The Social Gathering

At every social gathering, and usually one which involves some kind of alcohol, there's someone who thinks wearing a lampshade, a funny hat, yes and even a flower pot, is a good idea.

Shorelines

Along the shoreline of Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC

 Since I have some time on my hands (don’t ask) I thought I’d add another page to my blog. I thought to continue writing (and throwing pictures on the screen) about the things that grab me photographically. So, I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about shorelines and what the camera discovers when it takes me for walks along them. I might even show you a couple of different things I’ve been working on. One of these was mentioned in an earlier posting as difficult subject matter to translate into a viewable image, the nefarious ripple effect.

Ripple study #1 - Bluffers Park, Scarborough, ON

Ripple study #2 - Bluffers Park, Scarborough, ON

Ripple study #3 - Bluffers Park, Scarborough, ON

I’m also going to take the opportunity here to thank in person another individual who has been a good friend over the years (and you can tell those people from others you have met because they are the ones who, in spite of the circumstances of extenuation, still manage to keep in touch). Here’s to you Walter Borchenko.

Walter and the figures of the Guild Inn

A further other but not entirely different reason to write is to tell you about this incredible image software that I have been allowed to play with, thanks to the above-mentioned individual.

I have been a Photoshop user for a number of years. As most people in the photographic industry are aware it has been considered the standard in image manipulation. I don’t claim to actually be proficient in this software. I have a tendency to use a few tools to get a certain effect, or to get rid of some annoying detail, and that’s about it. Print it, that’s a wrap.

Well I am exploring a few of the possibilities of a new piece of software (new to me).

Now a disclaimer: There are certain frustrations in being a dabbler in the art. A big problem, at least for me, is trying to figure out how to wade my way through software; to make it through and around all the selection menus and dialogue boxes to make the software do it’s tricks for you. Part of the difficulty is because of my prior preconceptions or prior mental lockdown due to my own Photoshop mentality. And admittedly I’m getting, as they say, long in the tooth. I may not be as spry in the mental gymnastics department as I once was.

So this is a ‘hats off’ to the Capture One software. I am so new at it that I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to talk about it here. Let’s just say that I’m impressed. There is enough information on the net and demonstrations on You Tube to give you some idea as to its workings.

Oh, did I mention anywhere that for the past few years I’ve been shooting in NEF format? It makes a difference, particularly with this software (and I think it does a much better job than Photoshop in handling the files).

And back to the shoreline.

I like water. If you’ve followed this blog you already know that I’m from Niagara Falls, Ontario, a city named for water basically. Well, yes, it’s named for where the water, um, falls over an escarpment, but that’s quibbling.

I’m living at the moment in Scarberia. I don’t know if I’ve let you into this joke or not but the name of this city within a city is actually Scarborough, to the east of Toronto and now incorporated into the metropolis. Scarberia is one of the nicknames that we denizens apply to it.

I’m sorry but in many respects I consider the landscape of Scarberia to be boring except for a couple of notable exceptions (which happen to co-exist in close proximity), which are the Guild Inn and the Scarborough Bluffs.

Cathedral Bluffs, Scarborough, ON

I’ve already described the Inn in detail. The bluffs are basically a chalk and sand formation located on the shoreline of Lake Ontario. I’ve walked the shore here a number of times, often accompanied by my brother Ralph, and almost always with camera.

Bluffs and the shoreline, Scarborough, ON

Cathedral Bluffs, Scarborough, ON

I still identify myself, by and large (no weight jokes please), as a black and white photographer. That was one of the reasons why I started taking photographs in the first place lo these many years ago. I loved the whole process and I have always loved the look of the images. And in this context I still shoot things with that in mind, particularly the logs and driftwood and other ephemeral features that lay close to shorelines.

Sandshark Log, Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC

My recent trip to Vancouver gave me the opportunity to explore the shoreline surrounding the city, particularly Stanley Park on Burrard Inlet off the Strait of Georgia. That is where many of these images came from.

Driftwood pattern, Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC

Lionshead Driftwood #1, Jericho Beach, Vancouver, BC

Lionshead Driftwood #2, Jericho Beach, Vancouver, BC

Shattered wood detail, Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC

And the new software, Capture One, allows me to seriously play with the digital images, including converting them to black and white (and even toning them if I desire). It’s as if I were back in the darkroom, back in the old days (yeah, and when you think about it they weren’t all that long ago) with all the beakers, trays and chemical baths, the enlarger, easel and safelight, burning and dodging and then processing the paper to see what it held. It’s brought much of the magic and the craft back to realizing the images that were shot in camera.

Thanks Walter.

