In Focus Exhibit 2018

Once again I am taking part in the annual InFocus Photography Exhibition here in Edmonton.. This one is the fourth annual, and I have shown at least one print in each of them.  The show runs from February 5th to March 2nd and this year is at the Renaissance Edmonton Airport Hotel.  The official promotional card is included below, as is a link to the website.

This year I volunteered to help with some of the preparations.  I spent a couple of evenings at my shop with Aaron Chute and a couple of his friends.  We fabricated some wall panels and support bases that will be used to display the prints.  Last Friday we put together sixteen of these walls and got them ready for the show.  This left me kind of scrambling to finish my print.  I actually made the print several weeks ago but have procrastinated in getting it mounted, spotted, matted and framed.  I just finished that last night, so I can now deliver my print this week.

I encourage everyone to come and check it out...!!

http://www.infocusphoto.ca

Spring Break in the Gulf Islands

In the spring of 2016 the girls and I took a trip out to Vancouver Island in British Columbia.  I wrote extensively about that trip on our return and some detailed blog postings and snapshots can be found here by scrolling back.  A few weeks ago, back on December 30th, while we were in the midst of that cold snap, I processed a batch of Infrared 4" x 5" sheet film.  That batch included seven sheets from the trip at Spring Break of 2016.  This image is one from that batch.  It is of some eroded rocks at Tribune Bay Provincial Park on Hornby Island.  It was taken with a wide angle 80mm lens and a #25 Red Filter.

Frigid Photography

On Sunday morning my friend Court and I set out for a road trip.  We met at my place at 9:30AM and after a brief stop for fuel, we hit the road.  As was our usual routine we pointed the truck up to the northeast.  The forecast was calling for it to be very foggy in the morning, then to clear, with the afternoon high to peak at about -3C.  All of that came true, except for the clearing part.  It remained heavily overcast and the sun never broke out.  To make matters worse there was a stiff breeze out of the southeast that made it rather uncomfortable to be out in the open.  These were far from the worst conditions that I have ever endured, but in combination with the ugly flat light it left us rather uninspired.  We drove around for most of the day and had a great visit chatting about all sorts of things, including an upcoming group photo project.  We managed to get out with the camera a couple of times and I did come home with a few sheets of exposed film.  We also found a couple of locations that seem worthy of a return trip under better conditions.  The sun finally broke out a little, just as it was setting in the late afternoon.  The temperature peaked at about -4C, but with that breeze it felt a lot colder than that.  I suppose there is no option but to endure these kind of conditions for a couple more months.  Before we know it spring will arrive and we will be visually refreshed to get out again for some more serious work.

Guitars for Christmas

Margarit and I bought our middle daughter Annelise an acoustic guitar for Christmas.  We bought it new from the Long and McQuade music store here in Edmonton.  It is a Simon and Patrick guitar made in Quebec.  Quite a simple but nice guitar.  I had planned on buying a guitar for myself and learning to play.  I have no great aspirations to become a rock star or anything like that, but would like to learn to strum chords well enough to have sing alongs around the campfire.  My plan was to buy one after Christmas and then sign up to take lessons together with Annelise.

Well... the girls bought me a guitar for Christmas.  It is a lightly used Takamine acoustic with electric pickup.  I don't have an amplifier to plug it into yet, but it is a nice sounding acoustic.  I signed us up for lessons starting at the beginning of January, at Long And McQuade.  Every Monday evening at 8:00PM Anna and I go for a lesson with Gary Myers.  So far it is really basic, but lots of fun.  I actually took several years of piano lessons when I was a young child.  When I was about 12 years old... the same age as Anna is now... I switched to guitar and took a couple of years of lessons.  That was over 40 years ago and I've forgotten most of the little bit I knew.  But a few chords and notes are starting to come back to me.  I need to make a point of practicing every day and working at learning it.  Part of the challenge is getting Anna to practice as well.  I remember what it was like when I was young.  There is an impatience wanting to be able to play right away, and a lack of commitment to the required practice time.  I'll try to keep her in line.

