DUCHESNAY FALLS, NORTH BAY

 

We are still in lockdown here in North Bay, so I am still exploring my negatives files. It is a voyage of nostalgic memories. When I scanned this negative I wondered why I never printed this image. It is one of many I took on my regular excursions to Duchesnay Falls. It is close to my home and is one of my favourite photo spots. I still like it but , getting on in age, makes it more difficult for me to walk the trails and clambering the rocks.

FOR DAVID BROWN

Another image from my negative collection. I dedicated this image to David Brown, a passionate photographer and , just like me and I am certain many other photo artists , miss working in the darkroom. A unique place to work quietly on creating your images. Of course we follow the same processes while working digitally but we miss the unique intimacy of working in an almost dark environment experiencing the magic of seeing the image appear in the developer tray. 

WINTER LANDSCAPE, SUDBURY

 

Another image from my old files. I took this picture on a little photo excursion to the Sudbury area before the the great landscape restoration. Before the changes the area around Sudbury was quite barren. Actually it looked quite grim and desolate. It is amazing how, since the nineteen eighties, the landscape has been transformed to the point that it will be difficult to find areas as this one I photographed in the mid seventies. This truly is a historic image. 

SNOW LANDSCAPE WITH ABANDONED HOUSE

 Another rediscovered pictures. This time an old house I photographed a few times. The old elm trees are all gone and actually so is the house. I am at an age now where you realize that your camera was really the magic memory box. Every day I discover new forgotten memories. After scanning in these old negatives to can re-interpret these images again.

MINE SITE, PICKLE LAKE, ONTARIO

 

We are under stay-at-home order, which is a good time to search my files for hidden gems. I scanned this negative, which I took many years ago on a trip to Pickle Lake in North Western Ontario. We were driving along a dirt road near a large copper mine. I guess what attracted me was the beautiful cloudy sky contrasting with the textures of the rocks and dirt along the road. The film I used was one of my favourite films Ilford HP5. I still miss working in the darkroom. If you wonder about ofthe height of  this”mountain” well, it was only about 3 meters high.

MINIMALISM, LAKE NIPISSING

 

This image is a reflection of our unusual time of isolation. It reminds me of the minimalist art of the nineteen sixties. It shows a view of just basic elements of rectangles and strong basic colour contrasting with the texture of the railing at the government dock here in North Bay. 

FIREFIGHTER’S HELMET

 

It is quite a lot of fun looking through old files and discovering negatives which I simply forgot about. This negative is quite a few decades old. Actually I took this picture when we just arrived in Canada and I worked for a photographer in Toronto, who did a lot of work for the provincial and federal government. So one morning,on my way to the subway, I passed some firetrucks parked outside an office building. The firemen were busy rolling out the hoses, so of course being a curious photographer I had to take some pictures of course.  I was intrigued by this helmet . You don’t see these anymore and I am certain that they are quite valuable . Thiswas shot using Kodak Trix developed in Agfa Rodinal.

WINTER, LAKE NIPISSING

 

Choosing negatives from my files, remind me of a famous quote by Ansel Adams, “the negative is the score and the image is the performance”. I have to agree with his analogy with music. Each time you make a print of a specific negative you make some subtle and sometimes of course major changes in the interpretation of the negative. A good example is this print, which is made from a old negative but is a very different interpretation from earlier prints. 

LIGHT BEFORE COLOUR

 

The British painter J.W. M. Turner once said light came before colourand as a photographer I have to agree with that statement. Turner of course was a master in painting light and that is one of the reasons I so admire his work. This image is quite old. I made this picture sometimes in the seventees but , because I did not write it down, I simply can’t remember where I took the picture. During this period of isolation and actually compltete lockdown, I gigured this is an excellent time to once again go through my old negatives and start scanning some of them.I came across this negative made with my old twinlens Roleiflex and processed it on my computer. I never printed it before and looking at the result I wonder why I never printed it. It is a wonderful image.

WINTER LANDSCAPE, BONFIELD,ONTARIO

Another picture from yesterday’s photo excursion. Yes it was quite cold with the temperature around -15 C However the sun just appeared above the horizon, colouring the Winter landscape in a beautiful golden hue. Of course it did not add to us feeling warmer but it definitely created a very romantic atmosphere, giving us quite a few nice images.

 

BACK LIGHTING

 What a beautiful Winter day we had. So John, Gerry and I left early on a photo trip. Of course we could not let this day go by without taking photographs. One of the places we visited was an abandoned saw mill. John and I had been there before but of course you always see something new. My first series of pictures were of a large backlit group of old loading facilities. The very pronounced shadows and large shapes made me think of the traditional black and white images by photographers like Edward Weston, Charles Sheeler and the German photographer Albert Renger Patzsch.

