March Day Trip

The weather on Friday was absolutely gorgeous.  A new high temperature record of +13.5C was set in Edmonton, surpassing the old record of around 12, set back in the early 1940's.  Unfortunately I was stuck back at work and was unable to get out and enjoy it.

The forecast for Saturday was not nearly as good, but still pretty reasonable, so I made plans to get out for a day trip.  As I was leaving the city I found this sign on a neighborhood pub...  I just had to chuckle over that one.

The forecast temperature of +5C was reached late in the morning, and at one point it peaked at about +6C, but that's about all she wrote....  But it was mostly sunny and very pleasant to be out.  The snow that fell a week or two ago is quickly melting and it is becoming muddy and very spring-like. 

The Monochrome Guild is just getting started on a photo project based on the Alberta Heartland.  This is the area northeast of Edmonton that is being converted from small town and agricultural to one of the largest industrial sites in North America.  There are already numerous refineries and upgraders in this area, that process the crude oil from Alberta's Oilsands.  There are many fabrication yards, pipelines, infrastructure projects and further development underway and in the planning stages.  Our group wants to document the swift change that has taken place here over the past 100 years.  From fur trading post, to bush being cleared for family homesteads, to the coming of the railway and the development of small towns and now moving forward into these massive industrial projects.  We also want to document the people and the landscape and the things that are being left behind in the name of progress.  We hope that this will become a group exhibition of black and white photographs.  To that end I went out by myself today and did a little scouting around.  Mostly I was up in the northern part of Strathcona County.  I made a few photographs with my view camera, and took a few documentary snap shots with my digital point and shoot...

Rough Week.....

As I was out doing my film tests at Elk Island on Sunday, I began to feel uncomfortable with some abdominal cramping.  I had a pretty intense bout with this same condition about a month ago, and it lasted for three days.  I kind of wrote it off to symptoms of the cold or flu that I was coming down with at the same time.  This time around the cramping came back fairly intense, and again lasted for about three days, but was not accompanied with a cold.  My abdominal muscles were going through the spasms and became very sore.  At the same time by back muscles were becoming quite sore trying to compensate for the doubling over that I was going through in the front.  At their worst these spasms were coming every few seconds.  I was unable to get out of bed for two days, and did not go to work for the first three days of the week.  Margarit convinced me to go and see my family doctor.  He suspects it is a problem with my gall bladder and ordered a bunch of tests.  The blood and urine samples were no big deal, but the dreaded stool sample was not a lot of fun.  Dumping a load on a paper plate, picking through it with a popsicle stick, and trying to smear some into a tiny little jar, leaves something to be desired.  Next time you see one of those ads on TV for paper plates, and how much food gets loaded onto them at the family picnic, take my word for it...  they really do hold up to that much without collapsing.  I am now just waiting to go in for an ultrasound on Monday.  A few days after that I will get the results, and I can go forward from there.  Since the spasms stopped on Tuesday evening, I have felt pretty good, except for being a little dehydrated, sore muscles around the middle, and a lingering headache.

Needless to say I was not able to play Game 27 of the Renegades winter hockey season.  We had a really short bench with only about 10 or 11 skaters and a backup goaltender.  Despite a parade to the penalty box, the guys managed to hang on for a 5-2 victory over the Trojans.  More importantly this keeps us in the last playoff spot with three games left in the season.

I returned to work for most of the day on Thursday and again on Friday.  It was a rather quiet week at the shop with the weather forcing us to postpone an installation in Calgary for yet another week.  I have a lot of odds and ends to catch up with next week when I get back... hopefully to full time duties.

On Friday evening I set up my home studio and took some photographs with my view camera of Hailey and Annelise in their new dance costumes.  These were just recently handed out at their dance classes, and will be worn in the year end recital coming up in June.  Here's the color Polaroid version, but I also shot a whole bunch of Black and White.

While I had the lights set up I also took a portrait of myself.  Actually this portrait was taken for me by my oldest daughter Hailey.  This will be used in the submission package being put together for the "Procession West" project.

More Film Testing

On Sunday March 3rd I continued with some film tests.  I am trying to establish which developer I like best with Fuji Neopan Acros film.  In the past I have used Kodak D-76 Developer 1:1, but lately I have not been happy with the results.  I am considering three alternative developers, Kodak X-Tol, Agfa Rodinal and Ilford Perceptol.  I am shooting a bunch of test shots with the film under various lighting conditions.  Then I will process all of the negatives in the various developers, including some in D-76 for reference, and compare them.  I will probably make some test prints of these negatives to get a really good feel for which I like best.  A week ago I took some test shots in sunny conditions.  Today I took a quick drive out to Elk Island National Park to do some more test shots.  The skies were overcast and the light very flat, so I did some test shots under these conditions.  I would like to do one more batch, with artificial studio lights, and then I can process all the film.  While I was out driving around I rattled off a few snapshots with my little digital camera...

