East Coulee Springfest

Last weekend I headed down to East Coulee for the Springfest Music Festival.  This year was the 21st Annual, though I have only known of it since last year.  Margarit decided to stay home and catch up on some chores, so I headed down with the three girls.  Even though I had Friday off from work, there were a lot of things that I needed to catch up on too, so we didn't get away until Saturday morning.  We arrived in East Coulee around lunch time, and unpacked the groceries and gear that we had brought along.  Our trailer was in storage in the shop in East Coulee over the winter, so we stayed in it on Saturday night, and then brought it back home with us on Sunday.  It needs to be cleaned out and re-stocked for the upcoming May Long Weekend and summer camping trips.

The music festival is a fundraiser for the East School Schoolhouse Musuem.  This building has been designated a historic resource and they are trying to raise money to replace the roof and the mechanical system.

There were 46 bands scheduled to play over the two days of the weekend.  One cancelled due to illness but the rest all showed up.  The festival was a mix of country, folk, blue grass, country rock, cajun, pop, world, blues, rock, etc., etc....  There were three stages set up in classrooms in the school, as well as a fourth across the street in the Community Center.  In the past the bands also played in the local hotel but it was unfortunately closed at the end of 2014.  I managed to see 11 of the bands and took photos of a number of them.

My two youngest daughters, Annelise and Helena, were pretty good sports about it, but soon grew tired of wandering between the various stages.  They retreated out to the old playground and had a blast out there.  While most playgrounds use sand as a base, in a coal mining town they used coal.  The girls were soon very dirty.  We took a break and retired back to the trailer in the afternoon.  We also took a ride around town in a horse-drawn wagon, and checked out some of the vendors.  We had an early supper of BBQ steaks with baked potatoes, corn on the cob and salad.

After supper I headed back over to check out some more of the bands.  Hailey came with me and Anna and Helena stayed behind in the trailer and watched movies.  Later in the evening Hailey and I went back to the trailer to check on the younger girls.  Hailey decided to stay with them and I went back and checked out a few more bands.  It was awesome and I really enjoyed the festival.  Next year I will be back, with Margarit, and we will spend both days enjoying the great mix of music.

On Sunday after breakfast we hooked up the trailer, eased it out of the building, and returned home to Edmonton.  The girls arrived home in time to have supper with their Mom and wish her a Happy Mothers Day.

Dani-Lynn [Country/Pop]

80's Dad and Lightnin' Child teamed up over their love of acoustic, folk, blues and jazz.  They have been described as a "hungry band" playing many songs about their love of great food.  The girls particularly liked their song "Grease Stained Shirt"

The Spitzee Post Band from High River played a mix of Bluegrass, Old Tyme, Folk and Gospel.

Alex Boisselle is a roots, blues, folk and cajun singer/songwriter who sustained a career ending repetitive strain injury to his chord hand.  He relearned to play on lap slide guitar, became a lead guitarist, and added harmonica.  One of my favorties of the festival.

During our afternoon break the girls played in the coal dust of the school playground and took a ride in a horse drawn wagon.

The Wayfaring Fiddlers are a Drumheller based band that explores traditional fiddle music, playing a range of styles from Celtic, Appalachian, Gypsy and more.

Another local band, Willow Creek, plays music once heard in country dances of rural Alberta in the 1950's and 1960's.

Fools Tongue's musical style, inspired by world percussion and thick vocal harmonies, sits somewhere between World, Pop and Alternative.

Layne Syvertsen, another local artist, plays a wide range of folk, blues and rock in a style all his own.  A solo musician and superb electric blues guitarist, he was another of my favorites.

Through the day the crowd was a mix of young and old.  By late evening, a lot of the older crowd had gone home and the younger fans were beginning to really get into some of the faster, more lively music.  The Give Em Hell Boys, from Edmonton, played a unique style that fused classic and outlaw country with breakneck bluegrass rhythms and punk rock attitude.  A large crowd began dancing in front of the stage and the floor of the old schoolhouse was just bouncing.  I half expected it to collapse and see everyone clatter down into the basement, but the old floor hung in there. 

Spring Photo Weekend on Kodak Infrared

When I recently processed the batch of Kodak High Speed Infrared 4" x 5", it included several sheets from the recent Spring Photo Weekend with the Monochrome Guild.  Here are a few shots which includes the following.  The first two were in Banff National Park, at Two Jack and Second Vermilion Lake.  The next is a shot taken along the Kicking Horse River, below the Natural Bridge, in Yoho National Park.  The last two are of the Rundle Mission Church on the Stoney Reserve at Morley.

