Strip Mining Operation

Last weekend I was down in the Drumheller Valley.  I stayed at the shop in East Coulee.  Nigel, Court, Arturo and Mark from the Monochrome Guild met me down there.  Arturo's wife Sharon also came along, as did Mark's wife.  We were working on shooting some images for our historic "coal" project.  This is a visual arts project documenting the coal mining industry and its history, here in the province of Alberta.  We got together and starting shooting images for this project back in June on a trip down to Crowsnest Pass, and the project will continue for another year or more.

Nigel and Court were staying at my shop with me.  Mark and his wife met us for the day on Saturday.  Arturo and Sharon were staying in town and met up with us as well. 

We headed out on Saturday to a nearby strip mining operation.  This is one of only a handful of active mines still working in the province.  This one supplies a nearby power generating plant.  The mine is on the verge of being shut down as a result of the government decision to cease all coal fired power generation.  I understand that the plant will be switching over to natural gas in the near future.  No doubt that decision will bring about a big rise in the price of natural gas.  I am rather skeptical of this plan and believe that it will only result in higher home heating costs.  In my opinion I think that improving the already efficient coal burning technology and then exporting that expertise globally would have made more impact on worldwide greenhouse gas emissions....

The mine is still operating and probably will be for another year or two.  I understand that layoffs of non-operational staff at the mine are upcoming.  In the interim the current operation will continue.  We were able to get very close to one of the enormous draglines as it was stripping overburden a mere couple hundred yards from a nearby range road.  We also shot some old buildings that are at risk of being swallowed by the mining operation, should production continue long enough.

After shooting here for a bit we continued on to an area that had been previously mined.  The area had been partially reclaimed and there was some old debris left behind from the mining equipment.  The landscape had a rather desolate and lunar appearance.

It was an interesting location and an afternoon well spent.  This was the first area that we explored over the course of the weekend and by the time it was all said and done, we had managed to shoot at several other locations as well.  It felt good to get out again with the big camera and get serious about starting to photograph again.  I think I ended up shooting about two dozen sheets of film over the two days which sees my annual count now well over 100.  

Over the past 22 years of shooting with my large format view camera, I have a long term average of around 400 sheets per year.  Last year my count was way down and I only shot about 125 sheets.  Mostly that was because my time was consumed by my job, and by the construction of our cottage.  Now that work on the cottage is substantially complete, I am finding myself returning to photography.   I shot quite a bit on that trip last June.  A couple of weeks ago I also did pretty well shooting out around Nordegg when my friends Chris and Connie were visiting.  This current weekend has added to the tally and got my creative juices flowing again.  I look forward to getting out on a more regular basis in the future.