WINTER, THE SOUTH RIVER, ONTARIO

 

As I promised, I will be posting more pictures this year. While we are still in some form lockdown, I look at this time as a good period for reflection. My extensive photo archive is simply a treasury of forgotten images like this view of the South River, which I took two years ago. Using a large matt around the image gives it a new visual perspective. 

BARN, STURGEON FALLS

 

Revisiting some of the old sites I have photographed over the years, you see the process of time. Like this barn, which is slowly deteriorating and probably wil be gone in a few years or maybe has collapsed already  since my last visit. It still has character with its strong textures and patterns.

QUILTED ICE HUT, LAKE NIPISSING

 

When visiting the North Bay art winterfest I took a picture of this quilted ice hut on Lake Nipissing. It certainly is a good picture for these dark times when all of us are living in isolation because of the dreaded  covid 19. But I am certain that this year will hopefully bring us a semblance of normal life again. So lets keep our fingers crossed.

WINTER, LAKE NIPISSING

 

Winter has definitely arrived  here in North Bay and surrounding areas. Many parts of Ontario did not or hardly received any snow. Very unusual for this time of the season. I took this picture at the end of the popular cranberry trail in Callander. A black and white version of this landscape is also quite strong. However the colour version was my final choice In a future posting I might use the monochrome version.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

Christmas Eve and the right time to post a my Christmas image. I chose this image of one of my most favourite subjects, an old maple tree, which I have photographed since the early seventies. So here is my visual 

AGGREGATE PIT, NORTH BAY

 

A few years ago I visited an aggregate business  not far from my home. In the Winter of course, the only landscape is quite stark . everything blanketed in snow contrasting with the exposed, strongly textured gravel and sand. It is a great place to photograph because of the stark simplicity of the landscape. White and black interspersed with beautiful textures and patterns. 

WINTER LANDSCAPE, BLACK AND WHITE

 

It is the busy time before Christmas.Last week I designed and mailed our Christmas card which took up some time, but all the cards have been sent. So on Saturday my friend Gerry invited our friend John and me to go on a little photo safari. The weather forecast predicted a nice sunny day but of course it was quite overcast. Not a great problem because I overcast skies in the Winter. It makes for nice moody Winter shots with strong graphic images. We had a great day visiting some of our favourite spots. I decided to concentrate on black and white pictures. So here one example of that trip.  I hope you like it.

WINTER LANDSCAPE, COLOUR

 So here is the promised colour interpretation. Rob gave the black and white image 10 out of 10, so I am interested which picture he prefers. I used the word interpretation because I used a variety of filters and adjustments to create the Winter mood I was looking for. The enormous changes in the various photo adjustment programs gives me the same freedom as painters have to create the image to your own artistic interpretation.

WINTER LANDSCAPE, POWASSAN, ONTARIO

 

Again a. picture I took a few years ago in the Powassan area. It was a difficult decision which image to choose, so I decided to publish both interpretations. Today I start with the monochrome image, tomorrow the colour interpretation. Each image reflects the Winter season and both show a different aspect of the cold season. I feel that this image reflects a strong graphic meaning of the Winter season. But lets look at the colour picture and maybe this will decide my view of which picture is the one with the most impact.

DRAMATIC SKY, LAKE NIPISSING

 

Last Friday afternoon I made a visit at one of my local beaches here in North Bay. It was a pretty somber grey Fall day. But I was lucky because just when I arrived the sky started to open up at the horizon. Of course that was all the change I saw but it made for a pretty simple but dramatic picture, which, after I turned this simple landscape into a black and white image, became quite a visually impressive image.

FIRST SIGNS OF WINTER

 

This photograph was quite a challenge for me. The original is an old and I mean old, Agfa  slide. This type of film has a pretty limited life span. The colour was faded and showed discolouring on the edges. So, after scanning, I decided to turn the image into a monochrome picture and I am quite happy with the result. I took this picture early on a cold November morning and I like dark moody quality. Then I made some rather subtle changes with a LUT filter, which you can create yourself, to enhance the overal tone of the final image.

OLD BOOTS

 

About time to post another image. Again I have been rummaging through my files and liked this picture of old boots at one of my favourite places to visit the Powassan Treasure Mill. Its a fun place to take pictures.

The boots were black with the centre pair brown. So I turned the original colour image into a monochrome picture and then simply masked out the brown boots. It just added a contrast to this richly textured image.

 

COMPOSITION WITH COW PORTRAIT

 One of the places I visit, is a famous local house which is decorated  with all kind of found and collected junk. But lately it does not look that interesting any more. Everything looks neglected and deteriorated. Still, I did take a few pictures and liked this painting of a cow surrounded by some typical Canadian objects like old snowshoes, skates and hockey sticks. Again I prefer the monochromatic interpretation.

