Old Neon

This one actually was shot over a year ago... and processed and scanned some time ago.  Just getting around to posting it now.  Some old Neon, here in Edmonton.  I shot this back in March of 2018, with my Ebony 4" x 5" view camera and a Rodenstock 90mm lens.  The film was Fuji Neopan Acros 100, processed in Rodinal 1:50.  For some reason I am drawn to old signs and will continue to build up a collection of images like this.....

Working Through the Holidays

Usually I close the shop for two weeks... or thereabouts... over the Christmas holidays.  As the company is involved in skylights, and work really slows down once winter weather sets in, there is usually not all that much to do over the holidays.  In fact, I usually end up feeding the staff for two or three months over the winter, so that they are available and ready when construction season picks up in the spring.  Even though they don't get paid for all the days over the Christmas break, they seem to look forward to the time off.

This year, the shop closed on Friday December 20th, and will not re-open until Monday January 6th.  On Friday the 20th we shut down production at noon, and had our annual staff BBQ.  As in the past I picked up some steaks, and a bunch of food and beer, and we had our annual Christmas party.  But this time around, things were a little different.  Two representatives from the company that is buying the operation showed up for the BBQ.  I made the announcement to the staff that the company had been sold.  A couple of years prior I had let them all know that I was looking to slow down, exploring all options, and that the sale of the company would be one of them.  I'm not sure if this really took anyone by surprise as it has probably been fairly obvious that something was up.  A lot of people have toured the shop in recent months and there has been all sorts of discussion, correspondence and review.  

I assured all of the staff that their jobs are secure and that the new owners need them to move forward.  This was backed up by the two representatives that were present.  I think everyone took it fairly well and hopefully there are no issues moving forward.  I assured them that come the beginning of January it would be business as usual and I would be staying on for at least a year to transition into new ownership.  I guess I will have to wait and see if everyone shows up, ready to work, in the new year.  But, I've always tried really hard to be appreciative of the staff and to treat them like family.  Probably to my own disadvantage as at times if felt like there was a sense of entitlement, and that my efforts were not fully appreciated.

Even though none of the staff are present over the holidays, I have been in to work every day except for Christmas Day.  That will continue through the remainder of the holidays.  I have a lot of things to wrap up in advance of the sale of the company.  We need to complete a detailed inventory count and come up with an accurate valuation.  I also need to compile a list of all payables and receivables, as well as close off the accounting system in advance of the sale.  The inventory count was undertaken on the weekend of December 21 and 22, and I wrapped up the odds and ends on Monday the 23rd.  I spent the weekend at the shop doing the count with the assistance of one of my partners.  Since then I have been working on the valuation, and the rest of the paperwork.

With my retirement on the horizon, I don't really feel all that bad about forfeiting my Christmas holidays this year.  I just keep reminding myself that in a year I will be fully retired and that all the days will be holidays.  A small price to be paid for freedom from the daily grind.

March Calendar Image

This is the March image from my new calendar.  I took this shot inside an old grain elevator down in Vulcan County.  I was visiting my brother Wes in Calgary in January of 2016 and we went out for a day trip to do some exploring.  I shot this with a 65mm wide angle lens on my Ebony 4" x 5" view camera.  I've started passing out copies of this calendar to friends and family over the holidays and so far I've got lots of compliments.

Carpentry Projects

I've made the decision to retire and quit working so much.  The sale of my shares in my skylight company is imminent.  I will be working through 2020 to transition the company into new ownership.  After that I may be involved on a minor basis as a consultant, but I think I'd prefer to make a clean break and step away at that point.... still a little undecided though.....

In the mean time I need to take steps to get all of my stuff out of the shop.  The company has occupied our current premises since 1978.  I was the first worker in the building.  My Dad sent me there as a sixteen year old kid to paint some racks and get ready for the move of the company materials and equipment into the space in that summer.  Here I am, over 40 years later, still working in the same place... but not for too much longer.....

One of the things I need to deal with is all of the little carpentry projects that I've had on the go for the cottage in Nordegg.  I now have the kitchen cabinets done and just need to haul the last section out.  This past little while I've been working on the bunk bed for the girls room.  The frames that will hold the mattresses are now done and have received the typical three coats of laquer.  I'm now working on the end frames that will support the mattresses.  These are fabricated from the spruce logs that I cut and peeled earlier this summer.  This is my first attempt at rustic furniture construction and so far it has gone pretty well.  I've cut tenons in all the support branches and drilled holes in the upright posts to accept them.  The frames are now all assembled.  Just need to finish sanding everything and then complete the requisite lacquer finish.  In between I will need to cut some dadoes into the uprights, into which the mattress support frames will be fitted.  A couple of braces left to be fabricated as well.  Should be able to wrap up most of this over the coming week or two.  Then I can move on to some of my remaining projects as I transition out of ownership......