Completion Near

Our project with Shunda Creek Contracting in Nordegg is approaching the end.  Our cottage and garage up at Nordegg are just about finished to the lockup stage.  That's all that our agreement with Scott of Shunda Creek includes at this time.  The last of the siding was just installed over the past few days.  There are only a few odds and ends remaining to look after.  Some soffit material is yet to be installed, some caulking, eavestroughs, downpipes, chimney, plumbing vent, and two skylights to put on.  We will get Scott back in the spring to do some site work and to trench in the utilities.  The bulk of the work from now on will be up to me.  I am hiring trades to do some things, and others I will be doing myself.

The basic schedule is to get electrical rough in done this winter, so that we can install insulation and vapor barrier in the early spring.  My friend Rob is going to do the electrical work for me, and I'll be helping.  I will do the insulating myself.  Then I have a drywall crew hired to do the boarding, taping, texturing and priming starting in the spring.  Once drywall is complete the girls and I will paint everything.  We have a mechanical contractor, a friend of my cousin, based out of the Rocky Mountain House area, that will be installing our furnaces and the pressure system.  Once that is all complete, hopefully by summer, we will have a unfinished but somewhat functional cottage.  We can then take our time and look after flooring installation, interior trim, cabinets and fixtures, railings, appliances, etc.

There will be no shortage of work for some time to come.  Not only is there all of this interior construction stuff to look after but I also intend to build some of the furniture and maybe the cabinets.  Then there is exterior stairs and landings.  Site work outside includes building permanent firepits, splitting firewood, general cleanup after all the construction.  Seems my time is committed for the next several years.

I will say that we are quite happy with the job that Scott has done for us to get the buildings to this point.  I designed the cottage myself and he turned my plans into a functional building, with some sound advice and input along the way.  We are finally beyond the rough construction stage and now have something real to work with.  Exciting times indeed....

Forgotten Prairie at Foothills Camera Club

On Tuesday January 16th the "Forgotten Prairie" short documentary was shown at the Foothills Camera Club in Calgary.  They have a great venue at the Loose Moose Theatre Company in the Crossroads Market.  Turns out that Byron Robb, who is in the film and was part of our entourage out to the ghost towns last spring, is on the executive at Foothills.  He set the whole thing up and invited producer Rueben Tschetter to show the film.  All of those that were involved in the project were invited to attend.  I left work just after lunch on Tuesday and made the run down to Calgary to arrive in time for the event.  Connie of the BigDoer team was able to attend but unfortunately Chris had a prior commitment and could not make it.  Byron even went so far as to invite myself and Rueben for dinner, and to stay the night at his place. 

The showing was well attended and I would guess there were around 50 people present.  It was a regular camera club meeting and the documentary made up the "guest speaker" part of the evening.  It brought back a lot of memories from my days in several camera clubs here in Edmonton.  This included Images Alberta Camera Club and Crossroads Camera Club.  I fondly recall all those meetings with guest speakers, competitions and projects.  I left the club scene when the photo world went digital and it was at that time, back in 2002 that I founded the Monochrome Guild.  We have continued as a somewhat informal collective of photographic artists working in film, and do not have the structure of a typical camera club.  All the same it was kind of fun to watch the proceedings at a club meeting.

After the showing there were a number of questions from the audience about the making of the film and about my photography.  I included a few prints from the trip out to the ghost towns.  After the meeting we headed to a nearby pub with a few club members and continued our photographic discussions over a couple of cold, foamy ones.  Later still we returned to Byron's place and continued the visit between Rueben, Byron and myself.  It was well into the wee morning hours before I finally retired to bed.  The night before had been much the same due to a late hockey game and by this point I was running on fumes.

We slept in a little the next morning and went out for breakfast together.  After that we said our goodbyes and I hit the road north to Edmonton, arriving back at work just after lunch on Wednesday.

Winter Harvest

This image was taken just over a year ago, in February of 2017.  Winter arrived early in the fall of 2016 and many farmers were caught by surprise.  All over the province crops were left in the fields through the winter, unharvested.  This shot was of some snowed in canola swaths in a field up in Two Hills County.

