Schoolhouse Windows

The abandoned schoolhouse at Sheerness, Alberta.  There is an active open pit coal mine a short distance away from the former townsite.  The race is on as the mine is only set to keep operating for a very short period of time before the nearby power generating plant switches to natural gas.  Will they make it up to the town before the change... remains to be seen...  I thought I'd better document the school before it is gone.  This was taken in September of 2019 on Ilford HP5 film, processed in 510 Pyro developer.  It was taken with my Ebony 4x5 view camera and a 90mm lens.

Miners Shack

Back at the end of August I went out for an ATV ride at Nordegg.  I wound my way back onto a bunch of the groomed trails in behind and above the townsite.  There were Lupines blooming all over the hillsides and it was quite spectacular.  I had known of this old miner's shack for many years, but never got around to photographing it before.  That is the remains of an old gate in front of it.  I shot this with my 4x5 view camera on Agfapan 25 film.  The film was poorly stored when I bought on Ebay from a seller down in the United States.  The boxes were mouldy and musty smelling, despite the fact that the seller claimed it had been stored frozen.  The expiry date on the film was 1991.  I've been using it ever since, and the odd sheet has some mold spots on it, but for the most part it's still OK.  Every once in a while it yields a pretty decent image... like this one.  This was shot with a 90mm wide angle lens and processed in Rodinal developer.

Eight Days

This is a photograph of one of the graves in the Historic Nordegg Cemetery.  I took this photograph earlier this fall.  The headstone says.... "In Memory of Dorothy Madeline" who died in April of 1920, at the age of eight days.  Life must have been so difficult out in the frontier of a coal mining town a century ago.  We take for granted so many things in these modern times.  The current Covid pandemic is a bit of an eye opener for all of us and makes us realize how mortal we really are. 

Hotel

This is a recently processed sheet of Ilford Delta 100.  I developed the film in Rodinal 1:50.  The shot was taken back in August of 2019.  At the time I was out exploring with my friends Court, Nigel and Arturo.  We were staying in East Coulee, and photographing around the Drumheller Valley, and also up around Sheerness.  We were working on a group project visually exploring the coal mining history in the province.  That project is still ongoing, though it has largely been put on hold this year due to Covid.  Eventually we hope to turn this project into a gallery exhibition, or perhaps some sort of publishing endeavor.  Hopefully we can resume activities in 2021.  

This particular image sort of fits the theme, though not fully.  This sign sits on top of the now closed Seymour Hotel in Stettler.  This hotel would have once served the nearby coal mining operations at Sheerness.  I took this with my Ebony 4x5 view camera and a 300mm lens.

In Focus

Once again, Alexis Marie Chute is curating the InFocus Exhibition.  This is an exhibit of photographs that is displayed every year in conjunction with the Exposure Festival that takes place three hundred kilometers south, in Calgary, every February.  I think this exhibit has been ongoing since about 2014.  I have had one or more of my prints exhibited in every edition of the show, with the exception of last year.  Last year I was so wrapped up at work, and the sale of my company was imminent, and I missed the submission deadline.  This year the submission deadline was on November 16th.  The resulting accepted images will be shown in February of 2021.

There is a theme this year.... Brave New World.  I don't work well with themes as I have my own projects that I work towards and I shoot in my own style.  I did find three images in my archive that sort of fit this theme, so I sent them in.  By the end of November I will find out if any of them are accepted for exhibition.

The first is a shot of one of the ancient Limber Pines at Whirlpool Point.  This tree is among the oldest in Alberta.  One of the trees dated from this site is estimated to be 2500 to 3000 years old.  I thought this kind of fit the theme.

This next shot is an older image of some aspen trunks out at Elk Island National Park.  This was shot with a technique called Orton Imagery.  It is actually a double exposure, one in focus and one out of focus, that gives the image a bit of a glow.  My feeble attempt to try to fit to the theme...

Finally this one, a shot from the summer of 2019.  The carcass of this old Cottonwood Tree hangs on and defies gravity despite the harsh conditions.  This is a bit of a stretch to fit the theme, but the only thing I could come up with for a third image to round out the submission.

Easing into Retirement

I'm starting to get used to the idea of being retired.  I still have to work one day per week, until the company shuts down for the Christmas break.  I've chosen to work Tuesdays, and I have four of them left.  Other than that commitment, I'm pretty much retired.

