Work Continues....

On November 20th I slept in a little, and then had a leisurely breakfast.  I eventually got my butt in gear and set to work in the guest cottage at around 11:00AM.  I had a number of things on my agenda, for this date, and I managed to get to most of them.

I managed to finish installing vinyl floor tiles in the west bedroom.  It was a mild day... for this time of year... but did not get nearly as warm as it had in recent days.  The sun busted out off and on, and the breeze was light, most of the time.  The temperature struggled up to about +5C.  In the late morning I dug out the table saw and cut up some hardwood for trim around the stone floor, and some hemlock for use as door stop stock.  I also set up the sawhorses outside and managed to prime and paint the hemlock, and get several coats of lacquer on the hardwood maple.  I never did get around to any ceramic tile, or any trim, but I was satisfied with what I was able to accomplish.

Later that evening I watched the Oilers game on TV, and was once again disgusted when they blew an early lead and lost the game, this time to the Florida Panthers.  Once the game ended, feeling rather tired, I went to bed.

The problem with going to bed early is that I can't sleep more than about 6 hours or so... and I was wide awake at about 4:00AM.  I laid around for over and hour and tried to fall back asleep, but I couldn't.  So by about 5:30 I just got up and got busy.  I had my morning coffee and some breakfast and did the dishes from the last couple of days before it even got light.

I worked in the guest cottage for a few hours in the morning.  I put away a bunch of junk and cleared some space in the East Bedroom.  Then I applied filler to the joints and screw heads in about half of the floor area.  This has to be done several hours in advance of applying adhesive and floor tiles.  While that filler was curing, I moved back to the West Bedroom.  I cut and installed casing around the door jamb, corner trim, and baseboards.  Once I had finished with that, I cut a bunch of ceramic tiles for the backsplash in the kitchen.  Then I moved over to the bathroom, and finished installing the strike plate and the stops in the door jamb.

By this time it was about 1:00PM.  The forecast was calling for this day to be the best day of the week.  So I took advantage of that and took a short break from work.  I went for a drive south on the Forestry Trunk Road as far as the North Ram River.  The temperature peaked at about +15C on my truck thermometer, but it was partly overcast and fairly breezy.  I stopped a couple of times and set up the view camera for a couple of compositions, but nothing really exciting.

When I got back to the cottage at about 3:30 I decided that I needed to do a little more work.  I glued the ceramic tiles on for the kitchen backsplash, below the window.  The I started installing vinyl floor tiles in the East Bedroom.  I shut things down around 4:30 and set about a few other chores.  I put a few oats out for the deer, and brought in some firewood.  Then I started the BBQ and put on a baked potato, some wings and a steak.  By early evening the wind had really picked up, and the temperature dropped right off.  It is forecast to snow overnight, and only make it up slightly above freezing on Wednesday.

Pothole

This is the second sheet of film that I processed from the recent Fall Photo Weekend in Jasper National Park.  As with a few of my other recently processed shots, this scan is a sheet of Bergger Pancro 400 film, processed in HC-110 Developer.  This is quite an improvement over my previous attempts at developing this film and the increased contrast is a positive in my books.  I will continue to work with this film and developer combination.

This shot was taken at a place called The Pothole.  This is just off the trail, below Athabasca Falls, in Jasper National Park.  There is a natural depression in the rocks that collects runoff water, and a little debris.  This shot is rather tight on some of the logs that have accumulated here.

I shot this on Remembrance Day... November 11th... just after we observed the moment of silence.  I took this at about 12:20 in the afternoon, with my Ebony 4" x 5" view camera and a somewhat long 210mm lens.

Moments before I took this photograph I helped out my friend Gord.  He had dropped his magnifying loop down beside the water.  I encouraged him to jump down and retrieve it, and the gave him a hand... quite literally... to pull him back up to the viewing area.  I think it worked out well for both of us, and I'm anxious to see the photograph that he took at the same time and place.