All photographs by Colin Campbell

Dilapidation

The Dovecote at Uxmal in the Yucatan Peninsula

Another view of Uxmal

 This is another posting about photography and what I like to photograph. I shoot a lot of different subject matter. If it looks interesting somehow and I have my camera I’ll photograph it: fungus and pipes, cogs and logs, colors and textures. Not so many people though (although I was conned into shooting a wedding this June). I’m not the only person who likes to shoot this kind of thing. Right Sid?

This posting is also an excuse to hang up a few images in my digital room.

The Amphitheater at the Guild Inn

Recently, in the past few years that is, I’ve started to look at things in a different way. I might shoot something now just for the color(s) that I see, or for the texture(s), maybe a pattern. I find that it’s interesting then to see how what I saw is transformed into pixels, the new technology. Sometimes that’s where frustration sets in, because of the difficulty of translating what is seen, separated from the real world context, into an image that then can be shown.

Still, as one photographer said, they photograph in order to see what the world looks like photographed.

Abandoned house, Curve Lake, ON

Handyman opportunity, found on a back road

Here’s an example: I spent some time trying to photograph the ripples in a streamlet that ran parallel and fairly close to Lake Ontario because of the patterns they created, shadows of the ripples in this streamlet over the sand and pebbles. I’m thinking ‘moiré’ patterns here, sort of interference patterns. I took quite a number of different photographs from a number of different angles. I thought it was very interesting and quite beautiful. Now, here is where the frustration came in, I still haven’t been successful at getting those images to view right, and I’m still working on that one.

Infrared shot of tires and barn wall

So, subject matter varies… greatly.

That being said I still like to photograph what might be encapsulated by the term ‘dilapidation’, the title of this post. What the word means, if you’re not familiar with it, is things falling apart from lack of care. I think my online dictionary says something about disrepair or ruin.

Hey, that sounds like me. I’m fascinated by those places and things which have been built, lived in and/or used by people but that are now abandoned, discarded, rusted, burnt, buried, sunken, collapsed, shunned, and weathered. I also like to see how the environment reclaims the abandoned and the decaying.

Barbecued Doors

Same farmhouse, stairway to second floor

I love to explore old abandoned barns and farmhouses. Well, I’ll explore any house or building falling into decay really, but the country versions just seem to hang around longer and are usually not quite so chained or gated off from the public.

Muskoka farmhouse

Roof needs a bit of work

I like to photograph abandoned cars and trucks in fields, for much the same reason that I like the farmhouses in these sites/environments. I think that the location helps to isolate the subject.

And some things are photographed just because they tweak my sense of humour.

Sign from repair shop in Ida, ON. It says 'repairs bodies'.

So I’ve thrown together here quite a mixed bag of images. I hope you enjoy them.

 Now if I can just get the damn ripple shots to come out better...

From Seattle's underground city, Sam's sign.

Also from the underground, an actual bathtub gin bathtub

House and bathtub from N'Awlinz featured in a Campbell Brothers' story.

Causeway destroyed by Katrina

Boat stranded on shore from a previous hurricane.

U.S.S. Cairo, Union ironclad gunboat, Vicksburg National Military Park

Crane and gator, Squamish, BC

Is it is or is it ain't a Volkswagon?

Just resting

Pick-up in a field

Same truck, rear view

Old car and door, Oatman, Arizona

Car doors, again near Oatman. This is one of my favourite shots and is a great print.

What I did on my summer vacation - part the third

So, the carousel blew my (admittedly) wee mind. After I had finished doing my thing with the carousel we wandered out the rear door and discovered...

The Burnaby Village Museum

This site, which we didn’t quite stumble across (but it was close), is advertised as a10-acre open-air museum (circa 1925). Wow, that’s cool too. It turns out that this little ‘town’ has more than 30 shops and homes, including a movie theatre, blacksmithy, bakery, newspaper and an Ice Cream Parlour.

Oops, lets back up. Even before we got to the village proper, for want of a better word, the first building that we encountered was one that housed the 1912 B.C. Electric Railway interurban tram (#1223).

Now I’m a bus driver, and I have been for several years, so I know somewhat about creature comfort and the transit of masses. This electric train (albeit a big one), I really liked. The interior of the car glowed with the warmth of the incandescent lamps and the glory of polished wood. It sure showed an interest in detail that I think you seldom find in transit vehicles these years.

  

So Sid and I wandered these streets, photographing the scenes, and even got the chance to wander behind the scenes. We took the time to watch a blacksmith at work (and yes, took a couple of pictures of her at the anvil). Can you tell that I enjoyed the whole expedition?

And again, in praise of off-season visitation, there were few actual people on the streets or in front of my lens.

