North to Alaska - Part 1 Grande Prairie/Dawson Creek

A recent work trip saw me based in Grande Prairie, Alberta from which I then traveled out to various locations. While some consider these road trips an inconvenience, they present many new and interesting photographic subjects. I often travel early in the morning and late in the evening to accommodate business hours. This also means I travel during the golden hours of photography. Here are some shots of a day trip out to Fort St John British Columbia, up the first 100 or so miles of the famous Alaska Highway.

During WW2, in 1942, the Canadian and US Governments combined forces to build a roadway to link Alaska with the rest of the USA.

The Alaska Highway stretches from Dawson Creek, British Columbia (Mile "0") to Lower Post in the Yukon covering about 885 kilometres (595 mi.) It continues from Lower Post and crosses the Alaska border at "Mile 1221" (1965 kilometres). The original finishing point of the Alaska Highway is in Delta Junction, Alaska at "Mile 1422".



Dawson Creek is named after the watercourse of the same name, itself named after George Mercer Dawson who led a surveying team through the area in August 1879; a member of the team labelled the creek with Dawson's name. I believe this sculpture is depicting George Mercer Dawson. It is mounted in the traffic circle right at mile zero and points onward to the west.

My next post will include some early morning shots of fog on the river banks at Taylor BC and ... the original timber curved bridge on the old Alaska Highway.

Spring Shadows

Well it may be spring on the calendar here in Alberta the only sign of that here is the strength in the light. Finally we are getting some real heat from the sun.

Shot east of Smoky Lake Alberta, the snow amongst the trees and the warm shadows here bring back memories of springtime spent trudging through the bush hauling pails of maple sap back to the sugar shack to be boiled down into maple syrup.






The old car below was abandoned in the farmyard above this stand of trees. Again, it was the play of the shadows that caught my eye. I want you to look at the car's shadow on the ground - what is odd about it. Maybe you are faster than me but after a few minutes I realized that someone had chopped the roof out of the car and that is why the shadow includes the complete window line; something you wouldn't normally see when the sun was so high in the sky.

Fort Smith Fire Department at "Northern" Store

Wednesday March 4 2009, Fort Smith NWT

I have some pictures of the fire trucks and crews in front of the Northern store in Fort Smith Wednesday night this week. Around 5pm, staff evacuated the store and the fire department arrived to investigate the cause of a fire alarm. As of 6pm, there was no apparent cause and they were still investigating the cause. I am told that there have been ongoing renovations and these may have caused the alarm.

Higher quality jpeg and raw images are available

Edmonton Silver Skate Festival Outing

Images Alberta Camera Club, http://www.imagesab.com/imagery/, had our February outing at Edmonton's 19th annual Silver Skate festival.

This was not an organized 'meet and shoot' but an informal come-and-go day. That was a good thing as some members attending Saturday shot from before the 9 starter's pistol kicked off the 25 km speed skating marathon until the fires' dying embers after 9 pm. That was just Saturday. Sunday's racing included the Winter Triathlon, the 50 km speed skate marathon as well.

Throughout the day, events spread across the ice of Hawreluk Park to include other family fun activities. Volunteers staffed jam can curling and Sledge hockey trials. Royal Glenora skate club had figure skaters performing routines and clowns entertained young and old alike with their icy antics.

Off-ice family activities included baking bannock over an open fire, maple syrup candy trough, horse drawn sleigh rides, a toboggan hill and a kinder-castle playground with colourful ice blocks frozen and peeled from old plastic milk jugs. Cross country skis or speed skates were also available to try for free

With the Silver Skate festival, was Edmonton's newly launched 'WinterLight' festival. Lighted snow sculptures, intricate cut and sculpted fire pits, singers and the Vibe Tribe's fire dancers prepared onlookers for the finale of the evening, the '24 Hours to Ignition' competition. Local artists had been given a pile of willow branches, a bale of straw, a roll of twine and 24 hours to create their masterpieces.

All were sacrificed to flame thrilling the evening crowds.