Rachel's Quinceanara

Back in the summer I took a bunch of portraits of my neighbor's daughter.  Rachel is turning 15 in January of 2024 and her family is planning a big Quinceanara celebration.  This is the celebration of a young woman coming of age.  Her Dad spent a lot of time in South America, and her mother is Hispanic.

I had the honor of being asked to take some portraits.  The family wanted some portraits of Rachel taken in the summer, as conditions in January will likely not be great for photographing outdoors.  The family also wanted the portraits taken in Black and White.

I was happy to oblige, and one evening last summer Rachel got all dressed up in her gown and we headed over to Rainbow Valley.  I shot about a dozen sheets of large format film, half on Ilford HP5 developed in 510 Pyro, and half on Bergger Pancro 400 developed in HC-110.

Following my return home from the Fall Photo Weekend in Jasper, I processed the Bergger stuff.  I had already processed the HP5 images earlier in the fall.  I am now able to review everything, and decide which images are technically the best.  Of course the family will have final say and decide which images they prefer as aesthetically the best.  I will provide them with high resolution scans of the images, and I will also make some darkroom prints for them from a couple of the best negatives.  This image, one of the ones shot on Bergger Pancro 400, is one of my favorites...

Good to be Back

On Friday November 17th we celebrated my Mom's 90th birthday.  Margarit and I, along with my brother Greg, his wife Barb, my nephew Colin, and Barb's Mom Shirley all took my Mom out for dinner.  It was a nice evening.  Sadly my brother Wes and his family from Calgary were not able to make it.

On Saturday the 18th I loaded up the truck and hit the road for Nordegg.  We have been accumulating all sorts of stuff at home in our living, waiting for the day when we can take it to Nordegg.  Although the guest cottage is not finished yet, it is far enough along that we can start taking stuff out, and making some space back home.

Last time I was out, way back in early October, I brought out the dinette table and two of the chairs.  This time around I loaded up the other two chairs.  I also loaded up an area rug, a bed frame, some finishing lumber, and a second hand slipper chair and end table that we bought.  I also managed to squeeze in the TV, some dishes, and a few other supplies.

I arrived at the cottage in the mid afternoon.  It was soooo nice to be back.....!  I have been on the road so much lately with the trips out to Vancouver Island and Jasper.  The last time that I was out at Nordegg it was early October, and I was still golfing.  There has been snow a couple of times already, the golf course is long closed, and the hockey rink will be open soon.

I off loaded everything once I arrived and put things in their proper place.  Then I settled down for the evening.  I tried to watch the hockey game on TV, but my Oilers soiled the mattress once again, and lost a road game to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

On Sunday morning I awoke before dawn.  I went downstairs to use the washroom and saw that the clock said 6:45.  I figured I might as well get up and get busy.  Later I realized that the clocks had not been set back to Standard Time, and it was really 5:45AM.  I had a shower, and then some coffee and some breakfast and then set to work.

I cleared out the west bedroom and applied filler to the screw heads in the subfloor.  Then I installed a small section of ceramic tile on the kitchen backsplash.  After that I proceeded with installation of the remaining trim in the bathroom.  By this time it had warmed up outside so I applied another coat of spray paint to the retro medicine cabinet that we bought some time ago.  Later still I continued with installation of about half of the floor tiles to the west bedroom.  Late in the afternoon I moved some materials around in the bedroom and applied filler to the rest of the screws.  This is in preparation for installation of the rest of the floor tiles tomorrow.  Finally, I moved a small sofa over from the main cottage.  By this time I was tired, and the late afternoon sun was setting.... early... as it does at this time of the year.  I shut things down and headed back over to the main cottage to make something for dinner.  I decided to run a batch of my Shrimp in Cream Sauce, and set to work on that.....