Note: I wanted to thank Sid, for a lot of things really, but for making me think about photographs and about photography as a whole in this latest outing. I haven’t been taking many photographs recently, even though I enjoy it and identify myself with it. I needed a refresher course.

What I’m getting at here is that Sid showed me (again) that the principle of hand holding a camera under difficult lighting situations works. Sid taught me for a second time how to play around with the available light and of how to play with the ISO setting of the camera. We took many photographs, even inside the buildings (particularly the cannery which had sections that were quite dark), of pipes and machines and gears and assemblies, all kinds of stuff. Most of the flash photographs that I took have elements that I find are disconcerting, detracting, annoying. Hand holding the camera even captured the best shots of the carousel.

Me, behind the scene

Thanks dude. I owe you.

What I did on my summer vacation - part the two

And so… the intrepid travelers make their way over the highways and byways of British Columbia to the Burnaby Village Museum where they find, much to the delight of the Campbell of record, a village, and this...

And so here I iz making another post about something that fascinates me. In fact, let’s just call this…

The Carousel Take Three

You know, I’ve been thinking about my interest in carousels and carousel horses and I believe I have isolated the when and the where of it all, when the fascination first hit me. Now, to tell you about it we have to get permission from Mr. Peabody in order to use his ‘Way Back Machine’ and go back a few decades in time. I’m thinking we’d have to go back possibly to the middle to late 1960’s at a guess.

I recall, when I was a yute back in Niagara Falls, standing on a sidewalk located on a street that was once quite infamous in its day. Its name was, and still is, Erie Avenue. This used to be, again an age gone by, where women of negotiable affection plied their trade. But that was years ago and business and custom had moved away from Erie Avenue to other locales; the street and the buildings that I remember as that youth looked grubby and were in disrepair.

I remember looking in the dirty front window of an old rundown storefront, what you might call an antique store if you were feeling generous, past the corpses of flies, and seeing amidst the rather squalid items inside (I sort of recall the huge metal ‘harp’ out of a piano lying on its’ side) a beat up wooden carousel horse. I thought it was, in the jargon of the day, very cool.

In my mind that store was always closed, so I never had the opportunity to go in or to find out how much the horse was (and probably not that I could afford to buy it even then), or from whence it came. Still, the memory lingers.

Ah, my first horsey love.

The day after I posted the story I came across this shot of the building in question shot around 2005

My second infusion, if memory is serving this up correctly, occurred in Springbank Park in London, Ontario. I was a rock’n’roll musician back then (we’re talking the mid 70’s now) and I was this tall skinny bass player with long permed hair and a beard. I was also into photography, as they say, and had photographed (and even attempted a painting of) the horses on the carousel that is located in the park. The painting, I admit, was not a very good one and has fortunately been lost to the ages. I still have many of the images I shot back then, including a few of the horses and carousel, but these have not been digitized and were shot mostly on slide film (which is beginning to fade now). It was back then that I really looked at the expressions on the horses’ faces for the first time.

I’ve written at some length on this topic in an earlier blog entry so I won’t redo the rant here.

So since then I’ve been a photographer of carousels when I could find them in my wanderings. These ones from Burnaby are a beautiful example of the woodcarver’s art.

As it turns out, I seem to have turned another corner or added another dimension to my interest in carousels and their horses. I’ve done more than just photograph; I’ve actually researched this carousel in particular and found out a bunch of interesting information about it.

I found out the who, the when, and the where of its manufacture.

The carousel was built in 1912 at Leavenworth, Kansas (yes, also home of the federal prison and the fort of the same name) by Charles Wallace Parker who owned the C. W. Parker Company. This was the 119th carousel made by that company and it was sold initially in 1913 for $5,886.00. Its speed on the outermost track is a rocketing 7 ½ mph (and about 5 mph on the inside track).

Hell, I’ve even found out the names the horses were given during the latest round of restoration work that was started in the 1990’s (the horses were named by the patrons who paid for their restoration. Their names appear in the article that is cited below).

And if you’re interested in more on it’s history see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._W._Parker_Carousel

The only problem with this list is that, at least online, there is no master diagram that shows you which horse is where on the carousel, or tells you where the numbering started in their tally. If I had this information I could tell you the names of all the horses I shot.

The exception to this is horse #37, known as "Old Paint". The horse was named for the "old paint" that was originally on the carousel before it was restored and is currently in a display case next to the carousel.

Another little tidbit of information is that Parker liked to use the term Carry-Us-All for the ride and some people mistakenly think that this is the origin of the word carousel. It isn’t. I believe that I also wrote about this at some length earlier in a previous posting.

Wow, what beauties these are. Go ahead, look at them all again. And there are more.

All photographs taken by me.