Winter Harvest

For a couple of years in a row we were faced with the early arrival of winter in central Alberta.  This particular photograph was taken in early 2017 and the canola swaths are still laying in the field, unharvested.  One year was particularly bad, but I can't reacll if it was 2017, or the next year.  Snow arrived early and stayed... for a couple of years in a row.  Many farmers were caught off guard and a lot of crops were left out in the field.  It varied from one area to the next but throughout central Alberta unharvested crops varied from around 50% to approaching 100%.  Some fields were swathed but not combined, while others were not even cut.  In the following springs many farmers had to finish taking off their crops in order to seed for the upcoming growing season.

This shot was taken up to the northeast of Edmonton in Two Hills County.  This rolling field had swaths of canola that got buried by that early snow.  I shot this in Black and White and quite liked the image, particularly the patterns of the rolling field.  This particular shot was taken on color transparency film and was part of the big batch of E-6 that I recently processed.

The colors are somewhat skewed as the E-6 chemistry that I used had expired in 2008.  The film itself was Fujichrome Velvia 4" x 5", and it expired in January of 2010.  It was sitting in the film holder, loaded and unexposed, since March of 2013.  And then it sat in the fridge after exposure, from 2017 until last week when I finally processed it.