Headlight and Fender

I shot this old car last summer, as part of a documentary project that I hope to undertake.  This is a project that involves access to private property, and to gain the trust of those associated with the location.  So far things have kind of stalled, so it remains to be seen if the project can proceed in the spring.  I am confident that it will, but it will take some work.  In the short term I am not able to provide any further detail as to what the project is about, or where it is located.

I took this shot on August 30th at about noon.  It was recorded on Bergger Pancro 400 film, with my Ebony 4" x 5" view camera and a Nikkor 65mm wide angle lens.  No filter was used.  As per my previous posts, I developed this batch of film in Kodak HC-110 Developer and am quite happy with the resulting increase in contrast.  This is quite an improvement over my previous attempts at processing this film.

Athabasca Eddy

This is one of the first sheets of film I have developed from the recent Fall Photo Weekend in Jasper, with the Monochrome Guild.  This one was taken on Remembrance Day, November 11th, shortly after the moment of silence... at 11:50AM.  I used my Ebony 4" x 5" view camera, and a long 360mm lens.  A #25 Red Filter deepened the value of the turquoise colored water, as well as the small little shadow areas.  I shot this on a film that I don't use all that often.  This is Bergger Pancro 400, exposed at 320 iso.  In the past I have been disappointed with the lack of contrast exhibited by this film, so this time I experimented and processed in Kodak HC-110 Developer, dilution B, for 9:15 minutes at 24C.  This rather robust and fast acting developer provided a nice increase in constrast over what I'm used to with this film.

This is an eddy on the Athabasca River, in the canyon just below Athabasca Falls, in Jasper National Park.  The bubbles in the water were swirling around in this water worn cavity in the rock.  I thought a longer exposure would yield an interesting pattern.  I was not disappointed, and this is the result of a 4 second exposure.  I took a second shot on a different, slower film, with an even longer exposure.  I'm interested to see what that one looks like when I get around to processing the film.

West Lawn Columns

This one is from the recent Vancouver Island trip with Arturo and Chris.  This is the front entry of the West Lawn Building at the Riverview Mental Hospital in Coquitlam.  It was a pretty cool place and we spent over a day there photographing everything we could find.

This one was taken on October 28th at about 4:00 in the afternoon.  I used Kodak Tmax 100 film and developed it in 510 Pyro.  I shot this with my Ebony 4" x 5" view camera and a Rodenstock 90mm lens.  I think I'd like to print this one, but before I do, I wait until I develop the rest of the sheets that were taken at the same location and see which is best.

BP2.1 Greenhill Tavern

Just after returning home from the Fall Photo Weekend in Jasper, I processed a batch of Bergger Pancro 400 film.  This is a film that I do not shoot all that often.

I took some environmental portraits of my neighbor's daughter in advance of her 15th birthday celebration.  That celebration is coming up early in the new year, and I haven't developed all of the film yet.  Those portraits were on this same Bergger emulsion, and since the summer I have been shooting more of it to build up a batch for processing.  I shot a couple on the recent Jasper trip and that put me up to a total of 19 sheets, close enough to the full batch of 20, so I ran it.

The portraits turned out really nicely but I don't want to post them here on my blog until I get permission from my neighbor.  The rest of batch included various images, some dating back as far as the summer of 2021.

In the past I have developed this film in Perceptol or Rodinal.  I was never overly thrilled with the results as it was always a little flat and dull.  The development times were over 20 minutes and this was rather tedious.  This time around I developed in Kodak HC-110 Developer.  This is a vigorous and fast acting developer that only required 9 minutes.  I found that it provided much nicer contrast, though it did increase the grain somewhat.

These two images were taken down in Blairmore Alberta last fall when we were exploring the Greenhill Hotel for the Beer Parlour Project.  

Fall Photo Weekend - Cement Plant

After breakfast on the morning of Monday November 13th we all packed up our gear and checked out of the hotel.  It was snowing very heavily and it appeared as though photography would not be an option on this day.  Steve and I took a quick drive up the Pyramid Lake Road.  The snow was beautiful on all the trees but the sky was heavily overcast and none of the peaks were visible.  We elected against dragging out any of our gear.

