Almost Eric

Aurora

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:51 -0600

[DI][Take 1] - [AI][Take 2][662][822][Cascade.jpg] - [AI][Take 3][822][662][Ursas.jpg]

"Faint," would be an appropriate word to describe the Aurora on the night you see above. Exposures lasted for a minute or longer. I had been walking home from a friend's house on an early-summer night, very much looking forward to bed, when I noticed that the Northern Lights were out. The decision to grab the camera and head out into the dark countryside had been made months before, shortly after I had missed the last opportunity to photograph this peculiar, celestial event. Sleep would have to wait, because the lights would not.

The clock marched past midnight, and before an hour should have been up, one o'clock drew near. After every frame I would check the display, eager to see what pattern the dancing above me had traced. When the first of this series appeared sixty seven seconds after tripping the shutter, I was amazed.

I don't talk as much about the music in my posts as I feel I ought to. I have said that music is a big part of things here, and I mean it. This post began with the song that I hope you're about to listen to. When I first heard Borealis, I felt very much the same as I did when I first saw the S-curve caressing the windmill. It was only a matter of time until the opportunity to collect the images that accompany this song came along. Now that it has, I present them both to you.

This is Mike Marshall and Darol Anger.

Matt and Heather

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:59 -0600

[DI][Take 1] - [AI][Take 2][1022][585][Over the Shoulder.jpg]

I remember that it was a cool and rainy day in the springtime of 2004. I was going to visit Stan who was finishing up his first year at college. Driving in my '87 Ford F-150, a gift from Grandma, I was still getting used to the freedom that came with having a vehicle I could call my own. Instead of playing the radio I decided to listen to a recording of the Vinyl Cafe, which was then and still is my favourite radio program. This was before podcasting, and the truck was from an era that did not know the compact disk, so I was listening to a show I had recorded off the radio onto a cassette tape. For reasons that I still do not fully understand, one of the songs on that recorded show resonated deep inside of me. I punched the rewind button and played the song again, and then again, and again, and finally once more before rewinding and playing it for a sixth time. This is what I do when a song really moves me, it is what I have done with just about every other song posted on this site. It is as if with every play something I didn't notice before about the songwriter's message, or my own appropriation of it, becomes more apparent, more clear.

Heather, the older of my two younger sisters, really likes it when I sing, which is something I don't do much of publicly. This past weekend she got married, and she asked if I would sing a couple of songs at the reception. Given that I am the older brother who is hopelessly wrapped around her little finger, I agreed. One of the songs she asked me to sing was that same song I first discovered on a lonely Alberta highway over five years ago.

Even though performing makes me nervous, I thoroughly enjoy doing it. And one could not have asked for a better audience on Saturday night as family and friends gathered to celebrate Heather’s marriage to Matt. It was truly wonderful to see my little sister at this place in her life, ready and radiant. It was equally fabulous to welcome such a fine brother into the family. It was an evening I will not soon forget. As the D-chord rang from BJ's guitar, and I started into the song, I was feeling very much, more alive.

This is Ross Douglas.

Monochrome: [AI][Take 1][1022][585][Matt & Hez (B&W).jpg] - [AI][Take 2][1022][585][Over the Shoulder (B&W).jpg].

Postcards of Misfortune

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:38 -0600

Postcards: [DI][1] - [AI][2][1022][585][A Welcome Lack of Snow.jpg] - [AI][3][1022][585][Making Good Time.jpg] - [AI][4][922][622][Journaling, Camp Fire, Flags.jpg] - [AI][5][1022][585][Murderers Creek Area.jpg] - [AI][6][1022][585][Slippery Slope.jpg] - [AI][7][1022][585][Preparing Supper.jpg] - [AI][8][1022][585][Turning In.jpg] - [AI][9][1022][585][LODs Out Front.jpg] - [AI][10][1022][585][Lunch Under a Juniper Tree.jpg] - [AI][11][1022][585][Beth and the Fence Crossing.jpg] - [AI][12][1022][585][Snow, Sunshine.jpg]

On the morning of our sixth day outdoors I was dropping down a hillside, coming back to the campsite after going for a short hike. All of a sudden, without cause or explanation, a penetrating pain set into my left knee and I nearly lost my footing. The pain dulled quickly when I reached the bottom of the hill and stretched out, but I was concerned. We packed up and hit the trail soon after and my knee, though tender, did not protest throughout the rest of the day. For the next four days we were stationary, resting, teaching, learning, and spending time alone in the woods, collecting our thoughts and renewing our strength for the next part of the trip. By the time we started hiking again on day eleven I had all but forgotten about the pain in my knee. In fact, after an hour of carrying the heaviest pack I have ever carried, uphill, I had never felt better. By the time we reached our campsite that evening, the pain in my knee had become substantial, so bad that I could no longer bend it. Staggering into camp, I walked as though I had a wooden leg.

