I haven't taken out a holga or a any kind of plastic camera in ages. I finally did this past weekend! I picked up a holga at a thrifty store for something like 3 dollars. It wasn't just any old holga but a 120s original! I now have identical twins. This twin has a bit of a leak or I didn't tape it up very well.

D

I love winter. I love all the white and the browns and the leafless trees. We've been hitting the trails lately, and I've been super happy that there has been snow. The other day we took a hike on a path we'd never been on. I vaguely remember seeing coyote signs and there was a little concern on whether we were going away from the road or rounding around to meet it. Smile, we made it out alive and well, and there were no falls. Paula, have you taken the trails around the badlands area?

D

When I was younger I used to think the prairies were ugly, boring, lifeless. Monotonous in their sprawl to the horizon, and their shades of beige, was often how I'd feel about this landscape. I once spent a summer working at a pool in a small town in BC, surrounded by the straight pines and the Telkwa Range. Driving home we came through Banff and it was coming out of the foothills to the big sky of the prairies that I instantly felt its beauty. I think you need to yield to the prairies before you can feel its soul, the pastel nature to its winter skies, the slow and soft undulations of contours well worn by wind and water, the once blah shades of beige with the changing light, and the large large sky, weighty and oppressive to some, freeing and inspiring to others. Here is a small set made while watching the prairie sky as it drained of light and filled with evening.

I'm going to continue a bit with the photos behind the house. There are a lot, and I love walking around back there. I don't get far, and it's because it's a bit of a maze getting around. There are a lot of boggy bits, but if I keep, I think, to the left it gets better, and you can keep to a straight path. I remember once a cousin from the mainland visited and we lent her boots and she stepped into a spot which swiftly took the boot. Warning people is really fruitless. You're curious, and yea, you have to find out for yourself. This cousin was here with her father and brother, and it was a bit of a surprise them visiting us. We were remote from where they would have been visiting, but I guess they got to driving and ended up at ours. Well, let's just say, I saved the day with dinner. My mother hadn't food enough in the fridge to feed a crowd, and that day I had spent going door to door trying to sell clams for a quarter a bag. I think my friend and I sold enough that we both had fifty cents and bags and bags of leftovers. My mother cooked up the clams and in my head I was a hero. The uncle talked about those clams later in life, and my mother didn't have to get out and buy stuff, like probably yucky pork chops.

These photos were taken behind the house in NFLD. I think the next time I go, I'm going to haul a chair up there just so I can sit and not be tempted to just lie down on the moss. I might have missed one day in not going back there while I was back.

When we were young we would hike back to the pond to fish. I haven't been back that far since then. Maybe this year.

Another best-of! The process of selecting my 2011 images-with-staying-power took me through a number of folders I haven't visited in some time. With film, I found that not only were there fewer images, and none really of the small rituals of my life, but there was also some inherent time between shooting and reviewing. With digital, I was finding that my images didn't feel quite right, which I'd attributed to an adjustment to the new tools. I think what I really needed was a longer period for mental reflection. Summer 2011 took me to the Adanac mine road in the mountains outside of Bellevue, AB, site of a massive forest fire in 2003. I can still remember the thick smoke, reloading of helicoptered water buckets, and weary and worn looking firefighters fed plates of spaghetti by the townsfolk. I had long wanted to shoot in a recovering forest, those silvery trees standing loosely and ghost-like against the green of the new growth. This summer, my father and I got an english-toffee coffee from the 7-11 ready work our way through the area. Here are some of my favourite images from my first trip through the backroads of this burn. I hope to return, to walk through these areas, and a get a better feel for the landscape.

It's so hard picking photos that have lingered in my mind long after I've taken them. I took a lot of photos last year and it was nice revisiting, but damn if they're not all my favourites. :) went through the year on flickr and picked out a bunch. I've got a couple of posts worth, and then I think I'll go through photos that didn't see the light of day.

Donna and I are going to take stock of our photo records of 2011 and select some of the highlights. I am going to do a two pronged approached, one post for my own work, and one for work we did for clients. Photographically, this was a great year for the technical. I got a great digital camera, started paying attention to work flow, and allowed myself to shoot subjects and approaches I would never have considered when I was an exclusive film shooter. For 2012 I am looking to have a great artistic and creative year, behind and beyond the lens. I've presented 9 images that really stuck with me this year. Some are not remarkable images, but I can still feel that pre-click rush when I look at them now. The process of going through your images is really important to grow as an artist and the information is invaluable. I can't wait to see Donna's images. After that, I'm going to pick some of Donna's images that have really lingered in my mind.

This photo tugs at my heart a little. I know what it smells like there. I know those roots.

Some of the photos I've been looking at, I think, why didn't I lie down on the ground and take that photo. sigh.

In about a half hour I'm planning on cutting a small piece of banana bread pudding and having a decaf nespresso. It will certainly make up for the long day. I think I'll wait til 9 and watch Republic of Doyle. Some good!