I've certainly been able to keep myself busy, but it is at a much more relaxed pace than I have functioned at in the past.  At the end of the day I look back at what I've accomplished, and it is always something.  But it seems sort of minimal some days, and I recognize that this is all due to the relaxed pace.  I still get up every morning at the same time as I always did and dive into something.  I'm now able to read the morning paper in the morning, rather than the next evening when the news is already old.

I've designed my annual calendar and sent it out for printing.  I entered the InFocus Exhibition this year and sent in four images for consideration.  I've been working on cutting mounts and mats, and dry mounting and framing the prints from the wedding that I photographed this summer.  I've been doing some general cleanup and organization in my office and in my darkroom.  I've processed a bunch of film and scanned some of the negatives.  I reloaded a pile of empty film holders that I had laying around.  I finished up some drawings of the cottage that we're going to build next year and submitted my Development Permit application.  I went in the office and worked on Tuesday.  I would be playing hockey too, but our games this week got cancelled due to the virus pandemic.

The weather is a little chilly right now... only about -12C.  The sky is heavy and leaden and the light flat as a pancake.  I'm looking forward to some better weather so that I can get out and do some photography.  For now I will continue with all my little projects around the house and enjoy my days.

2021 Calendar

Once again I am printing a calendar for the upcoming year.  I have been doing this since 2014.  I feature some of my favorite recent photographs on these calendars.  I give them away to friends, neighbors and family at Christmas time.  I always try to use images that are no more than three or four years old.  I never have a lot of really current ones to choose from as I am usually behind in processing my film.  I recently outlined this in a blog post with the title "Backlog".  The image selection is somewhat challenging as I alternate from year to year between landscape and portrait format.  I also try to select images that suit the time of year for each month.  This year it cost me over four hundred dollars to get a batch printed but its worth it, as they are usually quite well received.  Every year I seem to get more and more requests and the quantity ends up increasing.  This is the cover of the calendar.  The image is of a plunge pool at the edge of Englishman River Falls on Vancouver Island.  I took this shot on my trip out to the Island in October of 2019.  Over the coming weeks I will post the images that I ended up using for the twelve months of 2021.

Rimrock Hoodoos

This is an old one that dates back to October of 2013.  This was the first trip to southern Utah that I went on with my friends Rob and Brad.  As I spend more time at home in my semi-retirement I actually have time to go back and look over old images, catch up on chores, and just slow down.  This image was taken on Kodak Tri-X Pan film, developed in PMK.  I shot it with my Ebony 4x5 view camera and a 150mm lens.

Retirement Luncheon

I went in to the office on the day after Remembrance Day for my scheduled work day.  I had been told not to bring a lunch as they were planning a staff luncheon.  It turned out to be a retirement luncheon for me.  In addition to all of my co-workers at Mac Plastics, there were also two guys, Randy and David, from the parent company.  Randy is now based at the Whitehorse head office, but happened to be in Edmonton.  And David lives in Strathmore and drove up for the day.  Some speeches were made and I was thanked for my years of service to the company and for building such a solid operation.  They seemed genuinely grateful, and pledged to keep my legacy ongoing.  They presented a plaque honoring not only me, but also my late father, for the contributions that we made in starting and building the company.  I understand that this plaque will be permanently displayed in the office.  In addition to all that, they presented me with a gift card for a local photography store.  That gift card was of a sizeable value and I want to use it to buy myself something that I will have for the rest of my life.  I'm not sure exactly what that will be, but it will NOT be some shitty digital camera that is obsolete and worn out in two years time....

It has been a challenge for me to transition out of the ownership of the company.  I have always worked for myself and never had to answer to anyone before.  I've been anxiously awaiting the day when my work commitments will end and I can be fully retired.  But, it was really touching to be appreciated like this and to be recognized for what I accomplished.  In my thank you speech I thanked the new management team for their generosity, but also thanked my staff for being with me all through the years and for being part of the team that made this accomplishment possible, and for helping to provide me with the opportunity for an early retirement.  It was a nice day...

Pontiac

I shot this negative back in 2018, down in southwestern Saskatchewan.  I was on a reunion trip with Chris, Connie and Rueben to revisit some the locations from our Forgotten Prairie documentary.  I somehow managed to cram a tripod and a 4x5 view camera into the backseat of this old Pontiac sedan.  It was taken on Bergger Panchro 400 film with a Schneider Super Angulon XL 58mm wide angle lens.

A couple days alone

I'm beginning to lose track of time....   Now that I am almost retired, and go long stretches of time without having to go into work, I begin to lose touch with what day of the week it is.  It is a wonderful feeling that I have never experienced before.  My life has been on such a hectic pace for so many years, that this is really refreshing.  I just finished up a stretch of eight days off work.