The last week on trail should have been agonizing. My knee would be strong and limber for the morning, causing little discomfort and working pretty much like it ought to. But by about one o'clock, after cooling off during lunch, it would seize and stiffen up, making hiking very difficult and most uncomfortable. In the late afternoon on our thirteenth day, the sun broke through a rain storm that for a couple of hours had forced us to take shelter under a large juniper tree. I was at the back of the group, peg-legging at half-pace over a trail peppered with boulders the size of melons. The clouds were lit up all around; the light was incredible! My knee was throbbing. I could not have wished to be anywhere else.

Such was the case during the last week of our trip. We had many opportunities to entertain misery due to weather, temperature, wrong turns, ruined gear, and aching bodies. Mine wasn't the only knee to fail. And yet, instead of letting such discouragements get the better of us, we were able to press on and experience joy. Hot and delicious meals cooked under a sky brimming with stars, meaningful conversations, the company of friends around a fire, and a beautiful landscape surrounding us on all sides. Malheur is the National Forest we were hiking through; it is a French word that means misfortune. By the end of day twenty one I think each and every one of us was feeling quite fortunate, not to have survived the trip, but rather to have had the opportunity to experience it.

This is Jake Armerding.

Everlasting Splendors

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:22 -0600

[DI][Caleb] - [AI][Mark][922][622][Mark.jpg] - [AI][Abram][1022][585][Abram.jpg] - [AI][Beth][1022][585][Beth.jpg] - [AI][Emily][1022][585][Emily.jpg] - [AI][Garrett][1022][585][Garrett.jpg] - [AI][Hannah][1022][585][Hannah.jpg] - [AI][Jesse][1022][585][Jesse.jpg] - [AI][Kyle][1022][585][Kyle.jpg] - [AI][Brad][522][822][Brad.jpg] - [AI][Mindy][522][822][Mindy.jpg] - [AI][Samantha][522][822][Samantha.jpg] - [AI][Scott][522][822][Scott.jpg] - [AI][Shane][522][822][Shane.jpg]

For eighteen days in February I and fourteen of my contemporaries hiked, camped, explored and lived in the wilds of Eastern Oregon’s Malheur National Forest. We weathered snow, sun, rain, warmth, cold, wind, and everything in between. We ascended ridge lines, descended into valleys, crossed plains, followed rivers and traced forgotten road beds. Once in a while we found ourselves lost. We purified water when it was available and melted snow when it was not. We cooked culinary concoctions over miniscule stoves, creating meals not normally thought of as back country fare: pizza, pancakes, brownies, spaghetti, falafel, and pineapple upside-down cake to name just a few. We ate like royalty.

Long have I understood that there is no joy to be found in the pursuit of an activity itself. In my case at least, every hobby I have undertaken has always been done in the context of relationship. Whether it was hounding for gemstones amongst the gravel in the back alley when I was seven, or chasing hawks through the field behind our house when I was nine. Whether I was casting to cutthroat trout on some remote stream when I was sixteen, or climbing mountains in Montana when I was twenty, all of it was done with at least one close friend by my side.

I took (far too) many photos during the nearly three weeks we were gone, and I look forward to sharing some of the best with you here. But first I would like you to meet my companions on this expedition, fellow Explorers, because without their camaraderie, encouragement, care, and enthusiasm I would never have had a reason to spend eighteen days in the wilderness, let alone enjoyed it so much. Their names are written above, click to view their portraits.

Three musicians, whose solo careers I have followed with much delight, recently joined forces to record their first collaborative effort. From their debut album entitled Before the Ruin, this is Drever, McCusker & Woomble.

Big Water, Big Land, Big Sky

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:33 -0600

"There's a photograph! I should pull over." How many times have I thought this? About as many times as I've continued driving on by, bothered by the fact but moving on nevertheless. Too many. Such was the case with this photograph. It was mid morning, dreary, and I was hurtling along Hwy. 200 west of Dixon on my way to Missoula. This stretch of road runs beside the Flathead River; the scenery is particularly "Montana". As I crested a rise on an inside turn, this scene greeted me, and I kept on driving. "The light won't last," I told myself. "It's too cold. You'll have to trespass. There's alot to do today in the city."

"I have to!" I said aloud.

