TXP in PMK - 3rd Batch

I processed another batch of Kodak Tri-X Pan 4x5 film in PMK developer the other day.  This batch includes images that were all taken in 2012.  Looks like I still have about 4 more batches to go.  The next one is underway, and is presently being washed.  I will continue to post scans of these images as I finish them.  I real mixed bag of stuff here.  A couple images from the Heartland projects which is documenting the changes northeast of Edmonton as some large industrial projects are developed.  A few images from day trips and weekend camping trips.  This includes a couple taken on the Thanksgiving Long Weekend last October at Ram Falls.  Also a few images from down in the Crowsnest Pass, when I was on my way home from the Dinosaur Trackway project.

Procession West at McMullen Gallery

The Procession West exhibition is into its final days at the Art Gallery of Regina.  That show gets taken down just before the end of the month.  In the mean time, a second copy of that show, with slightly fewer prints, has just been installed at McMullen Gallery here in Edmonton.  We are sharing the gallery space with a painter named Elaine Funnell.  I delivered all of the prints to the gallery earlier this week and helped the staff to arrange everything.  The show is now installed and technically it is open, though the official opening reception won't be until this Thurdsay.

10,000 Pageviews...!!!

Back in late March the counter on my blog hit 7500 pageviews.  It seems as though interest in my ramblings, my hockey scores, and my photography is increasing.  Here it is less than 5 months later and the counter has now hit 10,000 pageviews.  Quite the milestone....

Forestry Trunk Road - Blackstone River

We just returned from a very relaxing and enjoyable camping weekend.  We met up with my cousin Vic and his family, out by the Blackstone River, along the Forestry Trunk Road.  This has been a favorite camping spot of ours for some time now.  The area was obviously heavily flooded earlier this summer when the eastern slopes of the Rockies experienced very heavy rain and significant snowmelt and runoff.  This all contributed to the severe flooding that was experienced in Calgary, Canmore, High River and other locations to the south and east.  It seems this area suffered the same fate, but to a lesser degree.  The nice grassy clearing that we usually camped in had turned to big mud hole, and there was dirt and debris all over the place.  This composite photo gives a little bit of an idea what things were like.

We set up camp and made the best of it.  It turned out to be one of the most relaxing and enjoyable weekends that I have had in a long time.  Mostly my cousin Vic and I just sat around and visited.  We had a lot to catch up on.  We had spent a lot of time together when we were young, but after we both got married and had families we sort of drifted apart and lost touch.  Mostly we just lounged around the campsite, made a fire, had a BBQ, and did a little fishing.  Our wives were out hiking and collecting rocks along the river. My three girls made friends with their second cousin Ceyanna and the girls seemed to really get along well.  At one point I gave Vic's wife Susanne a crash course in photography and we experimented taking macro photographs of all the Longhorn Beetles that were flying around the area.

After a big breakfast on Sunday, and some more visiting we eventually had to wrap things up and get ready to head for home.  Vic and his family were heading back to their place in Innisfail and of course we had a little longer drive back to Edmonton.  As we were packing up a thunderstorm rolled into the area and there was quite a bit of lightning and it was staring to rain.  By the time we really got going the rain became fairly heavy and the road got quite muddy.  The storm was pretty severe and by the time we got back to Nordegg the temperature had dropped from 26 degrees that we experienced earlier in the afternoon, to 11C.  The storm would end up crossing paths with us four times that day.  As we drove east from Nordegg to Rocky Mountain House we could see the dark clouds, heavy rain and lightning to the north.  When we turned north at Rocky Mountain House we drove right back into the path of that storm for a second time.  There was very heavy rain, a little hail and lots of lightning.  At some points it was so heavy that we had to slow right down to 40 or 50km/h and the windshield wipers of the truck couldn't keep up.  I managed to get this shot of some lightning, out the front windshield of the truck.

