Posts by: George Barr

Ken and I had gone to Drumheller to photograph and I persuaded him to continue further north east to Hanna, where stands an old railway turntable and roundhouse. Now, I’d been there before, and needed something different. I made some photographs of parts of the side of the turntable (for another article maybe) and decided to wander around the back of the building.​

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There are a number of places to visit around Calgary where one can have fun photographing old machinery. They provide interesting shapes, faded paint, rust and gears.

Most know of Heritage Park, some have visited Turner Valley Gas Plant. I’m guessing that fewer have visited Pioneer Acres, just north west of Iricana, which itself is north east of Calgary. There’s a modest admission fee and then you can wander around to your hearts content.

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Upping colour or contrast has a long and honourable history. Everyone who shot Fuji Velvia was taking advantage of the film’s tendency to push colour to unreal levels. Agfa film was known for its warm tones, others did nice things to skin, and even Kodachrome wasn’t real, just nice, and long lasting.

With digital editing, it’s simply a slider away to take the colour and push it up till it pops, and many do so, with nearly all of their images. Heck, cameras even have a setting for it. A quick visit to popular photo sites will reveal colours that never saw the light of day, so to speak.

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It was early spring and I hadn’t been to Fish Creek Park in a long time. It was mid afternoon, the light fairly harsh, and I didn’t find anything to excite me ’til I made my way upstream and I was literally under McLeod Trail. In the shadows under the bridge and away from the heat of the sun were some ice formations, and one in particular stood out because it was lit from behind by a stray beam of sunlight sneaking under the bridge from the other side.

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We were attending our daughter’s graduation and decided it might be fun to stay on Granville Island in the heart of Vancouver. Alison and I were just walking around, looking for images to make. There were stores and stalls, fruit stands and boats, ship’s propellors and lots of characters, as well as a scattering of rust and water.

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Thisis Bill. Bill is a working rancher. William Allard (of National
Geographic fame) was in Calgary to lead a workshop by The Camera
Store that I had signed up for. Bill asked why I would want to attend
a workshop at my age and with my experience, but I was feeling a bit
stale and the idea of shooting people instead of rocks and rust, of
working with someone more spontaneous and probably flexible than
myself was appealing – and the workshop did that for me in spades.

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I made this image in early September of this year. I was using my new Pentax 645Z and had a 35 mm lens and a 75 but nothing in between. I made a vertical composition and then wanted to include more to each side, without adding extra top and bottom, so it just made sense to do a stitch, even though at 51 megapixels, I didn’t really need the extra resolution. Switching to the 35 would have included a lot more.

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We were fortunate enough to be able to take an Adventure Canadacircumnavigation cruise around Newfoundland. The ship had arrived the
evening before from South America and before that the Antarctic, and
customs were being VERY thorough and we departed several hours late –
already well after sunset and just plain getting dark.

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Welcome to the first of what may turn out to be a series of briefarticles focusing on a single image I have made, and the lessons learned
from the making. If you find this useful or interesting, be sure to let
us know and we can prepare more articles.

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