Finished the Rosie Prints

I have finished all fifteen copies of the "Whole Lotta Rosie's" print from the shoot back in August.  I still have to cut frames for four of them, but the rest are being provided just mounted, matted and bagged.  100% of the revenue from these prints will be donated to Knitted Knockers, the breast cancer charity that the shoot was done for.

Soap Tray

This is a rather subdued composition, from the recent visit to the Nordegg Historic site.  This is a soap dish, inside one of the shower rooms, in the wash house.  I shot this one on Fuji Neopan Acros 100 with my Ebony view camera and a Nikkor M 200mm lens.  I like the simple composition, but this needs some work in printing to nurse some contrast into the subject.  Perhaps this one is considered for the Apparitions project, but Arturo shot the scene too, so perhaps his image is better.

Coke Ovens

This is a shot from the trip to Crowsnest Pass in September.  Margarit joined me on that trip and we met up with Chris and Connie to explore a couple of locations for the Beer Parlor Project.  On September 24th, our oldest daughter Hailey's 20th birthday, we hiked up to the ghost town of Lille.  It was a 6km round trip, with a couple of steep slopes.  In the heat of the day it was a bit of a challenge packing heavy camera gear and my big wood tripod.  

I really like this shot of the abandoned Coke ovens, so that makes the hike worth the effort.  I'm told that the mine closed down around 1913... before the first World War.   One of the interpretive signs at the site referred to these as the Bernard Ovens...

I shot this on Fuji Neopan Acros 100 with my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Rodenstock 90mm lens.  I used a #8 Yellow filter to deepen the sky value a little, and increase contrast.  Development was in Rodinal 1:50 for 11:00 minutes.

A Little More Epoxy

On October 13th I gave Margarit a hand and we added a little more epoxy resin to the mold with the pebbles.  We had actually used all of the resin we had the first time around, but I ordered another batch.  It showed up while I was away in Nordegg.

That first batch shrunk somewhat as it cured and left one of the larger rocks sticking out a little.  There was also a patch in the center where the surface was a little uneven.  I calculated that about 1.3L of resin would be enough to fill everything properly.  This also gave us a little wiggle room for further shrinkage.  But, this time around it was not as deep a pour as we only added about 1/4" on top of what we did previously.  Hopefully this cures evenly, and without much shrinkage, and a little faster than last time.  In a few days we'll be able to take it out of the mold and see what the sides and bottom turned out like.

Highway 589

On the morning of October 17th, after I left the shop in East Coulee, I headed slowly for home.  I made a stop in the badlands, near the Hoodoos, and shot some of the formations in low fall light.  Then I stopped at the vegetable stand in town and bought a whole bunch of fresh veggies.  These are grown at greenhouses in Redcliff, and sold in a small building in town on the honor system.

After that I hit the highway for home.  North of Drumheller I took a side trip on Secondary Highway 589.  I stopped at a few places along the way and photographed a number of old buildings.  I think I got a couple of decent shots for my efforts, and the light was really good on this day.  It is an area worth a return trip to at some point.....

Open House at the Rock

The "Rock" is a gift shop in East Coulee.  It is part of our Dinosaur Valley Studios operation.  This year was just sort of a test... to get the shop set up... and to see how much interest there is, and what products might sell.  All of the items on display and available to purchase, are produced by Dinosaur Valley Studios.

On Saturday October 15th we hosted an open house.  I was in attendance as some of my photographs are for sale in the shop, and because I'm a shareholder of the company.  The weather was beautiful for mid October and we had a good turnout.  We estimate that about a hundred people dropped by during the course of the afternoon.

Later and into the evening a bunch of us hung around outside at the shop, and had a fire.  We stayed up until the wee hours, sharing some drinks and snacks and just visiting.  Eventually I turned in and crashed for the night in my trailer, which is stored in the yard beside the shop.

On Sunday, after a bit of a rough start, I hung around the shop all day and helped Frank.  He had a location manager and artistic director from a film production company coming by.  They hired us to customize an old Ford pickup for a prop in an film they were shooting in the area.  It was a crew out of Quebec and I understand it was a french language film.  The truck was a rusty old Ford F150 of about 2000 vintage.  We had to cut and weld a bunch of steel to the truck and spent the day doing that.  On Sunday evening I headed out into the hills with my view camera and took a few shots of the badlands in evening light.  In hindsight I should have headed out a bit earlier, as the light was over and done with before I shot all I could have.

On Monday morning I got up and after visiting with Frank for a bit, I hit the road for home.