We ended up eventually passing through the storm, which was tracking off to the northeast.  But, when we got to Alder Flats, and turned east onto Highway 13, we drove right into the path of the storm for the third time.  There was more of the same... heavy rain, lightning and some hail.  Once again we passed through the storm and eventually drove out from under the clouds.  The sky was very ominous and had a very eerie feel to it as we outran the storm and ended up driving out in front of it.

Once we got to Pigeon Lake we had left the storm behind and conditions were generally pretty dry.  At Highway 2 we turned north towards Edmonton and could see the storm off in the west, all the way home. Shortly after we arrived home and as we were unpacking the trailer, the storm rolled over us for the fourth time that day.  Once again there were heavy downpours of rain and lots of lightning.  This time around we were safe and sound at home and just slept through most of it.  When I got up to go to work this morning it was very wet and I heard on the radio that several roadway underpasses around the city were flooded.  I guess we were a little lucky....

August Long Weekend in the Badlands

We set out to the badlands for the August long weekend.  We weren't able to leave right away as we were travelling with our German relatives, and they had to return their rental motorhome on Saturday morning.  But we got away at a reasonable hour, and found ourselves down at the TL Bar Ranch by afternoon.  Nine of us were sharing our trailer as home base, though we did have a tent along for some extra sleeping space.  We settled down at the ranch campsite and enjoyed a nice evening in the badlands.  

The next morning we had a trailride booked and all nine of us went out on horseback for an hour and a half. This was the first time on horses for my cousin Roswitha, and her husband Gunnar.  It was a great ride up to the prairie overlooking the Red Deer River valley, and eventually back down to the ranch.  After the trail ride we packed up and headed for Drumheller.  We tried to stop at the Royal Tyrell Museum and rolled in with the trailer in tow.  The upper parking area was completely full, and it was very busy.  We continued on down to the overflow and RV parking area down below.  We soon discovered that this area was full too, and we were in a jam.  We had driven in to an area that we could not pass through, due to several people that had parked illegally.  We had no option but to back the truck and trailer out of the parking lot, and part way back up the hill in order to get turned around and get out.  Eventually, with Margarit and Gunnar directly traffic, I was able to get out.  We headed over to the PalcoPrep shop and dropped off the trailer.  Then we returned to the museum with just our truck and the rental car that the Germans were travelling in.  By this time is was late in the afternoon, and the museum crowds were thinning out a little.  We spent a couple of hours touring the museum and enjoying all the displays.  One of the highlights for me was to see the recently added feathered dinosaurs.  Two small raptors were prepped and on display.  These showed evidence of proto-feathers, and were the first specimens to ever be found in north Amercia.  This was of particular importance to me because my close friend and business partner, Frank Hadfield, found both of them. Of course true to bureaucratic form the museum did not give him proper credit for this significant find.  After we finished up at the museum we went back and picked up our trailer, and then headed out to the ghost town of Dorothy for the night.

The kids had a blast at Dorothy playing in the old playground and exploring the old churches and buildings. It was a beautiful clear evening and Frank and his wife Chris dropped by and spent the evening with us.  The night was really clear and there were a lot of stars visible.  Gunnar commented that this was only the second time in his life that he had seen the Milky Way.  I guess we Canadians just take stuff like this for granted.

The next morning we got up and wandered around Dorothy a little more.  Gunnar and I spent and hour or so exploring and photographing the old Alberta Pacific grain elevator with his daughter Vivien.  Later we headed back up the valley towards Drumheller.  We stopped near the Hoodoos and while everyone explored there, I wandered around a little and took some badlands photos with my view camera.  Then we continued on to the Last Chance Saloon in the Rosedeer Hotel up in Wayne.  We had lunch and a couple of cold beverages here, before heading over to the Suspension Bridge in Rosedale.  It was kind of nice to catch up on all this touristy stuff as we have spent many weekends down in the badlands in recent years, but always have blown by all this stuff.