For the better part of a year I have been looking forward to making a post about Montana, and pairing it with this song. The license plates down here read Big Sky Country, but it is more than the sky that is big. My inner perfectionist has caused me to wait so long, to pass over photographs on the far side of 60 miles/hour. This isn't the picture I had in mind, but it is the picture I was given. As I set up the tripod and watched the sun break through a hole in the clouds, lighting up the frost on the trees across the river, I was beaming inside.

Backed by Mike Marshall on guitar and composer, Bela Fleck, on banjo, this is double bassist extraordinaire, Edgar Meyer.

In [AI][black and white][1022][523][BW BL BS (BandW).jpg], or back to [DI][colour].

Cool Resolve

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:37 -0600

Life has turned a sharp corner for me with the arrival of a new year. For the next three months I will be in Montana, participating in an outdoor leadership program called Explore. I took this photograph on a backpacking trip I was on four years ago when the program was just a one-year certificate, and I was a student. Explore has now grown into a two-year diploma and I have joined for one more semester. So even though the corner is sharp, I find the landscape familiar. Even though it’s tempting to think I’ve gone in a circle, enough change has happened since, that I know this place is new and fresh.

Along with this change has come a significant amount of free time, at least for the moment. The other night I found myself entirely bored, and eventually, after drifting around camp for far too long, I stumbled upon a guitar to play. It has been over a year since the D-string on my own guitar broke, and even though I did buy another set of strings, I never did get around to replacing the broken one. So I took a seat, picked up the instrument, rested it on my lap, and began to play. Even after a year my fingers still remembered what they were supposed to do, and after bumbling about the fret board for a minute I was able to pick out a melody.

Whenever I sit down to play for playing’s sake, without a particular song in mind, I inevitably begin with a bluegrass walk that I first heard when I was in Explore. I still find it just as elegant today as I did then. This is John Reischman and the Jaybirds with In the Fall.

In [AI][black and white][1022][585][Cool Resolve (B&W).jpg]. Return to [DI][colour].

Amusing Skyline

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:23 -0600

[DI][Zipper] - [AI][Ferris Wheel][1022][585][Ferris Wheel.jpg] - [AI][Kamikaze][1022][585][Kamikaze.jpg]

As the sun goes down on the midway, the lights come up. Vendors make ready their oh so archetypical cuisine: hot dogs, corn on the cob, cotton candy, caramel apples, snow cones, popcorn, and so on tempt at nearly every turn. The stage is set. Subtly, with hardly a flourish or any ballyhoo, this evening's performance has begun. At any given time any given person is both actor and spectator. Enchanted but bashful boys annoy coy but eager girls. Conversations fill in the edges as queues ebb and flow about the centre. "Step right up! Take your best shot!" Carnies in purple t-shirts hand out darts and baseballs to confident boyfriends. When is a teddy bear too big? I observe the spectacle, taking it all in, eyes as wide as the little boy sitting on his daddy's knee in the bumper car. The sights and smells and sounds are exactly what I had imagined. Welcome to the fair.

I catch some looks as I make my way through the throng. A camera and tripod are out of place here, though only just. It may sound funny, or perhaps odd, but I can feel the butterflies, the stage fright. Many different details catch my eye, but only one aspect of this set holds my attention. The anchors of the scene, the big rides, towering over the fair grounds are what I am after. Forty minutes later and the light is gone from the sky. Gears grind and motors whine as the fair rides dance through the hours, spinning, rocking, swaying, and tossing their passengers into the night.

Cue the orchestra, strike up the band, it's time for the waltz. This is Fats Kaplin.

Making Pictures

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 23:20 -0600

[DI][Michael] - [AI][Daylight Studio][1050][656][The Master and His Light.jpg] - [AI][Quotable][785][785][Talking About Pictures.jpg]

The walls of the darkroom are packed. Shelves line the north wall, filled. Folders containing negatives and contact sheets, boxes containing prints, all of them marked by date and job description. Familiar names catch my attention: Lyle Lovett, Bill Frisell, Allen Toussaint, Tim O'Brien, and on it goes. Across the floor are boxes of cd's. The stack rises nearly to my waist, and I am pleased to discover many more familiar names. There's an enlarger, a safe light, and a counter that is covered by a strip of checkered linoleum. This is where the magic happens, where the hare is pulled from the hat.

Tacked to the walls at eye level, not mine but his, are quotes and one catches my eye. It reads, "Talking about photography is like thinking about praying." I am here because of a letter I sent not three months before, inquiring as to the possibility of being able to come and observe, to participate, to assist, and I have no real clue how this is all going to pan out. I am in Cincinnati, standing in Michael Wilson's basement, and I have a feeling that we are going to do a lot of talking about photography.

