DanOCan

I had fallen into a rut where I assumed that in order to get an “interesting” photo I had to travel.  To me “interesting” had become synonymous with “road trip”.  Yesterday on the drive home from work as I passed over the bridge across Priddis Creek I looked to the west and saw there was a combination of interesting light and chinook cloud over the creek.

I drove home as fast as I could and swept into the house with all the gentle grace of a hurricane.  I grabbed the camera and shouted a “See you in a few minutes, got to go get a picture” to Shirley before I was back in the car and heading to that bridge which is just a kilometer from home.

I was pleased to see the light hadn’t changed much and with a quick couple of adjustments to the camera I quickly fired off three bracketed shots.  I know I promised not to get addicted to HDR but…

Chinook Arch Over Priddis Creek

Sometimes in our quest to discover new places we overlook the things right in our own backyard.

January 14, 1990 was a noteworthy day for several reasons.  An odd little cartoon show made its debut and no one at the time expected that 22 years later “The Simpsons” would still be on the air.  I went with my friends Derek, Keith and Stuart to watch the Lethbridge Hurricanes play a hockey game that was broadcast nationally on TSN.  As they cut to a commercial break you can see me in my standard seat – Section J, Row 4, Seat 4…the best spot in the Lethbridge Sportsplex to watch the WHL goalies ply their trade.  If I were to dig through the dusty boxes here in my basement (and I could actually find a working VCR) I still have a VHS tape of that game.

Something else happened later that night that forever etched the date into my memory.  That was the night we got the call saying my dad had finally lost his battle with cancer and died. 

22 years ago.  I was only 17 at the time.  When you factor in my early years where I have no memories it’s not hard to imagine he’s been gone almost twice as long as he was around for me.  So many of the memories are still vivid – fishing at Lake McQuillan for hours on end.  Buying my first car together.  Him coaching my tee-ball team.  Christmas parties down at the fire hall.  Him driving in the Coaldale parade and letting me operate the siren in the fire truck.  The day a storm came up when we were in his fishing boat on Payne Lake and we barely made shore.  Him hanging over the fence with the neighbours talking for hours on end.  Saturday lunches at Burger King.  Him teaching me how to drive a manual transmission.  Camping weekends in the Crowsnest Pass.  Our vacation to Kalispell, Montana where he crushed the campground owner’s sprinkler with his van. 

We don’t have a ton of pictures from back then.  The digital age was still a decade or more away so film processing was expensive.  The pictures we do have were undoubtedly captured with the little Kodak Instamatic X15 camera which was witness to all our family vacations and holidays.

We live in an age where people use applications like Instagram to give their modern day photos the faded and aged look.  Many of the photos of my dad don’t need those filters, that’s how they came from the camera.  This one, from Christmas dinner in 1978 is a classic Overes family moment.  My dad, his face caught with an odd expression giving my grandmother a bit of a sideways glance.  A stubby bottle of Labatts Blue sits off to his left.  My aunt Roberta dutifully looking at the camera, her fork poised over her plate waiting to take the first bite, not knowing most of her was going to get cut out of the frame anyway.  My uncles Kevin and Lyle sort of looking down at the table not wanting to look at the camera and my grandmother, her eyes closed, just waiting for the awkward “Smile everyone!” moment to pass.

A plate of food sits at an empty chair, undoubtedly the spot my mother vacated just minutes before as she got up to find the camera and take the photo.  Already, in her absence, our cat Jingles has jumped into the chair and has one paw on the table – ready to make a move on that sneaky turkey.

A fleeting moment captured.  Sort of like life itself.  One day you’re a seventeen year old high school senior who’s biggest concern in life is who you’re going to take to the prom and the the next thing you know it’s 22 years later and you wonder where the time went. 

Eleven years after that Christmas dinner photo was taken my dad would be gone – it’s been double that since he died.  I try and do the math to try and put some context around the time that has passed.  It doesn’t help.  It’s like when I try and comprehend that my dad would have been celebrating his 80th birthday this April.  80?  How is that possible?  I guess to me he’ll always be 57…

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Every picture tells a story.  Words.  Clichés. 

We’ve all heard these phrases and – for the most part – they are true.  For me a picture is a portal, not just to another place and time but to the photographer.  Whether we know it or not, every picture includes a little bit of the photographer.  Look at my photos and you’ll learn a little something about me. 

Was I there to document a building knowing one day it might be gone?  When I took the picture was I simply trying to record something for future generations?  Or, was I there for a different purpose?  Perhaps I was feeling artistic, or even a little playful.  Am I mimicking the style of another photo I may have seen at one time?  Why did I choose to include a certain element?

And then there are nights like tonight where the photo contains a little bit of me – literally.

Red Deer Lake School

Yep, there I am on the right side.  That long shadow stretching across the snow-marked grass?  That’s me.  It was cold and I was in a hurry so I wasn’t paying very close attention to my composition and I wasn’t aware that the streetlights from the schoolyard across the road were casting my shadow into the frame.

I went out to capture star trails over the old school but it was too cloudy.  Instead I captured myself.  I think that’s sort of cool.  Timing may be everything but sometimes sheer luck is handy too.