Hasselblad Hailey

This is my Hasselblad 500 C/M camera with 50mm Distagon lens. This medium format system uses 120 or 220 roll film, which yields negatives that are 2-1/4" x 2-1/4".  These are considerably larger than the more common 35mm format, and yield great prints due to the larger size.  I bought the camera new in 1993, with an A12 film magazine and 80mm Planar lens and it cost about $3500.  A year later I bought this 50mm Distagon lens, which cost about $3750.  At that time there was a promotion on, and I got a "free" A12 film magazine with the lens, a $1200 value.  Nowadays with everyone bailing out of film photography and switching to digital you can buy a used camera body, in excellent condition, for about 500 bucks.  A used film magazine goes for $100 to $200 depending on whether it is a newer A12 style, or an older 12 peephole type, like the one on my camera in this photo.  The 50mm Distagon lens now goes for about $600.  This is one of the benefits of digital photography... it has made this high end film gear a lot more affordable.  In recent years I have purchased a second camera body, some extra film magazines, and several lenses including a 60mm Distagon, a 150mm Sonnar and a 250mm Sonnar.  All of these lenses were less than $500 each... a far cry for what they originally cost...

My 12-year-old daughter Hailey has recently started using this camera system.  She came with me on the recent Spring Photo Weekend with the Monochrome Guild.  That was her first time using this camera system.  I gave her a crash course in how to mount it on the tripod, how to compose the image and focus the camera, how to use a hand held incident meter, and how to take a picture.  I had to help her quite a bit for the first roll or so, but after that she did it pretty much on her own.  I only had to assist her in changing lenses, and loading and unloading the film magazines.  We had a couple of issues with the shutter getting jammed... as it is critical that both the camera and the lens be cocked when changing lenses.  But we got this resolved and she managed to do pretty well.  

She also came along with me on the recent May day trip down to the Drumheller area.  She shot six rolls of film over the Spring Photo Weekend, and then another roll and a half on the recent day trip.  Earlier this week we went down into the darkroom on two different occasions and she started processing this film.  I gave her a crash course on this as well, but she has processed 35mm film in the past and this was very similar.  I limited her to one type of film when she was getting started, to minimize the confusion that can arise when working with different films.  With the Hasselblad system you can remove the film magazine and switch between different ones, utlizing different types of film, in mid roll.  We avoided this for the time being and she only shot with Fuji Neopan Acros 100.  We developed 6 rolls in D76, and I recently scanned all the resulting negatives for her.  Here are a selection of a few of the better ones.

Kodak High Speed Infrared - 4" x 5"

Earlier this week I processed a batch of Kodak High Speed Infrared Film.  This included the two mystery images that I posted a couple of days ago.  This batch also included a selection of other images.  One, included here, was of some Mountain Avens gone to seed.  This was taken up along the Forestry Trunk Road in the late summer of 2014.

Kodak discontinued this film many years ago.  The last batches they produced had an expiry date of 2001.  I am still using up stock from those last batches, which I have kept in my freezer.  The film seems to be fine, but if I let it lay around in film holders for too long before shooting it, it quickly starts to develop some edge fog.  Several of the images that were in this batch suffered from this fogging.  Although the film was exposed relatively recently, it was loaded last summer and has travelled around with me a bit before it eventually was used.  I need to make a point of avoiding that and only loading as much as I intend to use.

Summer Hockey - Game 1

The Renegades played our first game of the summer hockey season last night.  The game was at Callingwood Arena, and we played a game against a team called The Fury.  As we are now in a new league, many of the teams that we will be facing, will be new opponents for us.  I really like the way that the management of this new league approaches divisional placement of the teams.  Our first three games of the season are considered exhibition games.  After we play the first one, the outcome determines who our opponent will be in our second game.  The outcome of that one determines our opponent for the third game.  After three games the divisions are set and the schedule for the remaining 12 games of the regular season is set.

We won our first game last night by a score of 4-1 and outshot The Fury roughly 40 to 20.  I expect that we will face a tougher opponent in our next game.

Mystery Images

Yesterday I processed a batch of 4" x 5" Infrared Film.  This included a number of my recent images dating back to last fall.  A few from the Fall Photo Weekend, as well as some from the Spring Photo Weekend.  I also included a few from Oregon, and a couple from the Road Trip this past weekend.  But, there was also an air of mystery to this batch....

A couple of years ago I came across a box of Kodak Infrared Film.  Someone had written on it "MT'.  That was scribbled out and then it was noted... "14 used".  That too was scribbled out and then there was a note that said "exposed IR'  The quantity had been changed at least once and now stated "8 exposed IR"  I could tell by the feel of the box that there was film in it.  At one point I thought it was unexposed film and was going to load it and shoot it.  Then I noticed the notations....  I set it aside and promptly forgot about it.  In recent weeks I rediscovered this box and vowed to process it the next time I was running a batch.  Yesterday I pulled two sheets from this box and processed them along with the batch of my own stuff.  

Unfortunately I didn't store this stuff with any degree of caution.  It has now become fairly badly fogged, as it has just been laying around in my darkroom for the past several years.  I think that one of my friends must have given it to me, as the subject matter looks somewhat familiar.  One of the shots is of the Spaca Moskalyk Church....   Perhaps someone asked me to process this for them and I forgot...  Or maybe it got mixed in with a bunch of film that was given to me, or that I purchased... from a friend that was giving up on film and going digital...  In any event it will be fun to figure out who this belongs to...  Here are scans of the first two images.  When I process my next batch of IR film I will include the remaining half dozen sheets in this box and I'll see what else is there...