December in Drumheller - Orca Skeleton

I took a trip down to East Coulee on the weekend of December 14 and 15.  Frank and his employees at Dinosaur Valley Studios are just finishing up a project.  This involved building a painted steel armature to support the skeleton of a Killer Whale.  This is a modern Orca, and not a prehistoric mammal of any kind.  The whale washed up on a beach on Vancouver Island some years ago.  The specimen has scientific value, so we were not permitted to permanently attach the bones to the armature, or to drill any holes, or glue anything in place, or damage the specimen in any way.  This support structure has custom made cradles, hooks and brackets to support every bone without damage.  I was down on the weekend to take a bunch of still photographs of the specimen, in various stages of assembly, for the client.  We set up a temporary backdrop, and some studio lights to do the photography.  Most of this was just shot with a digital camera but I did take a couple of 4" x 5" large format film shots with my view camera.  Here is a link to a news report about the project.

https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1854710&cache=yes

Pebbles, Morning Beach

Here is another image from the October trip out to Vancouver Island.  This detail shot was taken with a long 300mm lens on my 4x5 View Camera..  It was on Morning Beach, at the north end of Denman Island.  Morning Beach is a Community Park along the shore of Denman Island.  It is not part of the adjacent Marine Park that encompasses Tree Island and Seal Islets.  This image was from the first batch of Ilford FP4+ film that I processed from that trip.

 

February Image

This is the image I chose for the February page of my 2020 calendar.  This is a shot of the ice bubbles on Abraham Lake, with Mt. Michener in the background.  I shot this in January of 2017 with my 4x5 view camera and a 110mm lens.

Low Tide

Another shot from the recent trip to Vancouver Island.  Hope no one is getting bored of these shots of eroded sandstone.  The subject is so unique, and photogenic that I just shot it to death.  Eventually I will move on to something else.  This one was shot with my Ebony 4x5 view camera and a 180mm lens.  Like the others I have posted thus far, this one was on FP4 processed in Perceptol.  

January Image

This is the January image from my 2020 Calendar.  This shot was taken in an abandoned old farm house up in Smoky Lake County.  The images was taken back in November of 2016.  The light levels in the old house were very low and as a result the exposure was a long one... 60 seconds.

Procrastination

After months of procrastination I finally finished up the last section of kitchen cabinet for Nordegg.  It has been essentially done for quite some time.  Just had to mount the drawer fronts, and the doors.  I got that finished up last week and then this week I wrapped everything up for transport.  The next time that I go out to Nordegg with a helper, I'll take it along.

This is actually the middle section of cabinet in a U-shaped kitchen.  So, in order to put it into place I'll need to disconnect the sink that I have temporarily installed, and remove the temporary plywood counter top.  Then the fridge will need to be pulled out of the way so that the left side of the cabinet can be pulled back.  The center section will go into place, then the left side back into place, and then the fridge rolled back in.

I will likely put the temporary countertop and sink back into place for now.  We haven't decided exactly what we'll be doing for a permanent countertop.  Probably go with some quartz or granite but haven't really looked into that yet.  Need to get these cabinets installed first and then final dimensions can be confirmed for whatever we decide to use on top.

I've also started working on the bunkbed that I'm building for the girls bedroom and have the two boxes for the mattresses put together and ready to finish.  Now just need to move on to the posts and frames.

2020 Calendar

For the past five years or so I have been printing an annual calendar.  I get about 20 copies made up and give them away to family and a few close friends.  Every month features one of my large format black and white images.  For the past two or three years I have printed calendars in "Landscape" format.  This year I decided to print in "Portrait" format so that I could feature some of my vertical images.  I have included images that date back about three years.  This is partly to showcase some of my verticals, but also because I didn't do all that much shooting in 2018, and haven't processed most of my work yet from 2019.  Here is a scan of the cover.  This is a shot of Jasper Lake in Jasper National Park.  I took the image in October 2016 on the Monochrome Guild's Fall Photo Weekend.

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Sandstone, Grass and Pool

Here is another shot from Ford Cove on Hornby Island.  This is also from the recent trip in October.  I used a longer focal length 300mm lens to get in a little tighter on the detail of this outcropping eroded sandstone.  The grass and pebbles in the tidal pool give some indication of the scale.  It's pretty intimate and small in this case.  I used my 4x5 Ebony view camera and shot this on Ilford FP4 film, processed in Perceptol developer.

October and November Game Camera Images

I pulled the memory card from my game camera and found a few cool images from the past few weeks.  Always a little more activity when I put out some oats.  All the local furred and feathered residents seem to continue to stop by and check what's going on...

Nordegg Weekend

Margarit and I went out to the cottage on the last weekend of November.  We brought no kids, and no pets, so it is was unbelievably quiet and relaxing.

We left the city on Saturday morning about 9:30AM.  We stopped at the Antique Store in Rimbey and had a look around.  We ended up buying an old wood pitch fork, which we will hang on the wall out at the cottage.  As we were rolling west out of Rimbey the thermometer on the truck registered a temperature of -20C.  