For ten days I am offered a glimpse, a taste of what this life is actually like. We tear around the city, from the studio to the bank, the print store to the frame shop, the St. Elizabeth Art Society meetings to Brewtopia and driver's education. I am introduced to friends and family and am welcomed warmly. All the while we are talking: "How did you get into photography? What made you decide to go freelance? How do you go about deciding how much to charge? What do you enjoy about your work? What do you dislike? How do you conduct a shoot? Has it been a good life? How come? What would you do differently? Why do you do this?" My list of questions is long.

"These are some really good questions," he answers.

I take a deep breath, "How do you view your work in light of eternity? Or put another way, when all is said and done, what value is there in making a picture?"

He is silent for a while and then he responds, "I have thought about this question before. I think of it like this: When I take my dog for a walk, and we come to a place where she no longer needs to be on a leash, I let her go. When I undo the leash, I don't need to tell her to run, explore, and play because she already knows to do that, it is in her nature. The same is true for me when I am taking pictures. With a camera in my hand and a subject before my lens, I feel like I have been let off my leash, that I am doing what I was made to do. And so I don't worry about what the greater purpose of making photographs is, because I am content to know that the work that delights me is also the work I have been created for."

I thought about this question and his answer through the rest of that day. As evening descended I was reminded of the Benedictine motto, "Orare est laborare, laborare est orare." I was beginning to understand.

"Michael," I asked, as we watched a batch of prints wash, "If talking about photography is like thinking about praying, what about photography is like praying?"

"Making pictures," he replied.

This is Over the Rhine.

Carseland

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:08 -0600

[DI][Take 1] - [AI][Take 2][522][822][Landed.jpg]

If you're patient and happen to be looking at just the right spot, which could be anywhere along the face of the weir, you can see the trout jump. I don't think any of them ever make it up and over the concrete water slide, but that doesn't keep them from trying. And so, if you're lucky and usually when you're not watching for it, you'll see them, fluvial meteors rocketing from froth into deluge. The smart ones use the fish ladder.

Stan and I have been fishing together since day one, along with my dad and another friend, Andrew. Countless are the times we, in varying combinations, would make the hour-long drive to Carseland, the closest trout fishery that wasn't a stocked prairie pot-hole. Many are my memories of this place: large trophies to hand, the incessant
roar of the weir, taunting risers just out of reach, and of course that sinking feeling as the line went slack and another fish got away.

In every group of fishing buddies, there is always that one who without fail catches five-to-one easy over every other member of the group. I am not that fisherman, though if I'm patient, casting to just the right spot, using just the right fly, at just the right depth, I stand a chance with a trout for a dance. Stan, on the other hand is rarely turned down. This trip, the last of our season, was no exception. After Stan had released his fourth fish to my none, I began to wonder if I shouldn't just stick with what works. I banked the rod, grabbed my camera, and started taking pictures.

This is Harry Manx and Kevin Breit.

Black and white: [AI][Take 1][1022][585][Stan Deciding (B&W).jpg] - [AI][Take 2][522][822][Landed (B&W).jpg]

Kootenai Creek

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:04 -0600

[DI][Take 1] - [AI][Take 2][1022][585][Kootenai Creek 2.jpg] - [AI][Take 3][1022][647][Kootenai Creek 3.jpg]

When it comes to buying music, I lack self control. I remember one trip into HMV where I walked out with fifteen cd's! I hadn't planned on buying so many, it just sort of happened. Since then I have restricted myself to purchasing no more than three disks at any one time and usually only when I could really use an infusion of new tunes. Road trips qualify as such an occasion.

One such road trip at the end of June took me to Montana. This time, I was taking a course called The Character of Montana, a week-long photographic survey of the state. We photographed the ghost town at Garnet, the National Bison Range, Glacier National Park, and a rodeo in Augusta. For the flowing water shoot we were told to go to Kootenai Creek, a swift white ribbon of water coming off the mountains just south of the town of Florence, where the sixteen of us could spread out and find ample space and variations on the flowing water theme.

On the north side of Kalispell, just before leaving town, there is a BORDERS. It was there that I stopped, hoping to find an album or two to accompany me on the long ride home. Crooked Still, the cello-driven bluegrass band from Boston, had just released their new album. I wasn't looking for it when I entered the store, but it was the disk I was most excited to hear upon leaving. Many of the tunes floored me, but none so poignantly as the song that shared the name of the little town I drove through on my way to and from the creek where I took the photographs you see above.

Black and white: [AI][Take 1][922][622][Kootenai Creek 1 (B&W).jpg] - [AI][Take 2][1022][585][Kootenai Creek 2 (B&W).jpg] - [AI][Take 3][1022][647][Kootenai Creek 3 (B&W).jpg]