Kodak High Speed Infrared - Shunda Creek Backwater

Here's another shot from the recent batch of Kodak High Speed Infrared.  This one was taken back in June of this year.  This is some backwater along Shunda Creek, not too far from my cottage in Nordegg.  I shot this with my Ebony SV45TU view camera and a 110mm lens, with a #25 Red Filter.  

The film was loaded just a week or two before it was exposed, and then unloaded into the fridge a couple of weeks afterward.  It was processed at the beginning of October.  There seems to be very little issue with the fogging that was previously a common problem for me.

Perogies

On Thanksgiving Monday, for some reason, I felt compelled to make a batch of perogies.  It's not that we needed them for Thanksgiving, as we already had our dinner the day before.  I ordered a pasta roller online and it had arrived a week or so prior.  And back in early September, at Nordegg Days, I attended a perogy making workshop.  This was to be the day that I would give it a try.

I followed the recipe that we had been given at the workshop and mixed up a full batch of the dough.  I boiled some potatoes to make the filling, and mixed half with cottage cheese and the other half with cheddar cheese.  Then I spent a couple of hours filling all the perogies and getting them into the freezer.  I never did an exact could but made somewhere around a hundred of them.  One of these days we will have some of them for a meal, and I will provide a review.

Whole Lot More Rosie's

My friend Chris shared these photographs from the Rosie the Riveter shoot earlier this summer.  One of the images is mine, and I've posted it here on my blog in the past.  The rest were taken by my friend Byron Robb, and by Chris.  I am currently in the process of mounting and matting 15 copies of my print to be distributed to all the ladies that took part.

Beer Parlor Project

I recently processed a batch of Fuji Neopan Acros 4x5 film and it yielded three Beer Parlor Project images.  These were all from our recent trip down to Crowsnest Pass in late September.  The first two shots are of the Greenhill Hotel in Blairmore.  The last one is of the nearby Elk River Inn.  It was quite cool and blustery when the Greenhill shots were taken and I'm pleased that the images turned out as well as they did.  We really didn't get anything more from this stop on the Beer Parlor tour as there was virtually no one around, and nothing going on inside.  

The shot of Len's Elk River Inn was under much better conditions and it adds to the selection of other images that I was able to get from this location.  I still have a started roll of 35mm film in small camera from the stop and will get to processing it once I finish the roll.

A Busy Week in Nordegg

I arrived out at the cottage on the evening of October 2nd, and stayed until the morning of the 9th.  The girls had school and work so they all stayed home in the city, and I was out by myself.

During the week it was fairly busy in the subdivision as there are a number of cottages under construction.  There have been five foundations poured in the last few weeks, in addition to all of the other cottages that are further along in construction.  There are only a handful of four or five lots left that have not started building yet.

For the latter half of the week, with some of my other chores completed and out of the way, I set to work more seriously in the guest cottage.  The weather has been exceptionally mild all week.  On Friday I took a break from working and went and played another round of golf.  Every time I expect it to be the last round of the year, but then the weather keeps hanging on.  Once again I played two balls, and for most of the round I was the only player on the course.  My scores weren't great... one ball was 50 and the other 47.

With that out of my system, I went back over to the guest cottage and kept working.  I got aspen paneling installed to the main wall in the cottage.  This is an interior wall that spans the width of the cottage and separates the two bedrooms from the living area.  The last couple of inches at the top need some boards ripped down in width and I didn't have time to dig out the tablesaw before I wrapped things up.  But I did finish the last of the subfloor at the base of that wall.  The only subfloor remaining is a small area between the entrance door and the wood stove.  Right now I have our kitchen range stored here, and can't move it by myself.  The second bedroom also needs to done, but I have my chopsaw set up in there right now.  I also worked on some of the electrical stuff as I went along.  I connected the range plug in the kitchen, and then did the receptacles in the main wall.  I also mounted the thermostat properly.

Earlier in the week I got a bunch of firewood split and stacked.  Four trees came down behind the cottage over the past year and I cut those up when I was out a few weeks ago.  This time around I finished splitting the last of those logs and started a new wood pile over by the guest cottage.  I also split a bunch more from the big log pile in our yard, and replenished the stack beside the garage.  I burnt this entire pile of wood last winter.  I now have it almost full again... though I think this time around I may have piled it a little higher.

I spent Saturday evening tidying up the cottage.  I swept the floor, took out the garbage, washed the dishes, vacuumed the rugs and generally got packed up to go home.  I headed home first thing on Sunday morning and joined the girls back in the city for Thanksgiving Dinner.