I tried to capture the spirit of the day in my wanderings and you can sample some of the day's events here at my blog. If you wanted a day of varied shooting technique and style, this was THE EVENT to attend.

If you missed this outing then join us March 21 for this winter's final weekend of 'WinterLight'. Many of the same performers will be at Churchill Square as we say a final fairwell to winter and usher in spring. I hope to see you there.

Here's their link.....http://www.winterlight.ca/joomla/events-overview/illuminations-mar-21.html

Silver Skate Festival -Edmonton Alberta

Here's a quick teaser for an upcoming article.

I attended the 19th annual Silver Skate Festival in Edmonton Alberta this past weekend. In addition to the 25 km speed skating marathon there were a variety of activities for the whole family as part of the ongoing 7 weeks of winter events under the banner of "Winterlight".

Berlin Sculpture

I've not posted anything lately but I have been busy in learning mode. I sat in on a learning session at Images Alberta Camera Club on ©Photoshop and ©Lightroom work flow. These were lessons that I needed to become more proficient with my ©Photoshop Elements and ©Gimp photo processing tools.

Today's picture has bothered me since I shot it last year in Germany. I was using a Kodak ©EasyShare 5 Megapixel point and shoot digital camera but grossly underexposed the main image due to the light level in the sky. Early efforts to brighten the picture resulted in a totally washed out sky.

Today, I used the magnetic lasso tool in ©Photoshop to make a very clean selection of the sky above the sculpture, darken the sky to match the exposure of the rest of the image, then brighten the entire image to bring out the detail. The frame is also a tool from within ©Photoshop Elements. Overall, I am very pleased with the result and I achieved better color truism than I was able to achieve using HDR type tools to balance my shadows and highlights.

The foreground is the "Berlin Sculpture", a piece of work by the Matschinsky-Denninghoff's couple. Our guide on the 'hop on, hop off' tour said it was meant to represent the two Berlins, East and West, separated after the war but still struggling to unite. This is in the meridian of Tauentzien Strasse, a popular street full of shops and businesses. Centered within the links, is the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtniskirche. This church was extensively damaged by allied bombing in 1943. The church was saved from demolition in the early 1960's and was stabilized. It stands as a testament to the destructiveness of war and there is a memorial hall in the base of the west tower. Throughout Germany we often saw plaques and photos of city highlights before and after the damage of war.

Carnival Ballons - Cologne Germany

In January 2008, I had the opportunity to visit Germany where we were attending a trade show in Paderborn. We had researched with tour books and online and decided that we wanted to visit Cologne,but we had missed one very important fact: the day we arrived was the first day of Karnival, a celebration of abandon on the last days before the pious living of Lent. Think of it as Mardi Gras but colder and with more clothing. The cathedral was closed for the duration as the area became alive with song and drink. What were we do but join the crowd!

Karnival crowds in Cologne Germany during Karnival















One of the more elaborate costumes to be seen.

Market Day - Paderborn Germany

Market day in Paderborn Germany is Wednesday and Saturday. This is a local butcher's truck on the market square for the Farmer's Market. The beauty of these are they are self-contained and refrigerated. At the end of the day, they simple wipe everything down and close the windows and doors and roll away.

A visit to St Andrews NB

A visit to a yarn and knitwear shop in St Andrews New Brunswick. I was struck by the color and texture of these skenes of yarn against the cork floats strung in front of the shop.

Used Cars

In October I went out to Stan Reynolds' Salvage Yard in Wetaskiwin with Images Camera club for a photo shoot. Over about 5 decades, Mr Reynolds has collected everything from old wagons and threshing machines to jet aircraft. Many of his vehicles became the start of the Reynolds Alberta Museum. See the attached link.

http://machinemuseum.net/KMain/RAM%20History.htm

When I saw the truck with the old advertising board, I knew I had to take the picture. I have altered the original with a faked blue sky and posterized the colors.


Some of you have seen another edit I did on the original photo using a the 'threshold' option in my editor. It converts light and dark areas into a inked appearance. Some pre-editing was required to clean up the background and adjust shadows to create this 'drawing'.