About an hour later we rolled into Rocky Mountain House.  We made a lunch stop at Cucina, one of our favorite restaurants.  It is owned by an Asian couple that immigrated to Canada several years ago.  The menu is a mix of Korean, Italian, with a little red neck red meat thrown in to appeal to the locals.  We haven't managed to stop here all summer as we usually had a vehicle full of pets, or it was way past meal time.  This time around it worked and we had a really nice lunch together.  After lunch we hit a couple of the Antique Stores in Rocky and Margarit bought a few small items.

Later in the afternoon as we headed west towards Nordegg, it got quite a bit warmer.  As we drove up over the ridge at Saunders the truck thermometer registered a temperature of -3C.  Obviously there was some warm air pushing over the mountains.

When we got out to the cottage, there was no one around.  We took a walk around the subdivision in the afternoon and there were only two other vehicles out at cottages on Tamarack Trail, and only a handful more in the more established section.  It was very peaceful and quiet.

Once the fire in the wood stove got going, and the chill was taken out of the cottage, it was really cozy and warm.  We couldn't seem to get the stove to draft properly at first and promptly filled the cottage with smoke, setting off the smoke detectors.  Eventually we got the fire going and aired out the place.  The furnaces didn't even kick in and the fire was all that we needed all weekend.  We made an evening meal of homemade pizza and salad and then watched a documentary DVD.

On Sunday it was even warmer.  The tempereature got up to about +4C.  We had a big breakfast together and then relaxed, lazing around the cottage.  I put some oats out for the deer and filled up the bird feeder.  A Whitetail doe eventually wandered over and had something to eat but mostly it was the squirrel, the magpies and some whiskeyjacks that were gorging themselves.  That squirrel was really defensive and kept chasing the magpies away.

By mid afternoon we reluctantly packed up and headed on our way.  We decided to take a quick spin up the valley to see if the lake had frozen yet.  There was barely a puff of breeze at the cottage and most of the way up the valley it was reasonably calm.  Once we got out to the Bighorn River we could see the wind sweeping snow over the peaks of the Bighorn Range.  Abraham Lake had a little ice at the east end, but mostly it was still open.  At Allstones Creek it was pretty breezy and there were waves on the lake.  Once we turned the corner towards Windy Point and the Mt. Michener viewpoint it was a full blown gale.  Windy Point lived up to its name once again.  It was a challenge to hold the truck doors open and there were large rolling whitecaps on the lake.  I took a couple of photographs with my medium format panoramic camera but Margarit had to hold the truck door open beside me to shelter me from the wind so that my tripod didn't blow over.  The temperature was +2C, but with the wind, which must have been at least 50kmh, it felt more like -15 or -20C.

After packing up here we headed for home.  We saw one solitary wild horse on the drive home, and had seen one herd on the way out.  Other than a couple of deer there was not much wildlife out by the highway.  We stopped in Rimbey on the way home and had dinner together at a place called James' Bar and Grill.  The menu was extensive and the food was homemade and really hearty.  A place we will definitely consider stopping at again.

The three girls survived the weekend at home in our absence.  They did not accomplish much in the way of chores and housecleaning and didn't even live up to our low expectations.  But all in all the weekend went pretty well and hopefully Margarit and I can head out together again sometime soon.

Hornby Shore

This shot was taken on our first trip out to Hornby Island.  It was just a short distance from the Marina at Ford Cove.  When we returned a couple of days later the sky was clear and the tide lower.  But I kind of like the moodiness of the sky in this first image.  This is from the first batch of negatives that I've processed.  Ilford FP4+ in Perceptol.  I shot this with my 4x5 view camera and a 135mm lens, with no filter.

Helliwell Spit

Here's a scan of another negative from the trip out to Vancouver Island.  This shot was taken at Helliwell Provincial Park on Hornby Island.  This the last shot of the day, after hiking around the perimeter of the park.  It was a beautiful spot, but I found very little that was visually motivating.  Perhaps I was just worn out from a long day of shooting and not seeing anything.  It was close to 4:00 in the afternoon when I saw this spit, projecting out into the Strait of Georgia, with the Sunshine Coast on the mainland,visible in the distance.  I took this shot before we packed up and headed back through the woods, to the parking area and the truck.  From there we had to drive across Hornby to catch the ferry to Denman Island.  Then it was a drive across Denman and another ferry to get back to Vancouver Island and the drive up to our rental house at Courtenay.  A great place to visit, but running your life based on these ferry schedules would become very frustrating over time.

Vancouver Island Negatives

This is the first scan of the first batch of negatives from the recent Vancouver Island trip.  This image was shot on FP4+ film, in 4" x 5" format, processed in Perceptol 1:1.  I expose the film at 100iso and develop for 11:45 minutes at 24C.  The shot was taken with my Ebony 4x5 and a Rodenstock 90mm lens, with #25 Red Filter.  The 90mm focal length is roughly equivalent to a 28mm lens on a small format camera.

The beaches of Hornby Island feature some spectacularly eroded sandstone.  This spot, near Heron Rocks and Ford Cove was particularly spectacular.  There will be more images from the trip posted in the coming days.