The weather was really mild for the first couple of days off and that's when I went out on the recent day trips with my camera.  I'm glad I took advantage of that nice weather as it quickly came to an end.  I also spent some time down in my darkroom and processed a bunch of film.  I'm just in the midst of scanning all those negatives and will have a number of new images to share in the coming days.

At the end of my time off I headed out to the cottage in Nordegg for a couple of days.  None of the girls felt like coming along so I went by myself.  When I arrived I pulled my truck into the driveway, shut off the engine, opened the door and stepped outside.  I was stunned by the silence.  There was a couple of inches of fresh snow that acted like a muffler and dampened any sound.  None of the neighbors were out, there was no traffic on the highway, and not even a puff of wind.  The silence was deafening... so much so that you could have heard a mouse fart.

I didn't really do anything for those couple of days.  Just kept the fire going, and got the cottage cozy and warm.  Shortly after arriving a deer walked up to the window and stared at me.  She was a big doe that I recognized and was a regular visitor.  She looked at me knowingly, expecting that I would put out some oats for her.  When I didn't immediately get to it, she just laid down under a big spruce, about 50 feet from my bay window.  After a while I got around to getting outside and dumped half a sack of oats out in the feeder for her.  She scampered away a little when I went outside, but never stayed more than about 50 feet away from me.  Even before I got back into the cottage she was already into that pile of oats.  It wasn't long before a few others joined her.

I hung up some framed portraits of the girls.  I shot these about 3-1/2 years ago with my view camera, and Margarit framed them together into an antique frame.  I found a spot on the landing of our stairway to hang it up.  I also put out a second bird feeder, and filled it with seed.

Other than that I just played guitar, watched some DVD's and enjoyed the solitude.  On Remembrance Day I made my way back to the city as I had to return to the office for a day on November 12th. 

Totem Pole

I took this shot back in July when Hailey and I spent a few days together out at the cottage.  It was taken with my 4" x 5" view camera and a 300mm lens, on Bergger Panchro 400 film.  I recently processed a couple of batches of this film in Ilford Perceptol developer.  I like the film, and the combination of it and this developer.  I seem to be having some issues with a bluish purple stain when I use this developer.  The stain seems to be around the perimeter of the sheet, on the emulsion side of the film.  Very strange indeed...  I thought maybe it was related to contamination of some sort, so I washed out all of my tanks and equipment and started with fresh chemistry.  The stain still seems to be there, though I don't recall getting it when I use other developers.  I hope that the stain is minor enough that I can print through it and it won't show up and spoil any prints.  It doesn't seem to be visible in the scans.

This was taken in Clearwater County, just outside of Banff National Park, along the David Thompson Highway.  This is the aftermath of the Spreading Creek Burn that swept through the area several years ago.

Backlog

With the snowy, cold weather arriving Saturday, I decided to stay indoors and attempt to catch up on some chores.  I unloaded about 35 film holders... so about 70 sheets... all images I have taken since mid September.  It has been a busy fall and the fact that I am now semi-retired, allows me to get out with the camera more often than in recent years.  My long term average has been to shoot about 350 sheets of 4" x 5" large format film per year.  With the recent outings this week I am now up to about 325 sheets for 2020 so far.  

After I unloaded all of these film holders I went through all the boxes of exposed film that I have, that is awaiting processing.  I knew there was quite a bit, but even I was surprised by the size of the backlog.  Including the few sheets of color film that I have taken, I have 615 sheets that are waiting to be processed.  In addition to this I also have some roll film, and a little 8" x 10" sheet film.  It's a good thing I'm about to retire and will have to some time to get after this...!!

Small Town Theatre

Thursday was forecast to be the last of the mild days.  I thought I would take advantage of it and attempt to photograph the Theatre in Vegreville.  I had seen it the evening before on our way back in to the city at the end of the Fall Photo Day Trip.  The light was gone and I was unable to photograph it at that time.  On November 5th I headed out.  It was heavily overcast and the light was not great.  The temperature was already on the way down, as the heat wave was coming to an end.  I think it still got up to around +6 that afternoon... not bad for the beginning of November in central Alberta.

I have been working on a project documenting old neon signs.  This is one of the buildings that fits that theme so I wanted to get out and shoot it.  It is unlikely that this sign will disappear in the short term, but you never know.  Many of the signs that I have photographed over the past few years are now gone.  Perhaps there is an opportunity to shoot this one again, in better light, but I took advantage of the mild temperatures and got a couple of shots of it with my view camera.  These are just snapshots taken with my phone.