We made a quick coffee stop in town and then reluctantly hit the road for home.  To our surprise the snow quit as we got a short distance northeast of town and by the time we got to the park gate, there was no accumulation, and nothing coming down.

Eventually we made a stop at an abondoned cement plant in Yellowhead County.  By this time the skies were breaking up and the light was really nice.  We met up with the others here and spent a couple of hours taking photographs.

Steve and I pushed on before the others and made a stop in Edson to check out the Commodore Tavern as a potential site for the Beer Parlour Project.  We had a couple of cold ones here, and got a laugh when we noticed that the condom machine in the men's room also sold "Fuck Trudeau" stickers for two bucks.  I should of bought one, but didn't have a toonie handy.  There were some interesting characters in the bar and I made a mental note that the place might be worthy of a return visit.

The rest of our drive back to Edmonton was uneventful.  I dropped Steve off at his place around 6:00 and made it back home to the girls and Hank by 6:30. 

This turned out to be yet another fantastic Fall Photo Weekend and I already look forward to doing it again next year.

Fall Photo Weekend - Medicine Lake

Sunday November 12th was forecast to be the best day of the weekend and that proved to be accurate.  The snow of the evening before continued through the night and when we got up there was four to six inches of fresh stuff.  But the skies cleared and sun came out and it was a very pleasant day.  It did not get quite as warm as it did on Remembrance Day, but the temperature peaked at just a degree or two above the freezing mark.

We took a drive up the Maligne Road and spent most of the day photographing at Medicine Lake.  This lake was formed in ancient times when a rock slide from the adjacent Colin Range blocked the path of the Maligne River.  The dam of rubble is rather porous, and the river drains through it.  In the summer months when the snowmelt into the valley is substantial, Medicine Lake forms behind the dam.  But then in the fall when the water flow decreases, the lake drains away just leaving river channels in the flats of the valley.  It is a very interesting natural phenomenon to witness and we come up to photograph here pretty much every time we visit.

Along the banks of the lake it is very sheltered from the wind, and in direct sun, so the conditions were very pleasant.  Despite all the snow, and the cool temperatures, gloves were not necessary.  We spent most of the day photographing here, and we all managed to expose quite a bit of film.  Before heading back down the valley we made a stop along one of the lakeside overviews and photographed the water channels in the snow.  Here we were out of the sun, and the breeze picked up, and it was not nearly as pleasant.

To wrap up the days shooting we made a couple more stops on the way back to town.  One was along the Maligne River, below Medicine Lake.  A second was down in the Athabasca Valley where there is a nice evening view of Pyramid Mountain.  

Once again, after the days shooting we headed back to the hotel and visited for a while.  We were all feeling rather exhausted after the late night the evening before, and after being outside in the fresh mountain air all day.  Later we walked downtown and had dinner at the Fiddle River restaurant.  It was exceptional, and we all really enjoyed our meals.

We ended up back in the room visiting after dinner and one by one everyone began to fade and started turning in for the night.  I expected to be nodding off, and in fact I was...  But I knew if I went to bed too early I would only wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep.  Steve felt the same way, so we toughed it out and tried to stay up a bit later.  The others all turned in and Steve and I got a second wind and ended up spending another night visiting, eventually turning in at midnight.

Fall Photo Weekend - Horseshoe Lake

On the afternoon of November 11th, after we had finished up shooting at Athabasca Falls, we headed over to nearby Horseshoe Lake.  The water was still open, and the light was very soft.  In past years when we visited here, I typically photographed along the west arm of the lake.  Gord, Court and Steve spent a couple of hours in this area this time around.  

Nigel and I took the short walk over the east arm of the lake.  There are some nice cliffs here, and I expected that the reflections would be nice in the soft light.  I had photographed here several times in the past, but not in recent years.