D

I love the straight roads of the prairies. And the pastel-ly winters of this landscape. Having spent so much time either driving these backroads or watching the evolution of the narrative the light wrote upon the grass and subtle curves, I would often wonder what it would have been like to have been deposited in this landscape. Where would you build a shelter - out on the open land with your back to the winds, so fierce they have shaped the land? In the coulees where you have some shelter but you've got the drifting and the runoff? I quite often also wonder what the land would have looked like 1000 years ago? Without this road, and the fence lines, how different would this look, and more importantly, feel? Just things I think about when I'm out shooting. Donna, what do you think about when you are shooting?

True Love is A Big Deal has started to fade. I say before the end of the winter it will a memory. I took the ricoh out today and took this shot. I am loving this camera.

I went out for a walk today. It felt good, but man, I'm beat. I figured I would nap when I returned, instead I put the chemicals in the bucket to heat up. I developed a couple of rolls of 24 and now I'm figuring I'm going to watch a movie.

D

Here's a spot my uncle drove us to. We took his old something or other white boat of a solid car. Smooth, I say. I'd like to take a ride right now down to this beach. He was sure I'd find some pictures.

Last week I watched Lying with Chloe Sevigny. There was a lot of oddness, and the tension was flimsy. It was there and then it flitted away. I still can't tell if I liked the movie. I watched it all; that is saying something. I do enjoy Chloe and Jenna Malone can do no wrong.

There was The Other Woman, with Natalie Portman, which was excellent and I was teary through the whole thing. That girl Natalie can act. We watched Black Swan last week too, and that didn't disappoint. The Other Woman, did have some buggy bits, where she didn't see that her and her father were on the same ground at points. It was a bit cliche with the obvious message. Hello Pot / Kettle! Other than that blip, I enjoyed. It does have another title on IMDB- Love and other impossible Pursuits.

I'll leave you with one more movie - The Sisters. Ok, I was on a Alessandro Nivola roll after seeing Coco avant Chanel. Have you seen him in Junebug? Sexy specialness! He was a doll in Coco with all that french talking. The Sisters was probably not his shining moment. He was great mind you, but the sisters were the meat of the movie. It was smart and the lightning fast bitchy needling by Eric McCormick was brilliant. I didn't think I would enjoy this movie as much as I did. It started off a little too play/stage like, and parts continued this way, but I didn't care. I wanted to know what was going to happen next.

I think I'm going to do these posts every Saturday. I don't normally watch movies, and I usually hate going to the cinema, but I think I've renewed an old love. Ahh Netflix and iTunes, you're the best.

D

You really do have to take the good and the bad to make a life. I've had a lot of good, but the bad cold/flu/strep? It was two days after new years day of pure misery. I should really have taken one of those tylenol threes that I hoarded away, and never used after wisdom teeth removal. I couldn't though. It really buggers me up sleep wise and I end up worse off. I am on the mend and I'll find out soon if I do in fact have strep throat.

The good! Let's see I went away for the weekend to the lovely cottage on the lake. The weather wasn't perfect, but the one day and part of another made up for the stay in the house due to the rain. I took many photos, but forgot the new camera. It's a cute little compact ricoh grd3. I've had my eye on it for quite some time. Some might say, I've been looking for it my whole life.

I also received some very lovely and expensive makeup. It's a wonderful day when you receive a perfect eyeliner from your niece's ex, and a massive kit from your mother. A gift from myself was the Death of a Polaroid, A Manic's Family Album. There's another book on it's way that I will share when it arrives. I think Paula you'll want your own. Wait! If it's as great as I am anticipating it will be my treat!

I'm feeling awfully jolly not being as sick as I was. There was luckily nothing pressing for me to rush back into work, and so a solid week of watching movies were my days. Another post tomorrow on what I saw.

Oh I almost forgot about a splendid gift we received. It was a nespresso. I'm addicted. It's fantastic. I could drink it day and night. This week I was limiting myself to decafs, but right now I've got a caffeinated beverage in hand. I'll have to make you one Paula when I've cleaned the house of my germs.

Ok, I'm done. I'll be back tomorrow.

D

I have since returned from the Windy West and am slowly revisiting my images. We went twice to the Milk River Ridge to shoot. It is this expansive ridge that marks the prairies, not unlike those scar-tattoo deals. Out there the sky is seriously huge, with nothing, not trees, or buildings, to interrupt the space. I found myself often wondering whether the sky simply wrapped around and folded into the horizon.
New Year - New Mission. 2011 was a great building year, a sort of consolidation year, that helped Donna and I lay individual and collective foundations to set out on some great explorations. I've got a number of objectives for this year - some personal, some business, and some artistic. First, this will be my year of Style and Design, in my life and in my work. I think I need to define a personal aesthetic - clean, uncluttered, functional, and not particularly frilly! That and I'd like to live in a house built of shipping containers.