At that time I had switched over some of my older lenses, that I had been using for some years on my Sinar F1.  I found this bulky monorail camera too heavy to carry around out in the field so I switched to lighter and more compact Ebony folding field cameras starting in 2012.  The Sinar uses a large lensboard about 5-1/2" square, while the Ebony requires a much smaller Linhof board.  I have an adapter to mount the Linhof boards onto the Sinar, but nothing that works in reverse.  Gradually I have been purchasing additional Linhof boards and switching over my 20+ large format lenses.  I have a Nikkor convertible telephoto lens.  It includes three interchangeable rear elements.  Depending on which rear element is used, the focal length is either 360mm, 500mm or 720mm.  The 720mm focal length will not work on the Ebony as the bellows are not long enough, and the extension of the camera is insufficient to properly focus the lens.  It works on the Sinar as I am able to add extension rails, extra standards and extra bellows to achieve adequate length to focus.  The 500mm is borderline for the Ebony, so in the past I refrained from using it and stuck to using my Fujinon-T 400mm.  But back in early 2017 I started using the 500mm Nikkor and found that it was workable for all but close focus distances.  Of course the 360mm focal length is not an issue.  I still have several Sinar F1's and will continue to use them.  I keep them for studio work as the movements are more precise and technical.  I also have the option of taking them out when I want to use the 720mm focal length.  I have several other lenses that I use primarily for 8x10, that can also be used with this camera in 4x5 format.  This includes a Fujinon-C 450mm, and a second Nikkor T-ED convertible set that, depending on the rear element, provides focal lengths of 600mm, 800mm or 1200mm.

I used the 500mm configuration for this shot to compress the near-far relationship and create a somewhat abstract perspective.  Just recently I made time to process this batch of film.  This image was shot on Kodak High Speed Infrared film, rated at 100 iso.  The Nikkor T-ED 500mm lens was used with a #25 Red Filter.  The film was processed in Kodak T-Max developer, diluted 1:6, for 6:45 minutes at 24C.  

Carpentry Projects Continue

The frigid cold snap has finally come to an end.  It was really cold through most of last week but by Friday and into Saturday it really warmed up.  On Sunday it was slightly cooler but the mercury still managed to expand to about -7C.  

For some reason I just didn't feel like getting out and doing much.  I could have taken a drive out to Nordegg, where the temperatures were slightly milder still.  I just didn't feel like spending six hours driving for a couple of hours out at the property.  I probably could have taken the new snowmobile out for a spin, but snow conditions are still a little sparse out there.

Instead I spent a few hours on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon, working at my shop.  I began the process of applying lacquer to the tongue and groove pine panelling that I bought for our project.  These will be installed on the vaulted ceiling portion of the cottage.  They can't go up until after the drywall is finished.  But, I'd much rather be prepping them now... during these short winter days... than later in the summer.

I've also been continuing with the ongoing door construction project.  The jambs are now all complete and I'm ready to start building the doors themselves.  The door frames are constructed and ready to go.  I've been waiting to find some antique windows to install into these doors.  Margarit picked up the first one on the weekend at an Antique Store in northeast Edmonton.  It is approx. 17 x 20 inches and includes some leaded glass.  I framed out an opening of this size in the first door, which will allow me to set this window into it.  Then I proceeded with the application of tongue and groove pine panelling to the surface of the door.  I got one side installed, and now just need to flush trim everything with my router.  Then it will be ready for me to panel the other side.  After that I can build the moldings to secure the antique window, and sand and finish the door.  By the time I have all of that accomplished, hopefully we have secured a second antique window and I can continue with the next.  We have a total of four interior doors that are needed, and would like to have an old window mounted into each of them.

January Sunday Drive

I spent most of my day on Saturday running some errands and doing some odd jobs.  This included working for a few hours in the afternoon at my shop.  I worked on sanding and staining the interior door jambs that I'm building for our cottage.  In the evening I printed in the darkroom.  Sunday dawned sunny and mild so I decided to head out for a drive.  None of the girls wanted to go this time so it ended up a solo trip.  At the beginning of the year I'm always anxious to get out and take the first photographs of the year.  It gets my archive started and sometimes stirs my creativity for the winter season.  Usually there is a break away from photography over Christmas with all the family activities on the go.  On this day I just headed up to my favorite nearby destination.  This is not a particular spot but rather a general area.  The rural counties of Lamont, Two Hills and Smoky Lake, to the northeast of the city have a lot of scenic churches, old buildings, and sometimes some interesting landscape elements.  Success of failure is dependent upon light and seasonal conditions.  On this day I managed to set the big camera up twice and got a start on my archive of images for the 2018 calendar year.  I also took a few snapshots with my digital camera.  I played around a little more with the 180 degree 12mm fisheye lens that I recently bought.  In the low winter light it was a challenge to keep my shadow out of the image.

