On January 6th I took a drive down to East Coulee. I had a small load of hardwood and hardwood plywood cuttings that had been riding around in the back of my truck for some time. This was material that I had to clean out of the Mac Plastics shop when I retired. I plan on using much of this material when we construct our guest cottage out at Nordegg. For now, I stored it, along with some equipment, down in my shop in East Coulee.
I took both my 4x5 and my 8x10 view cameras along with me for the drive. I find that snow in the badlands has a very abstract sort of appearance and I was anxious to try and photograph it. On January 6th the sky was heavily overcast and the light was very flat. But it was quite warm and peaked at +5C, with no wind. I stopped on a side road not far from East Coulee and photographed some of the badlands formations. It was dead silent, with not a soul around and not even a puff of breeze.
That afternoon I stopped at the shop and unloaded all of the stuff out of my truck and put it away in the building. Frank and I hung out at the shop that evening. Due to the current Covid restrictions we were very careful. We had a good visit, but stayed well distanced from each other. We had a few beers that evening and talked politics and business. I crashed in my trailer for the night. The next morning I got up and organized my gear. Frank and I visited a little more on the morning of the 7th before I eventually hit the road for home. Thursday was sunny with clear blue skies and the light was fantastic. Unfortunately it was a little colder... around -4C, and there was a bit of a breeze.
I stopped near Willow Creek and photographed a badlands formation in the beautiful winter light. I used both the smaller 4x5 and the larger 8x10 camera on this trip. It's looking like I am going to be a lot more active photographically in 2021, than I have been in recent years. The excitement of the new camera helps, but also the freedom of being retired makes a huge difference.
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