By dark we finally found ourselves setting up camp at the Bleriot Ferry Campsite.  It was pretty quiet as the long weekend was now over, and most of the tourists had headed for home.  We settled down for the evening and the next morning went up into the hills for a hike.  We had a bit of an episode with an electric fence but other than that we enjoyed hiking and exploring and the Germans even found a few scraps of dinosaur bone.  Late in the day we packed up and hit the highway for home.  It was after dark and late in the evening before we finally rolled back up to the house.  I had to return to work the next morning, but the girls were all able to sleep in.  We had a couple more opportunities to get together with our relatives before they had to catch their flight back to Germany on Friday morning.  We really enjoyed getting reacquainted with them and to have the opportunity to do some travelling and exploring together.

TXP in PMK - 2nd Batch

Just before the August long weekend I processed a second bath of Kodak Tri-X Pan 4" x 5" sheet film in PMK developer.  This batch, like the one a few days prior, was given normal development.  Slowly I am chipping away at my backlog of unprocessed film.  A few of these are from the end of 2011, but most are from 2012.  I scanned several of the better images...

Quite a variety of subject matter in this batch including some studio shots for Palcoprep, and images from the spring and fall photo weekend trips with the Monochrome Guild gang.  This includes a couple of images of what I think is the oldest tree in the province of Alberta.  A Limber Pine in the front ranges of the Rockies that is estimated to be around 1000 years old.

The shot of the old sofa was taken for the Heartland Project, a long term documentary of the changes taking place northeast of Edmonton as some mega-projects associated with the development of the northern Oil Sands begin to get underway.

There are still at least 35 more sheets of this film to be processed, plus an additional quantity that require plus development.  I hope to continue working away at these over the next couple of weeks.

Onward to the High Country... Wilcox Pass

Our travels with our German relatives continued...  On Monday afternoon, July 29th, after spending a couple hours at Windy Point, we made a beeline for the National Parks.  We headed into Banff National Park at Saskatchewan Crossing and turned north onto the Icefields Parkway.  By late afternoon we crossed over into Jasper National Park and found ourselves at the Wilcox Creek Campsite.  After driving around the campsite a couple of times we eventually found two camping spots that were large enough for our bigger RV's and relatively close to each other.  We settled down for the evening and got the BBQ going.

The next morning we got up moderately early and by 9:00AM some of us made our way over to the Wilcox Pass trail.  The trailhead was at the entrance to the campsite.  Margarit and the two younger girls, as well as my Aunt Matilda, stayed behind at the campsite.  The trail was 8km in length, return, with an elevation gain of 335M.  It was a strenuous walk, particularly with a heavy camera backpack and wooden tripod.  I lightened my load a little, taking only 5 lenses and a half dozen film holders with me.  At first the trail switched back through the forest, eventually breaking out on a ridge overlooking the Columbia Icefields.  Then it set off up the ridge, above treeline, into an alpine meadow.  Up at the top there was a small pond surrounded by a meadow filled with alpine plants and a few late blooming wildflowers.  We even found some marine fossils in the rocks. We spent a couple of hours up there exploring and making some photographs before eventually setting out down the trail again.  

We arrived back at the campsite a little after noon, worn out from the hike.  We had a quick lunch and then packed up.  We all drove over to the Big Bend Area and stopped at the viewpoint, and then down by the North Saskatchewan River.  We wandered around for a while and even took a short hike up to the canyon that the river spills though on it's way down from the Icefields.  By mid-afternoon we had to pack up and head our separate ways.  The Germans were continuing back to the north, up to Jasper, where they had a campsite reserved for the next couple of nights.  The girls and I had to head back home.  I needed to be at work the next morning, and a service technician was scheduled to come and fix our washing machine.  It had been out of commission for some time and the laundry was piling up around the house, more than usual, despite several trips by Margarit to a local laundromat.  It was a rather quick drive home with only a couple of brief bathroom breaks.  We eventually got home and got the girls to bed by around 10:00PM.