Darkroom Printing

Although I regularly get down into my darkroom to process film, printing of the resulting negatives doesn't happen nearly as often.  It is a bit of a production to set up and properly print. Sometimes I use unsharp masks with my negatives, and these have to be made ahead of time.  I don't like resin coated paper for anything but proofs and work prints so all of my serious work is printed on fiber based paper.  The actual print session involves an entire evening.  If I am successful, I usually get around to printing three negatives, and multiple copies of each.  At the end of the evening these prints are fixed and left in a tray of water.  The next evening I return to the darkroom and give the prints a second fixing bath, followed by a water rinse, a hypo clearing bath, a toning bath in selenium and then a final rinse.  The prints are then moved to a print washer.  As I usually don't have time to remain nearby and babysit the washer, I generally just leave the prints in the washer for about 24 hours.  During this 24 hour soaking bath I try to change the water a half a dozen times, and then at the end I run with washer for at least 15 minutes or more.  Once this washing process is completed the prints are hung up to drip dry, and then transferred to drying screens.

Back in December, a former customer of mine at my shop placed an order for one of my prints.  He had seen my "Warwick Sunflowers" print in my Procession West book and wanted a copy as a Christmas gift for his wife.  I printed that one to 11" x 14" a couple of weeks before Christmas and managed to get it mounted, matted and framed a few days before the holiday. 

Then, this past weekend I worked on a larger 16" x 20" print of my "Looking Down" image.  This is a shot looking down onto the rocks in the Astoria River, from the bridge on Highway 93A in Jasper National Park.  It was taken in November of 2016 when I was out in the mountains with the gang from the Monochrome Guild on our annual fall trip.  This image was selected for exhibition in the upcoming InFocus2018 show.  More to follow on that later....   

My friend Gabor came over for a visit while I was working on this print.  He shoots with a Leica and has processed a reasonable amount of film, but he has not done much printing.  He was returning a camera that he had borrowed from me, and decided to hang out in the darkroom and watch me print.  My negative was a fairly easy one to print this time. I used my typical split filter printing technique to control the contrast to my liking.  A couple of shadow areas needed to be dodged a little and one of the larger highlight areas needed some burning in.  Once we were finished with my print we tried printing a couple of Gabor's 35mm negatives.  Unfortunately I could not locate the lensboard for my 50mm enlarging lens in the mess that is my darkroom.  We had to print with the 135mm lens, which is intended for a much larger negative.  As a result the largest print we could achieve was on 8" x 10" paper, and the image did not fully cover the sheet.  But, the process was a good learning tool for Gabor and I hope he went away with a little better understanding as to how to make a fine print.

Nearly to Lock Up

I haven't been able to get out to Nordegg for almost a month now.  The recent cold snap brought work to a halt for a while, but our contractor has been busy since the weather conditions improved.  Siding, soffit and fascia is in the process of being installed and the work is well underway.  Scott just sent me a few photographs of the progress and I include them here....

Fresh Film

With the cold weather over the Christmas break I found myself spending much of my time indoors.  I was at my shop almost every day over the holidays building some doors and jambs for our cottage.  I also spent quite a bit of time in the darkroom, processing several batches of sheet film.  On Boxing Day I processed a batch of Ilford HP5+ 4x5 sheet film in 510 Pyro developer, diluted 1:100.  Development time was 7:10 minutes at 24C, but I think in the future I need to increase development time slightly.  This particular image was taken down in Crowsnest Pass in southern Alberta in March of 2016.  It was taken with my Ebony view camera and a Schneider 80mm lens.  The standards were tilted to provide sharpness from foreground to background.  Exposure was for 8 seconds at F22.0.  This in the interior of a tipple.  Mine cars full of coal were rolled in on the tracks, and then the switches were activated to that they could be rolled into the "Tipper".  The cars were rotated and the coal dumped out into the chutes and through the grates below.  Then the empty car was rolled out, and the switches activated again so that the empty car could be moved away and a full one brought up in its place.  The mechanics of this system are fascinating mechanically, historically and visually.

