Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Winter Visit to East Coulee

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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