Life On The Ranch

If you have read my previous posts you are aware that I unplugged and moved onto a semi Wilderness Guest Ranch and then gradually plugged back in. Here in the hinterlands I started making photographs with a Canon point & shoot and thus my life as a photographer was rekindled.

This is the house I lived in for three years. It was built in about 1908 and in 1950 was moved 100 meters to its current location. I chose the over-the-shoulder shot because I like the emphasis on its situation with the lake and mountain view. I also like the band of light highlighting the house and illuminating the lake while the cloud shadow obscures the mountain, preventing the hills from overpowering the viewers attention away from the dwelling.



O.K., this one is a film scan, but I thought you might like an extended view.



Though we were a guest ranch I didn't bother taking pictures of many of our clients, but who could resist our wildlife friends?

Our cat and one of the beggarly foxes that made daily visits...


I am looking straight up at this noisome little fellow. To hear him go on you would think he owned the place!


I tried everything I could think of (short of violence) to get this pest to leave one of the guest cabins. Nothing was working so I decided to take his mug shot. Who would have thunk it, I soon as the strobe went off he disappeared, well, in a flash!



This photo was taken in our bedroom, where we would enjoy our morning coffee in bed with the windows open so the Stellar's Jays could fly on in for the morning peanut rations. Notice the kerosene lamp, I told you we were unplugged!



Once the birds are fed it is time to feed the weasel.



Pine Marten were also frequent guests throughout the winter months.



The lake always seemed to manage to freeze up around November's full moon, seen here as sunset alpenglow bathes Hudson Bay Mountain in the days waning light.


And so after so many opportunities I just had to get a DSLR, unfortunately I couldn't afford one until after we had left this paradise, but that will have to be covered in another post.

And Now

Resurrection. During my unplugged years in the backwoods it was as though I had died to my past, and then I rebirthed. I had lain in the grave for a time but then the trumpet sounded and I was called forth, back into life, into aspirations and ambitions, into renewed hope and fresh vision. I have emerged from my dark ages a new man.

I do not see death itself as a permanent state and observation of the order of nature itself tells me that life springs forth from death...



What has this to do with photography? Well, in this case it is a roundabout way of introducing my first digital presentation on this photography blog-

Scenes From A Cemetery.
For many people a graveyard is a place to avoid, yet within the courts of a cemetery I have discovered many things, including not only sorrow and loss but also hope, life, promise and yes, even beauty. I am in the midst of a long term project to produce a book depicting these moods that can be found in such a place, and here today I would like to begin my digital photography blog with scenes from Mount Ida Cemetery, Salmon Arm, BC., Canada, for my old life has died, my old photographic ways have passed and life and art forge forward together, alive and renewed yet connected to the past.

Field Of Stones

ISO 800, 1/80, f5.6

I 've found John Doe!

ISO 1600, 1/60, f5.6

Masonic Symbol

ISO 1600, 1/60, f6.7

Tragedy, notice the dates...

ISO 800, 1/250, f4.8

Silk Flowers

ISO 400, 1/80, f5.6

Reflecting...

ISO 1600, 1/15, f5.6

Next

I continued to sporadically take more than make photographs over the next decade with the venerable box camera as film budget allowed, but the budget too was sporadic.

At this point in my life my big priority was to spend as much time as possible trekking, fishing and primitive camping in the Rocky mountains and foothills of my native Alberta, Canada. I wanted to take photo's for personal record on these outings and the ultralight Kodak Tele-Instamatic (110 film) seemed to fill the bill. It pretended to work at the time but the negatives have faded into detail-less strips of meaninglessness and that is almost more than I can say for the Woolco prints that consumed a teenagers hard come by earnings. That 110 cartridge fiasco did however quicken a desire in my heart to do better, and so I saved up for and purchased an early Canon AE-1, along with a Vivitar 70-210 macro zoom.

On the way home from the Woolco photo department I stopped by my friends house and took a blurry, hand held picture of the moon through the basement window, after which I made the following double exposure, representing to me a group of friends sitting around playing games and listening to music (probably Pink Floyd, or something similar).





Here is another image from that first roll of 35mm Kodak...




AND THEN, for a short while...

... I had the pleasure and privilege of owning a Mamiya 645 with pistol grip and a fabulous Vivitar strobe kit. Alas, due to an unfortunate incident I only had this dream machine for a few short months and then it was gone. While I was getting used to it I did manage to pull off what I consider to be one of my first self-portraits. Here is the portrait, scanned from the original print (notice the Rhinoplasty courtesy of Kodak)...



...and so it was back to using the Canon AE-1. Over the years I have owned 3 AE-1's, a Mamiya 35mm, 2 Konica 35mm's, a manual Minolta 35mm, 2 Minolta Maxxum 7000's and a Canon EOS-630.

In the year 2000 I sold off almost everything I owned, payed off my debts and moved deep into the wilds of northern British Columbia where my wife and I took care of a semi-wilderness guest ranch. After a year or so I bought my first of several Canon digital point-and-shoot cameras before plunging into the world of Nikon Digital-SLR. I currently own a D70, a D50, an FM, an F3HP and a plethora of lens, all Nikon except for my LensBaby 2.0. I dream of one day owning a Nikon D3, but then again, who doesn't?

The Beginning

Every photographer has a beginning and though I didn't realize it for many years my interest in photography began very early when as a child a favorite pastime was pouring through the family photo albums occupying space on the bookshelf in our spartan living room.

It was the early sixties and though our family was rather poor (financially speaking) we had two Brownie Hawkeye cameras complete with flashes - I still remember the 'pop' and the wonderful smell that filled the air when the bulbs went off, even the touch of the swollen blue bulb seemed somewhat, shall I say, erotic? An uncle of mine had a wonderful Leica rangefinder with which he shot beautiful slides that he would share on a screen in his basement during the long Canadian winters. I used to love to handle that camera and look through its finder, hoping one day to have one of my own.

During my fifth winter I snapped my first photographs, little knowing the hold photography would one day have upon me. Here is a scan of that first picture I can remember making, an image of a snowman my sister and I had made in our front yard.