Fall Photo Day Trip 2

A short time ago some members of the Monochrome Guild headed out for day trip.  That was intended to keep the tradition of the annual Fall Photo Weekend alive.  We succeeded at that, but it was a rather cold and miserable day to be out.

With the current mild weather some of the retired guys in the group decided to head out for a day trip in the middle of the week.  This was an opportunity for some that couldn't make it out the last time, to get out with the group.  We have done a fall weekend trip for over twenty years now and this year, it was somewhat limited due to the Covid pandemic.  Although I am not yet fully retired I had a few days off and so I organized the trip.  Court, Arturo, Fred and Gord headed out with me.  It was still rather a weird experience as we had to venture out in a parade of five vehicles due to the need to continue to isolate.  

We headed out into the area Northeast of Edmonton.  It was a beautiful day, mostly clear, with mild temperatures.  We explored at an old church, an abandoned baseball diamond, an old farm yard, and couple of small towns.  We intended to photograph St. George's Church in Two Hills County, but when we got there we discovered that the church had been demolished.  I'm glad I had a chance to shoot it a couple of times in the past.

This is a shot of that church that I took with my view camera a few years ago.  There is nothing left of the church as I understand that it was knocked down, burned and buried.  The cemetery is still there, but somehow that is sort of lacking, without the church.  On the way back home into the city I took a bit of a side trip through Vegreville to see if there were any interesting old signs for my ongoing project on Old Neon.  There was a cool theatre in town, but it was too dark to shoot it by the time I got there.  I will return on another day for that one.

Heat Wave

Shortly after writing about the winter like weather that we experienced, we were subjected to a heatwave.  This was right around Halloween.  There were a few high temperature records broken around the province but for the most part we just approached the records.  It got up to +19C at Rocky Mountain House when I made by way back home at the beginning of November.  Down in southern Alberta, including the Drumheller area, it got up to as high as +23C.  In the Edmonton area it didn't get quite that warm and I think it topped out around 16 or 17 degrees for a couple of days.  I was still out at the cottage with Hailey on Halloween but Margarit and the girls said we had record numbers of trick-or-treaters at our house, despite all the Covid precautions.  I think the official count was something like 58 kids.

I took advantage of the mild weather and went out with my cameras a couple of times.  I will write separate blog posts about those trips.  
In the end the mild weather was shortlived.  By Friday November 6th it cooled down to near normal temperatures.  On Saturday November 7th we woke up to snow.  It snowed heavily through the day and the temperature dropped down to -4C on Saturday afternoon.

Roundabout Way

On Thursday October 29th I went in to the shop in the morning.  It was my intention just to load up some stuff and hit the road.  But, I checked my work e-mail and there was a rush inquiry about a project that I had been involved in a couple of months prior.  A large glass skylight seemed to be on the verge of going ahead and they needed some up to date final pricing.  So, I spent a couple of hours looking after this before I returned to my personal project.

About a decade ago I purchased an 8x10 enlarger from a professional photographer in Toronto.  Including the cost of crating and shipping I paid over $3000 for it.  It is very large and I don't really have room in my darkroom at home to set it up.  I want to overflow into the storage room outside my darkroom to be able to use it.  Of course over the years, with my work schedule, I never had time to undertake the renovation that this would require.  So the enlarger stayed in crates, stored in my shop.

Now that I have sold the business I need to get these crates out of the shop.  I elected to take them to my shop down in East Coulee and store them there.  This time I intend for this to be short term storage.  I want to tackle the renovations at home and be able to set this enlarger up by the spring.  This will allow me to print my 8"x10" negatives, as well as some 624 panoramas [2-1/4" x 9-1/4"].

By noon I had the three large crates loaded onto my truck with the forklift, strapped them down, and was on the way to East Coulee.  I arrived in the late afternoon and used the forklift there to unload them in the shop.  It was very chilly that evening and I had to turn up the heater to warm up the shop a little.  I grilled some smokies on my BBQ and then spent the night in the East Coulee Hilton....  That's actually our travel trailer that I keep stored in the shop when we aren't using it.

It was kind of cool to be around the shop on Friday, while it was in operation.  The employees were there working on a couple of small projects.  They are continuing with the coating and painting of the large dinosaur sculpture that they were working on last time Margarit and I were down.  They also had the sculpture of "Grouchy" that was being repainted.  We also have the skull of a Fin Whale that is being restored.  I think that in my retirement I will spend a little more time down here at the shop and help out with some of the cool projects that they work on.