FOUR BRICKS

 

Composition with four bricks. The original was in colour but, after some study, I decided to turn the image into a monochromatic picture. Then I brought back the colour in the bricks to make them prominent in the composition and I liked the result. It definitely made the image visually stronger.

REEDS AND REFLEXIONS

 Another black and white image, which I took a few years ago when taking pictures around Munster, Ontario. It is a simple subject of reeds and its reflexion in water. I like the contrast between the detailed textured reed contrasted by the strong black and white reflexions, which look like a Japanese ink drawing.

LAKE NIPISSING, CLOUDS AND WAVE

 

Visited my favourite beach today. It was simply a glorious fall day. But instead of creating a colour interpretation of the landscape, I decided to render the scene into black and white. The reason, simple I liked the similarity between the clouds and the wave at the bottom. Black and white made the two elements more dominant in this composition.

FALL REFLECTIONS

A beautiful Fall day yesterday. We went for a walk along some trails, where we took pictures along a small creek. My first interest in running water are reflections and textures. I know what I can expect but of course the results are quite new and can be spectacular. The final image looks closer to an abstract painting rather than a straight photograph. Working with the various images on the computer is exciting because you manipulating the original file you can  see the image turn into final result you had in mind in the first place.

AUTUMN LEAVES

 

Just listening to Nat King Cole singing Autumn Leaves. I still love his interpretation of this popular song.

SoI am posting my visual interpretation. I like the painterly effect of this Fall image.

FALL LANDSCAPE

 

On the weekend I took a walk around the maple bush on the old Thorn’s farm property on our street. The house is gone but the old maple trees in the back of the property are still there for the time being. It’s a pity but I expect that soon we will see this nice area transform into some form of new development. So just in time to take some nice romantic Fall landscapes.  

WALK WAY, NORTH BAY, ONTARIO

 It has been a very long time since I posted a picture to my blog. Other projects have taken priority but I will certainly return to posting images again. This picture was taken last week on one of our walks through  the downtown neighbourhoods we like to explore. These areas are always an inspiration because there are always new ways of seeing the very familiar cityscapes. This picture was made while walking down one of the various walkways between streets. We enjoy those walkways reminding us of the paintings by a relative unknown painter Albert Frank who loved to walk along the various little lanes in Toronto, which he photographed and made into very delightful paintings.

RAIN

Rain today and yes I had to take a few pictures of hostas again. The two different patterns of the  drops and the lines from the leafs created a marvellous image.

SUMMER TEXTURES

Summer started yesterday, so to celebrate the new season I took some pictures in our garden. The garden is almost pure textures which we enjoy. The garden is predominantly coloured in a wide variety of greens, ranging from light yellow green to a deep forest green. However I decided to render my composition in black and white and yes I think this works quite well. It reminds me of the very powerful images of plants and gardens by the San Francisco photographer Imogen Cunningham.

DIPTYCH

Since the beginning of the pandemic I did not post any image on my blog. Actually I don’t have a good excuse for neglecting my blog. Not that I abandoned photography, far from it. this time was actually a good time to start looking at my past files and thinking about the direction my photography is taking me. Maybe it is my age but I found a renewed interest in my. black and white work. Also as I have mentioned earlier, I am very interested in what I would call my abstract photographs. Here is an example of my latest almost painterly experiments in my photography.

ROOTS

Time for another post. My choice  is a picture of some visually interesting tree roots. I am reading a book on Chinese art, a topic which has interested me for quite a long time. It is the ink drawings with just some light touches of colour, which I enjoy and recreate in this photograph. In this time  of isolation I like using my iPad to work on my pictures. There are some very good apps which allow you to explore different visual effects.

SPONTANEOUS ENVIRONMENTAL ART

Walking along the shore we came across this stacked rock “sculpture”, which I titled “spontaneous environmental sculpture”. I liked the simple elemental aspect. Not just the shape but alsothe colur and texture made a nice added surprise to our  walk.

EARLY SIGNS OF SPRING

Yesterday we went on a short little walk and photo shoot along the shores of lake Nipissing. It is still very early in the Spring season yet here in Northern Ontario. An overcast day which resulted in muted tones ranging from grey to yellow and browns. Actually closer to late Fall tones than the exuberance of the Spring colours of predominantly light green and yellow. It was a nice walk which resulted in a few nice images when I returned home. We are very fortunate living in a part of the country which allows us the freedom in these difficult and restrictive times to still go and enjoy the spiritual healing of simply walking and enjoying nature.

RED DOOR, HAILEYBURY, ONTARIO

Another picture from my file. when I saw this door, I was quite curious about the construction of the entrance to the building. It showed a very generous application of cement not just the entrance but also around the window. Looking at the file It reminded me of some nineteenth century gothic scene. Remembering old wet plate photos from that era I first made a black and white image, which I combined with the original colour file. Then I applied a variety of filters to end up with an early hand coloured final image. My workflow is quite simple, starting in Lightroom then switching to Photoshop to make my preliminary adjustments and finally using the various filters and settings in OnOne.   

