ABANDONED TRUCK REVISITED

The weather has been too nice to be working inside on my pictures in my digital darkroom.I had posted a picture of this old truck covered in snow in April and promised I would go back to photograph the same truck in the Spring. The landscape looked different and I thought almost as abandoned as the the old artifact. The final result is best in black and white, reminding me of the old pictures from the American Farm Security photographers in the depression years of the thirties.

SOLOMON'S SEAL

The garden is waking up. A couple of days ago I made some pictures of this very graceful Solomon's Seal. The unfolding leaves created a very simple, but visually, beautiful  sculpture, which translated in a black and white image, suggesting some classic Chinese or Japanese ink drawing.

ABANDONED, COBALT, ONTARIO

The building is of course not really abandoned because it is still used for storage but obviously it is not inhabitable. A few days I was thinking, its time to make a photo excursion up North again. Cobalt is a fascinating place with a rich history and every time I go there it has changed. Maybe simply in my imagination but there is a feeling of a certain community vitality. This picture I made two years ago. I had photographed this building before so , looking at the image I thought that it would work best in monochrome and here is the result. It looks like an image made in the thirties by Walker Evans, a photographer whose images of the cities and towns in the USA inspire me.

SPRING CREEK, TEXTURE

Another detail of our Spring excursion along the small creek. I am not interested in photographing water in slow motion to get this, what I call, the cotton wool effect. It looks nice but I think the effect has been overused. I like detail and texture, so I photograph with a very fast speed, which freezes the motion creating rich detail. The effect in the image is quite reminiscent of the detailed night images of the the milky way at night, but in addition I also have the motion of the water.  An effect I enjoy.

SPRING CREEK

Last Monday Dan had invited Gerry and me on a small photo excursion along a private trail. It was a glorious Spring day. No black flies yet to interrupt our walk along a small creek. We pend a few hours taking pictures of the rapids. I concentrated on the textures and reflections of the water because I found the sunlight too harsh, which created too much contrast on the white waves of the rapids But we will return on a day when the light is much softer.

KLOMPEN (CLOGS)

Spring has truly started so instead of spending time on my photography , it was time for cleaning up and working outside in the garden. But I did spend time on going through more of my old negatives. I found some very old negatives which I took in 1960. At that time I visited a clog maker or klompen maker in Dutch. It has been such a long time that I can't remember exactly where I took the pictures. Scanning and processing the images takes quite some time but it is bringing back many memories. The clogs are made from poplar or willow wood. In this picture the painted clogs are left outside to dry. Now back to working on the rest of the pictures.

DRIFTWOOD FOR PAUL KELLY

Last Friday evening we went to the opening of Paul Kelly's exhibition at the Kennedy art gallery here in North Bay. It was very wonderful to see Paul and his wife Susan again. The show was very a surprise for me because Paul has gone back to his roots in design and colour theory. It isa show worth seeing so, if you are in North Bay just go and have a look. Paul was telling me how much he likes my black and white photographs. So, i have gone back to my roots in black and white photography and scanned in the very old negative from 1974 when I was interested in the bleak landscape around Sudbury.When first walking into the landscape was the almost surreal environment. The rocks were all black and pitted caused by the sulfur released during the smelting of the ore. All the trees were gone of course except the dead wood laying strewn all over the landscape. But as I mentioned before in some earlier postings, the city of Sudbury has been doing and amazing job restoring the landscape.

SAND AND WATER, SPRING RUNOFF

Sorry David but I have to disappoint you this time. Yesterday I took my car in to have my tires changed, so I took a walk into the area behind the garage. It is actually a large are of disturbed land. Walking through the parking area I had to jump over different little streams of melt water and of course I could not resist photographing the sand ripples and the textures of sand and gravel. When I worked on the image it looked to me more like flames than streaming water. Anyway here is the final image.