Grouchy was finished, so in the late morning we loaded her up into my truck and I headed over to The Old Grouches Cozy Cafe.  This is a small restaurant in Drumheller that is a favorite of many locals.  I met Frank there and we re-installed her on her perch out front.  Then we stayed for lunch.

After lunch I hit the road and headed off across country to Nordegg.  It is actually further from Drumheller to Nordegg than it is from Edmonton.  It took about four hours to get there.  Hailey was at the cottage when I arrived and we spent a couple of days there.  It was quite mild and most of the snow that fell a week ago is now gone.  We had a big pasta dinner on Saturday night and watched some movies together.  We even watched an old horror movie, Nightmare on Elm Street, during the Blue Moon of Halloween.  There were no Trick-or-Treaters around out at Nordegg but I guess back at home in the city the girls had 58 ghosts and goblins come around.  This volume was as much or more than past years, somewhat surprising given the Covid situation.  But it was good to see that all the little kids are able to experience such a fun day...

By mid afternoon Sunday Hailey and I packed up and headed for home.  With the switch back to Standard Time on Sunday morning, it will be getting dark even earlier in the evenings now.

October Game Camera Photos

The batteries on my game camera died in that cold snap a little over a week ago.  I have images captured up to October 23rd.  But it turned really cold on October 24th and I have nothing then, or after.  Last time I was out at the cottage I pulled the memory card.  These are a handful of the best images that it captured over recent weeks.  I put in a new memory card and some fresh batteries and will continue to monitor who visits.

Global Warming...?

Owning property out at Nordegg really makes me question the concept of Global Warming.  For a couple of years in a row we got a big dump of snow on the last day of summer.  This year we had snow in August and September.  We have had snow several times now in October.  

It has been cold with a little snow back in Edmonton, but things are a lot more severe in Nordegg.  I headed out by myself on the afternoon of Friday October 23rd.  The girls all decided to stay home.  There wasn't really much on my agenda, just wanted to get away from the city for a bit, before heading back to work.  For the next couple of weeks I have to work two days per week but then by early November I am down to just one day per week until the end of the year.  Then retirement will be a reality.  Still trying to wrap my head around that, but really starting to enjoy the slower pace.

I brought along some of the prints that I've been working on.  There are three negatives that I shot back in July when my neighbors daughter got married.  My first attempt at shooting a wedding in large format, and it turned out pretty well if I do say so myself.

Road conditions were not great driving out on Friday, but not terrible either.  They generally get worse once we get further into winter.  I just hung around the cottage on Friday and didn't do much of anything.  On Saturday I slept in until around 10:30... so I must have needed it.  I felt really refreshed and relaxed most of the day Saturday.  I brought in some firewood, fed some oats to the deer and played guitar for a good part of the afternoon.  I made an early dinner and then watched a documentary on TV for a while.  In the mid evening I walked over to the neighbors place and presented them with the prints.

For the most part these were actually the rejects.  They all had little flaws and printing errors.  I kept the good ones back at home so that I can drymount, mat and frame them soon.  Rob and Brenda were thrilled with the pictures and there was a huge sense of satisfaction on my part for creating something that is so much appreciated.  A couple of other neighbors, Gene and Chris were also over.

We sat up until the early hours, visiting and doing a few tequila shots.  I tried to pace myself and think I kept reasonably coherent.  I actually didn't feel bad at all the next morning.

When I left their cottage shortly after midnight and got back to mine, it was -24C.  There was about six inches of fresh snow.  I think most of it fell on Friday, but it snowed lightly through the day for most of Saturday too.  I saw on the news that the ski hill on Mt. Norquay in Banff opened on Saturday, the earliest opening in 95 years.  The warming part seems to be missing the eastern slopes of Alberta...!

On Sunday I did more of the same.  Lounged around, doing as little as possible.  Changed out the swivels on some barstools that I bought on line.  The ones that they came with were really rickety and wobbly so I replaced them with better ones.  Puttered on a few other little chores, and played guitar a little more, but generally did next to nothing.  After dinner I watched a documentary for a while, and then went back to playing guitar for a couple of hours before going to bed.  By the time I quit playing my fingers were so sore I couldn't play any more even if I wanted to.

It stayed overcast on Sunday night and only dropped off to about -5C.  It was heavily overcast on Monday morning and looked as though it might snow.  Sure enough it did...  started around 10:00AM and snowed lightly through the morning.  I tidied up the cottage and got a few things organized before hitting the road for home in the afternoon.