T-shirt

I bought myself this festive T-shirt for the holidays...  just cracks me up...!!

Last Day... Full Day

January 2nd was the last of my day's off from work over the Christmas break.  Since the weather has now drastically improved, I decided to make the most of it.  Rather than sleep in, as I have been doing every day during this recent frigid holiday break, I decided to get back into the groove and get up at my regular work time.  My middle daughter Annelise was so excited about getting out to do something that she actually got up at 5:00AM.  I wasn't quite that early, but was up and about by 7:00AM.  Annelise, my eldest daughter Hailey, and I headed out by about 8:00AM.  Our first stop was for a big breakfast at a nearby restaurant.  After breakfast we headed to a couple of hardware stores to pick up some supplies.  Then it was off to my shop to work on some projects.  I continued with construction of the doors and door jambs that I have been fabricating in the shop, over the holidays, for our cottage out at Nordegg.  Hailey worked on some picture rails that she's building for her room.  Anna worked on a jump for her pet rabbit, Simba.

Margarit and youngest daughter Helena slept in late, and then went for breakfast on their own.  In the early afternoon they stopped by the shop to see how we were making out.  It was about 2:00PM when we all finally finished up what we were working on, cleaned up, and continued on to our next project.

The two older girls and I went out an on owl prowl.  We took a drive out to Elk Island National Park where I had seen several owls on a day trip a few weeks back.  I knew from experience that they weren't around much during the day, but that they became active at twilight.  We arrived out at the park around 3:30PM and scouted around for a while without seeing much.  Anna is a big fan of owls and has owl books, owl shirts, and all sorts of owl collectibles.  Shortly after 4:00PM, as the sun was setting and there was just that twilight glow remaining in the western sky, we spotted a couple of owls.  Both were Great Horned Owls, the provincial bird of Alberta.  The first was about a quarter mile away and we didn't get a really good look at it.  The second we found was up in a tree, right beside the road.  By this point, Anna was running out of gas and fell asleep in the back seat.  She missed the first owl altogether, but we woke her up and made sure she got a good look at the second one.  We actually saw a third one, along the side of the freeway on the edge of the city.  This was during our return trip home and it was quite dark by this time.

When we got home we had supper as a family, and then afterwards the three of us went over to the rink for a skate.  I took a stick and puck along and banged around on the rink for a bit while the two older girls skated around and try to regain their feel for the ice.  I skate to play hockey at least once a week, almost year round, for about a dozen years now, so I never lose my touch.... what little I have!  But the girls don't get out very often and always seem to have to relearn it.  It was a beautiful warm day... a nice change after the recent cold snap.  Even after dark, out at the rink, it only dropped down to about -6C.  By 9:00PM when we finished our skate, the day was coming to an end.  To cap things off we went to a nearby coffee shop for a hot drink to warm up and wind down.  A very busy and full day, but a most enjoyable one.

Welcome to 2018... !!

Its a heat wave today... relatively speaking.  During this past week off from work, I've been down to my shop almost every day.  I've spent a couple of hours every day working on some interior doors that I am building for our cottage up at Nordegg.  This project has to be done, and I'd much rather waste a -25C day with limited daylight, as opposed to some nice day later in the spring.  The door jambs are all done and I'm presently working on the frames of the new doors.  When I left the house late this morning it was still -26C.  But, when I left the shop to return home in the middle of the afternoon, the temperature had popped up to -14C.  Seems we have weathered the storm and milder temperatures are forecast to be with us for the next week or two... just in time for the return to work!!

Last night the girls and I had a big family dinner with a prime rib roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad and veggies.  After dinner we all bundled up and walked over to the nearby community hall for the annual fireworks display.  The temperature was -26C, and with the wind chill effect taken into account it felt like -32C.  Attendance was rather sparse this year with most people watching from their parked cars.  Only a few brave souls like us bundled up and wandered out into the school ground for the display.  Like all the previous years it did not disappoint and we enjoyed the show.  I didn't bother to bring my digital camera, but attempted to take a few photos with my cell phone.  It froze up after a couple of shots and the only good one I got is this one posted below.  It took over an hour back at the house before the poor old phone warmed up enough to turn on again...