05:05:  I wake up.  I’m not sure what has changed to move me from sleep to wakefulness but I can feel it.  I need to check the time and learn if I have to get up (**groan**) or if I have an extra hour to sleep.  I fumble around in the bed looking for my iPod.  At first I find just the headphone cable and then I carefully begin tracing it through the maze of tossed pillows and messed up blankets, like a firefighter following his hose out of a smoke-filled building.  (Male coupling points to the fire, the female coupling will be on the fire side…why do I remember this?  Then I question my memory.  Wait, think about this logically – when you role a hose you start at the male end so it ends up in the middle of the role to protect the threads.  When you throw a hose to extend a line you hold the female end and toss – that puts the male end pointing towards the fire.  When you attach another hose the female coupling of the second hose will thus be closer to the fire.  Got it!)  Without realizing it I have brought my mind back to life.  Once I finally reach the iPod I shield it under the covers so the glare doesn’t wake up Shirley – ain’t I nice?  I click it on and read the time.  Damn.  My niceness goes out the window along with any plans of sleeping an extra hour – **shove, shove** – “Wake up, dear!”  Shirley moves enough for me to know she will eventually use whatever mind tricks she needs to join me in the land of the wakeful.  Thursday has begun!

05:20:  Emerging from the bedroom and into the kitchen, I hear the dog behind me.  I wonder what he has in his mouth.  It must be something, the dog is like a junkie needing a fix in the morning – he *has* to have a sock or something in his mouth.  Sock if I  am lucky, underwear if I am not.  I decide to not look back and instead continue to make my way to the coffee pot.  The dog detours off to his bed in the living room to chew on whatever it is he stole from the bedroom.  I hope I remember to retrieve it before we get company some day.

05:22:  Coffee poured.  Need food.  Too lazy to cook.  Toast it is.  I go looking for the toaster.  Three drawers later I locate it.  “It’s just that I am tired.”  That must be it – it simply can’t be that my mind still struggles to remember where the toaster migrated to eight months after the kitchen renovation.  No, simply can’t be.  I open the bread cupboard.  (Right one on the first try, too!)  Four bags of bread stare me down.  There’s the leftover hamburger buns, the leftover hot dog buns, the bag with the final remains of a loaf of Calgary Italian Bakery bread from Costco, and the fresh loaf of bread Shirley must have pulled up from the basement.  I start the the Calgary Italian Bakery bread.  I find one slice intact, the remainder of the bag is various bits and pieces.  Bird food.  I grab the one good slice and add the rest to the pile next to the sink of things to get taken out to the chicken coop.  I return to the cupboard and grab the hot dog buns.  Those will do – there are two of them so I add my original slice of bread to the chicken pile.  “Too dry anyway.” I justify to myself.

05:25:  Buns are shoved into the toaster and are slowly heating up.  It’s odd that if they were dry to begin with I’d toss them but if I intentionally dry them out we call it “breakfast”.  I find the peanut butter and open the jar.  Crap, it’s new.  I hate making the first dent in the perfectly smooth surface of a new jar of peanut butter.  Yeah, it’s weird, but whatever.  I get over the hump and plunge the knife in.  Hey, no one said life was easy…

05:28:  I begin wandering around looking for my iPhone and laptop.  I remember having the iPhone on the couch last night when I was watching the Penguins game.  I remember having my phone there because I was spouting off on Twitter about how bad the Penguins were playing.  Despite their loss I feel some satisfaction in that they proved me right by losing their sixth straight game.  With my deep insight such as that (a team that has lost five straight isn’t playing well) I wonder why Hockey Night in Canada never came calling for me.  Their loss, I guess.

05:35:  Laptop booted, toasted buns on a plate, iPhone located and plugged into the charger since it was down to 12%.  I can finally sit down and start banging out another boring “day in the life” blog post. 

06:02:  Realize it is time for work.  Better get ready to face the commute.  Shirley is coming into the city today.  Dog is staying home.  Those factors play heavily into my routine.  Better let the dog out and get his food so Shirley will think I’ve done something productive rather than sitting on my laptop all morning typing like crazy.  As a side note note, if your wife asks “What are you typing?” answering “Emails to my girlfriends” is *not* the correct answer, no matter how funny it is.)  Going to be a long commute, me thinks…

Sometimes you have to love living in Alberta.  Not only does the weather change on a moment’s notice but your options for recreation are seemingly unlimited.  This weekend was a perfect example of that.

Yesterday it was abandoned places in the Canadian Badlands.  Cacti and sagebrush.  Today was snowshoes in the Porcupine Hills.  Spruce trees and snow.  Both less than 90 minutes from my front door. 

Now, in fairness, this has been a drier than average winter for Calgary.  I think it has been a month since we’ve had new snow.  We’ve seen high temps into the double-digits.  Major grassfires and high winds.  This is not a normal January for those of us living north of the 51st parallel.

I have not wasted the chance to get out and enjoy the opportunities presented by not having to travel roads covered in snow and ice.  North to Edmonton, south to Raley, east to Drumheller, west to Kananaskis.  That’s not too bad for getting around this province in the last couple of weeks.

The forecast says things will change after tomorrow.  Snow.  Freezing temperatures.  Basically what we would expect for January.  We always knew it couldn’t last, right?  Whenever we get a stretch of warm weather we fall into the collective trap of wondering if this is *finally* the year we get an early Spring.  I’ll never understand why we do it.  It’s like Canadians marking Groundhog Day; we know in our heads it’s all one big scam – after all, even six more weeks of Winter would mean Spring got here early – yet our hearts make us fall for it one more time.

Rather than lament the warm weather we will be missing, I’ll embrace the wintery weather which is coming.  I shall snowshoe through pristine snow in the blanket of silence that only the heavy blanket of winter brings.  Not only will I *do* it, I will revel in it.

But, before then, I shall take a quick moment to look back at some of the great travels I’ve had since Christmas.  (OK, I admit it – it’s just another excuse to post a picture from that great shoot at Raley.)

Raley, Alberta – December 27, 2011

Carbon, Alberta –- January 7, 2012

Porcupine Hills – January 8, 2012