere showing of Forgotten Prairie is now being referred to as "Night at the Museum".  Here is the official invitation from Facebook, as put together by my friends Chris, Connie and Rueben.

https://www.facebook.com/events/348690498924927

Thanksgiving Weekend

It was nice to have a long weekend and be able to have the extra day off.  It was cool and overcast for most of the weekend, and quite windy on Saturday and Sunday.  By the time I returned to work on Tuesday morning it didn't really feel like there had been much of a break, as I was busy all weekend long...

On Saturday morning I went to the shop and did some work on my travel trailer.  The quality of modern RV's leaves something to be desired.  Ours has been falling apart since the day we got it and I have already done a number of repairs over the past couple of years.  This time around I had to rebuild the back of the bench at our dining table.  To do this I had to remove the sofa to gain access to the back of the bench.  The back was constructed of 1x1 lumber, stapled together, with a sheet of 1/8" paneling on either side.  Needless to say this has been broken and fallen apart through normal use.  I reinforced the spindly frame with some steel angle brackets.  I then installed a solid backing plate of 1/8" aluminum sheet, over which I glued the original wood paneling.  The inside of the bench was reinforced with a continuous piece of aluminum angle.  It is a lot stronger now than it originally was.  Later that evening we went out to my brother Greg's place in Sherwood Park for our first of two Thanksgiving dinners.

On Sunday morning I was back to the shop, this time working on organizing some materials and supplies for our property out at Nordegg.  I lined up some tools, set up a proper hitch on my truck.  I just bought a new utility trailer that we will use to transport materials and our ATV's to and from our property in Nordegg.  It uses a different size hitch than our travel trailer.  Later in the afternoon I went home and did some work in the darkroom.  I printed a 8x10 negative from the Forgotten Prairie project by the Van Dyke Brown process.  This image will be displayed at our upcoming premiere.  Later that evening Margarit's brother Shawn and his family came over to our place for Thanksgiving Dinner.

Then on Monday morning I was back at the shop, this time to pick up my utility trailer and ATV.  Hailey and I headed out to Nordegg for the afternoon.  We got a bit of a late start but did manage to make it out for the afternoon.  I wanted to get a look at the property now that the framers are just about finished with the cottage and garage.  There were a few little things that I needed to change and I wanted to make sure they were looked after.  We took the lock off of the storage building that we had rented for the summer.  I put out a feeder with a salt block and some oats for the deer that have been living on and around our property.  With all the construction activity this summer they haven't been around as much as we would like and I want to encourage them to stay.  Hailey and I went out for a ride on the ATV for the afternoon.  The snow a couple weeks back brought down a lot of trees along the ATV trails and some of them are impassible right now.  Next time I take a ride out I'll have to take along a chain saw and clear some of the trails.  We made it back to the city around 9:00PM and I was back to the shop once again to put the ATV away.  Once the garage in Nordegg is completed we will leave it out there but for now we have to drag it back and forth.  Sure seems like I didn't really get away from work, despite it being a long weekend.

Here are a couple of snapshots of the cottage taken with my phone...

Forgotten Prairie - Premiere Showing

Everyone is invited to attend the Premiere Showing of a short documentary film called "Forgotten Prairie".  This event is being held on Saturday October 14th at the East Coulee School Museum, at 5:00PM.  The museum is located in the town of East Coulee, a 10 minute drive down the valley on Highway 10, from Drumheller.  This location was selected for its spectacular setting in the Alberta Badlands, as well as to impart a sense of the mood of the documentary.

I will be in attendance at the premiere, as will my friends Chris Doering, Connie Biggart and Rueben Tschetter.  Chris and Connie are the BigDoer team, historians, researchers, and writers of the "Off the Beaten Path" website.  Rueben is an independent filmmaker and the writer and producer of this documentary.

We all set out together on the Easter Long Weekend last spring to explore and document some ghost towns down in southwestern Saskatchewan.  This film documents that trip.

I will have a small selection of my prints available for viewing at this event.  Refreshments will be served.  Hope to see many of my friends and supporters there...

Fall Sunday

I slept in a little today, but was up and mobile by mid-morning.  I went to the Eskimos football game yesterday with one of my business partners, Brad.  There was a significant police presence outside of Commonwealth Stadium after the Eskimos loss to Winnipeg, but we didn't think much of it.  The disappointment of our sixth loss in a row, after a 7-0 start, was weighing on our minds.  The Winnipeg Blue-Bombers didn't play a very strong game either and the Eskimos could have taken it, had they played a little better.

When I turned on the radio this morning I learned that there had been a suspected terrorist event here in the city.  A few blocks south of the stadium, during the football game, a car rammed a police barricade that was set up for traffic control.  The driver jumped out and attacked a police officer with a knife, stabbing him several times.  Fortunately the officer is OK, but the assailant fled on foot.  A couple of hours later the same individual was stopped in a routine traffic check on nearby Wayne Gretzky Drive.  The ownership documents were found in the car that had been abandoned after the previous incident, and the name broadcast to the entire police force.  A driver with the same name was stopped driving a rented U-Haul van during that traffic stop.  He fled the scene as well, this time in the van, headed for downtown Edmonton.  He attempted to run into several groups of pedestrians along Jasper Avenue and injured four.  He was apprehended a short time later and arrested by police.  One of the two vehicles he had been driving had an ISIS flag in it and the events are being investigated as an act of terrorism.  I was pretty close to the scene of the first incident but had no idea what had happened until I heard about it the next day.  I guess even Edmonton, up here in the great white north, is not immune from this sort of stupidity..... what is this world coming to....??!!

Today my Renegades Hockey team played a game at 12:30 in the afternoon at the Knights of Columbus Arena.  It was a close game against the first place Hungry Beavers.  We had two goals disallowed and a number of questionable penalties were called.  We ended up tied in regulation but this time, when it went to the shootout, we lost by a score of 7-6.

Later this afternoon as I relax on this rather blustery fall day, I've just posted a new image to my Flickr account.  This is one from a recent batch of RPX-25 sheet film that was processed a few days ago.  This particular image was taken back in January on one of several trips to and from Saskatoon for the Procession West Show at the Saskatchewan Craft Council Gallery.