We were not disappointed and found lots of subject matter to point our cameras at.  I set the big camera up four more times, and shot eight more sheets, so it made for a pretty successful day, despite the weather.  It started to snow, moderately heavy at times, but we sill managed to wrap up our shooting.  It was really cool watching the reflection of the snowflakes falling down into the dark water and meeting the actual snowflakes coming down.  A video would have perhaps recorded it but there was no way that a still photograph could.  It was one of those things that is best just experienced and remembered.

By about 3:30 in the afternoon the light falls right off at this time of year, so our shooting for the day was done relatively early.  We headed back in to Jasper and unpacked all of our gear for the evening.  We hung around the hotel visiting and having a few drinks.  Later we walked downtown and went back to the Something Else restaurant.  After another fantastic meal we headed back to the room and continued our visiting.  The others turned in relatively early, but Steve and I stayed up late and continued chatting and joking around.  It was a great visit and one of the things that I really enjoy about this annual weekend trip.  By 1:30 in the morning we figured we'd better turn in or the next day would be a write off.

Fall Photo Weekend - Athabasca Falls

We awoke in Jasper on the morning of November 11th... Remembrance Day.  After having breakfast together in our hotel room, we made some plans for the day.  The forecast for the weekend was not very good, but we had no optioin but to make the best of it.  It was dull and overcast when we set out, and the forecast was calling for snow for most of the day.  But the temperature stayed fairly mild, and stayed around +3 for most of the afternoon.

As it turned out the snow was rather sporadic and came and went during the day.  Later in the afternoon when we headed back into town there was a little accumulation on the highway, but for most of the day the snow was pretty light.  Our first stop was up at Athabasca Falls.  It was surprisingly busy there and quite a few people seemed to have had the same idea.

We spent a couple of hours here photographing mostly below the falls in the Canyon and along the river, but also in a small pothole that was near the trail below the falls.  Unlike on Friday, the big camera made it out of the truck and I set it up four times, and exposed around 8 sheets of film.

Monochrome Guild Fall Photo Weekend 2023

For Twenty-Four years now the Monochrome Guild has been heading out for a fall weekend of photography.  The tradition started back in 2000 when my friend Jon and I headed out together for the first one.  I invited Jon to join us on the trip this year, but sadly he was unable to attend.  Jon no longer shoots film and is not an active member of the Monochrome Guild.  But he is friends with many of the current members, and is always welcome as a guest.

Most of the time we have four to six members of the group out for a weekend.  We like the fall because the accommodations are less expensive, and it is less crowded wherever we end up going.  Most of the time we visit Jasper National Park, and that was our destination again this year.

We have kept the fall tradition alive all these years, with only a short interruption for Covid.  In 2020 we had to cancel our weekend all together as the pandemic was in full swing.  In 2021 things were starting to open up, but sharing accommodations was not really an option.  That year we managed a couple of day trips, just to keep the tradition alive.  In 2022 we returned to the usual weekend long outing, and this year we did it again.

This year there were five of us... Steve Wreakes, Nigel Goldup, Court Smith, Gordon Dinwoodie, and myself.  Steve and I drove out together on the morning of Friday November 10th.  The others followed an hour or two later in a separate vehicle.  It was really heavily overcast most of the way out and Steve and I just didn't feel very motivated to try and photograph anything.  We arrived in Jasper in the early afternoon... too early to check into our hotel.  So we took an afternoon drive up the old Icefields Parkway.  It was closed for the season at the Whirlpool River so we were only able to get there, and then had to backtrack.  We stopped at one of our usual haunts, Portal Creek, to check out the ice conditions.  It had been cold and snowy a week or two prior and as a result the ice was not very photogenic.  We wandered around for a bit before eventually heading back into town, meeting up with the others, and checking into our hotel.  Later that evening we walked downtown and had dinner together at the Something Else restaurant.  Later still we hung around together in one of the two rooms we had rented and visited over a few beers and some fine scotch.