Riding Lessons

On February 28th the two older girls went for their weekly riding lesson.  The days are getting noticeably longer and it is obvious that it is not as dark as it used to be, when we arrive at the arena at around 6:00PM.  The light inside the arena is very dim and there is not much opportunity to make photographs.  This time around I brought my little digital Leica and shot deliberately at a slow shutter speed, attempting to show some motion blur.  I think that some of these images turned out kind of cool...

February Day Trip

Back on February 20th the two older girls and I went out for a day trip.  I wanted to do a couple of test shots, with my 4x5 to test some Acros film, as well as a roll with my Hasselblad.  The girls packed lots of snacks and lots of books and we drove around the countryside.  We had a lot of fun talking and listening to music and made a couple of stops to take some photographs.  I'm sure that Mom enjoyed having two of the three girls out of the house for the afternoon too...

Winter Hockey - Games 25 and 26

The losing skid continues...  The Renegades lost two more games this week.  One Wednesday we came up short against the Icebreakers, by a score of 6-5.  This one was particularly hard to swallow because the Icebreakers had a really short bench, with only eight skates, including two girls.  We had an almost full roster of 14 skaters and a goalie, and should have been able to skate them into the ice.  Then last night we lost to the Bulldogs by a score of 4-2.  This was a very tough physical game and I am still nursing some bumps and bruises on my old carcass.  With four games left in the regular season we are going to have to pull things together if there is any hope of us making it into the post season.

Color Negatives

The annual batch of C-41 color processing is now complete.  I will now pack away all of the equipment and materials until I accumulate enough film to bring it out again.  These past few days I have spent some of my time scanning the best of the 4x5 images that were just processed.  Most of these images were taken during 2011.  The shot of the pasture gate down in the badlands was actually taken by my eldest daughter Hailey, with a 4x5 view camera, back in the summer of 2011 when she was just 8 years old.

Winter Hockey - Game 24

The Renegades played another morning hockey game this past weekend.  This one was not quite as early as the last one with the game getting underway at 9:00AM Sunday.  I was still getting over a bad case of the flu and went out to play, but didn't have much energy.  We started out well, and it was a close game verses the Wolf Pack.  We lost our momentum when a goal, that would have tied the game 2-2 was disallowed due to the net being knocked off.  We took exception to this as it was their goalie that knocked it off.  We ended up taking a penalty for arguing the call and the momentum swung in favor of the Wolf Pack.  They ended up winning the game by a score of 5-1, and we are once again knocked out of playoff contention.  I can't understand why we aren't able to string together two wins in a row.  I guess this division is just really closely matched.  We now have six regular season games left to try and secure a playoff spot.

C-41 Processing

Even though I am, for the most part, a black and white photographer, I do shoot some color film.  This is a mix of color negative and color transparency film.  C-41 is the chemistry that is used to process color negative film.  There are also a couple of specialty black and white films that are processed with this chemistry.  The chemistry is rather costly, and not available in small quantities.  But, there are no local labs left processing this material in formats larger than 35mm.  So, for all my 120 medium format film, as well as my 4x5 and 8x10 sheet film, I would have to send it out for processing.  Instead, I have purchased a large batch of this chemistry, which should last me for some time.  I tend to save up all my color negative film for a year or more, and then when there is a large enough batch, I set up my Jobo processor, mix up the chemistry, and process several batches.  I am in the midst of my annual batch and have so far processed 7 sheets of 8x10, five rolls of 35mm, and a dozen rolls of 120 medium format.  I still have fifty sheets of 4x5 left to go, which I hope to get to in the coming days.  I have attached scans of some of the better images from these first few batches.

Winter Hockey - Game 23

The Renegades played an early morning game, at 7:15AM, this past Saturday.  We faced off against the first place Chiefs.  I was very concerned about this game because we were having trouble getting enough players lined up to play, and had to play with a backup goaltender.  We put together a really solid effort and soundly beat the Chiefs by a 9-1 score, the exact opposite of the game a week earlier.  It puzzles me why we play so inconsistently and struggle against some teams while dominating others.  This win puts us back into playoff contention and with seven games left in the regular season we need to start a bit of a streak to carry us through into the post-season.