May Road Trip

On Saturday May 2nd I made plans to head out on a road trip.  Initially Margarit was going to come along, but she is still recovering from a bad cold and decided to take a rain check.  Hailey decided to come along with me and once again, like on the Spring Photo Weekend, Daughter and Dad were on the road with our cameras.

We left the city early in the morning and were on the road with a coffee and a full tank of fuel by about 7:30AM.  We headed south to Big Valley, as I wanted to shoot a couple of old abandonded school houses in the area.  I had done some research on line on various photo sites and confirmed locations and coordinates with maps and on Google Earth.  

It was partly overcast, cool and fairly windy.  Though the sun would come out and the temperature would rise during the day, the wind remained with us all day long.  Our first stop was at an old school house that had been converted to a home.  It was completely abandoned and vandalized.  We explored here a little before heading on to a second schoolhouse.

This one was an older one, and the site at least, if not the building, was 100 years old.  The building itself had obviously been used as a granary in the past and was now empty.  Like many old buildings the floor is caving in and the roof is failing.  It is not long for this world.  We photographed here for an hour or so and then continued on.

In recent weeks I have been in email contact with Chris of the BigDoer blog in Calgary.  He and his wife Connie are historians, researchers, journalists and photographers with similar interests to mine.

http://www.bigdoer.com/

We had arranged to meet at an old abandoned house near the village Carbon.  It took me a bit longer than I expected to get across country from the Big Valley area to where we had arranged to meet with Chris and Connie.  I spoke to them on the cell phone to let them know we were on our way, and they were waiting when we arrived.  After some quick introductions, as this was the first time any of us had met face to face, we packed up our gear and set off across the pasture.  This interesting old house was about half a mile across a pasture, in a small coulee.  It was a fascinating old house and very picturesque.  It too had been vandalized a little, but mostly it was deteriorating and falling down.  We found some old newspapers and magazines inside that dated back to 1945.  There were also a couple of pages of hand written notes that seemed as if they were part of someones school science project.  Interestingly enough these notes discussed optics and light and had a diagram of a view camera and a description of how it was used to take a photograph.  What an unusual coincidence considering the fact that this what I had come out to do.  We spent a couple hours photographing and exploring here before hiking back out to our vehicles.  I carried my 4x5 camera outfit in a backpack, my digital camera around my neck, my heavy wood tripod in one hand, and a case of medium format camera gear that Hailey was using, in my other hand.  I commented that I felt like a Sherpa...!!  Out of curiousity I weighed all this gear when I got home just to see how much I was really packing.  It came in at 81Lbs.  No wonder my back was tired the next morning!

After hiking out from the old house we set off to an abandoned P&H Elevator just a few miles down the road at Sharples.  This one is pretty photogenic, and by this time the clouds had broken a little.  We still had that gawd-awful wind to deal with, but the light was nice.  We explored here for a while and then set off into Drumheller for a late lunch.  It must have been around 3:30 by the time we sat down for lunch and all of us were very hungry.

After lunch we headed off down the valley to East Coulee.  I needed to check a couple things on our trailer which we stored in the shop over the winter.  I also gave Chris and Connie a quick tour of the facility.  Although there aren't really any paleo projects on the go right now, they still found it pretty interesting.  To close out the day we took a short walk across the old timber bridge at East Coulee.  We noticed that one section of the bridge is beginning to settle and fail.  The decay of some of the main timbers has caused the south truss to settle about 4 inches at the last pier.  There is now a noticeable hump in the deck, and some of the cross bracing has become dislodged.  It was certainly more than solid enough for a few pedestrians, but I wonder how long this one will remain standing.

After our walk we said our good byes to Chris and Connie.  They headed back for home in Calgary and Hailey and I hit the road for Edmonton.   By this time is was a little after 7:00 and we knew it would be after 10:00 before we got home.  Neither of us were hungry after the late lunch but we made a couple of brief stops along the way home just to stretch and relax a little after a long day of hiking and driving.  An ice cream stop in Stettler and a coffee stop in Lacombe and by shortly after 10:00PM we rolled up in front of the house.  It was a really fun day and Hailey has become quite comfortable and proficient with the Hasselblad.  Now I'm anxious to process some of this film...!!

Summer Hockey

The summer hockey season is just about to get underway.  The league that the Renegades has played in for the past dozen years was sold to and merged with a competing league here in the City.  The new league is called the Capital City Recreational Hockey League [CCRHL].  The cost to play is about the same, and the new league seems to be a little bit better run.  We'll see how things go this coming season.  As in the past I am managing the team and playing.  Now that I have turned 52, my age is really starting to show.  I will certainly have trouble keeping up to many of the young players, some of whom are less than half my age.  

We had three opportunities to get out for a skate over the past three weeks.  A friend and former teammate who also manages a team invited the Renegades out to play some exhibition games over at the River Cree Arena.  This arena complex is part of the big Casino and Resort on the Enoch Cree Nation, just at the west edge of Edmonton.  It was great to get back out onto the ice and hopefully this gives me a bit of a jumpstart for the regular season that gets underway in a couple of days.