CITY SCAPE, MONTREAL, PQ

We are going through some strange times and are housebound of course like nearly everyone else. This is a good time to go through all my books and discovering the work of photographers, which over time I simply lost. One of the photographers I rediscovered is the Italian photographer Gianni Pezzani. Looking at his beautiful hand coloured black and white images. Remembering my own time working in the darkroom. Much of the digital photography is technically superb of course but most of it looks the same and I long for the time when photography was more innovative than what we see today. Of course there are some very creative photographers who have created great work using the computer so I should not generalize of course. 

EARTH DAY 2020

Today is the day we celebrate our earth, the planet we call home. While we are  battling a pandemic , we have to remember another and a much greater problem is the deterioration of our home. This day should also be a time that we have to seriously start working on cleaning up home and it is our only home, which we will lose if we don’t seriously tackle the problems of cleaning up and preserve the air we breathe,  the land we are destroying and the oceans and rivers we keep polluting.  Maybe while we are trying to get this coronavirus pandemic under control we will start realizing that we have to change our unbridled consumerism into a more sustainable way of living. 

TAG GRAFFITI, MONTREAL

Being cooped up inside your house or apartment is of course no great fun. you are restricted in your movement and you simply can't grab your camera and wander around looking for new images. But look at it from a positive angle. this is a great time exploring your files and finding some great  forgotten images.

So this picture is from a trip we made in the very early Spring a few years ago to Montreal.
Tagging is the simplest style of graffiti but this reminded me of a quote by Michael Ondaatje from his book In the Skin of a Lion.

"Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy”

Now back to my files looking for more forgotten pictures.

HAPPY EASTER

I like to wish all of you a Happy Easter. Yes I know times are very trying and frustrated but Easter offers us a message of hope and a reminder that better times will definitely return.

OLD CHURCH, CACHE BAY, ONTARIO

It has been quite awhile since my last posting. Actually I seriously have neglected posting to my blog. Maybe it was the Winter weather or other projects I am working on. I have not been on any serious photo excursions this Winter, but last Friday Gerry and I made a nice trip starting in Cache Bay and ending in Port Loring. The reason we went to Cache Bay was simply to see the state of the old Anglican church, which we had photographed earlier. The church is slowly deteriorating and we suspect that it is beyond restoration and will disappear in the next few years.  It will be a pity to see a bit of local history disappear. 

OLD SAWMILL, CACHE BAY

Time to post another picture. Lately I have been going through some of my old negatives and I came across some pictures I took many decades ago. These are the remains of the old sawmill in Cache Bay. It reminded me of a book I read in my late teens by the British explorer Percy Fawcett  and  his quest in finding the lost city Z, as he named it, in Mato Grosso in Brazil. Nobody knows if he ever found it because he disappeared in 1925. The fictional character Indiana Jones was loosely baseed on Percy Fawcett.

WINTER, SCREAMING HEADS

Time to post another picture. Christmas time is a busy time, but, together with my friends John and Gerry, We took a photo excursion to Screaming Heads. It was a grey Winter day which I like because it allows for some very fine moody photographs like this picture I took of the strange house looking like some fairytale haunted house.

MINER'S HOME TAVERN, COBALT, ON REVISITED

On our return to North Bay last Sunday, I took the opportunity to revisit the Miners Home Tavern again. When I photographed this place at the end of September, I planned to go back to retake the same scene but with snow. I was lucky that Sunday afternoon the snow came almost as ordered which gave me the chance to take this Wintery grey landscape. I think I did capture the mood of Winter in the image.

HAILEYBURY, ONTARIO

It has been awhile since my last posting. Last Sunday Dan, John and I conducted a small workshop as part of our exhibition, which closed that day. So I thought to post this image taken downtown Haileybury. Actually I would call the picture a photo illustration because I manipulated the image using Photoshop and Luminar4, two programs I use extensively.

FALL GARDEN

This weekend I returned to using my iPad again. It has been awhile since I used my tablet to work directly on my photographs. In a few weeks I promised to conduct a short workshop in Haileybury  on manipulating your images using the iPad. Actually it is quite enjoyable using the various apps to create some interesting results. 

RED MAPLE

Right across from our driveway, is a magnificently coloured maple. The Fall is my favourite season. It has of course a lot to do with the great display of colour. Nature is displaying its bright palette reminding us of the austere black and white Winter season.  

PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE, TEMISKAMING ART GALLERY

For information on opening times check the gallery’s website  https://www.temiskamingartgallery.ca/