In Pursuit of Excellence (In Photography)

"You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books that you have read, the music you have heard and the people you have loved.
-Ansel Adams

Photography can be art, but strangely it is also sometimes nothing more than personal record keeping, what we might term a snapshot. Often we just want to record a moment or occasion in our lives without any attempt at creating anything more and that's okay of course, being a perfectly legitimate use of photographic technology. 

The vast majority of photographs taken on any given day are exactly that and no more, a photographic record destined for Facebook or Instagram, possibly to be "shared" or "liked" by members of the recorder's inner circle, their "friends".

But the potential, ahhh, the potential of the medium is so very vast these days, it's a bit mind blowing, that is to say, EXTREMELY INTIMIDATING!

Every time I start to think I'm making some progress towards transitioning some of my work from digital record keeping to creating art, I come across someone else's photographs that very quickly illustrate just how far I have to go. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the perspective) photographic technology is advancing incredibly rapidly and as one technique or technology is mastered or at least partially understood, something new becomes possible. It's quite the challenge to keep up!    

I think the best thing I ever did to help my photography skills move forward was to join a photography club. If I am honest with myself I have to admit that I am guilty of being a bit of a lazy photographer (in the past). These days I am trying very hard to learn better habits and skills and to push, pull or drag my photography to a higher level.

When I first joined the St. Albert Photography Club http://www.stalbertphotoclub.com/
I was a little bit intimidated (and still am) by the skills of some of the members. Most of the members are not professional photographers, but rather they are for the most part, talented, passionate amateurs who love to learn and share their work with others.

Part of the process of a photography club is the submissions night that takes place every month during the club season. On that special night, members bring printed images, (as large as they can afford to print) up to the maximum size of 11" x 14" unframed but in a simple mat, to pit against the work of other club members.

The other way of entering is the digital submissions category and that is how I first entered the fray in an effort to determine if my images made the cut, if they would stand up to the critiquing of the other members of the club. At first I was regularly disappointed by the response to my submissions and in hind sight I see now that I often submitted badly chosen images, it was quite a revelation. 

A Non-winner from the "Country Roads" submissions theme.

It took quite a while to break into the winners circle and that only happened by accident.

When friends used some of my images in their home, they decided to re-print one of them in a larger size (because they liked it so much, wahoo!) and I asked for the old one printed at 11"x14" which was exactly the right size for submissions night.

My first winning image

I submitted it in the open category in October of 2013 and won first place, a very heady feeling let me tell you! That win ignited my renewed interest (my photo-mojo) and spurred me on to print more images, take more photos and much more carefully shoot, select and enter the various categories.

It's a lot of work planning and executing creative entries for themes such as: weathered wood, opposites, alone in a crowd, broken, fog/smoke or country roads. I've noticed though that it's good to be challenged, it's good to have stiff competition that consistently forces you to submit your best work for even a hope of having your images placing well. 

All of last season I was mentally chasing one particular individual who is consistently entering absolutely great images, technically perfect, exciting, creative and well crafted art. There are lot's of great photographers in the club, but this guy consistently submits excellent work and he makes every month even more of a challenge.

I love this one and expected it to do well......what can I say, it didn't even place but I still love it!

I called this post "In Pursuit of Excellence" because I wanted to make a point about how this kind of a challenge can be such a motivator to up your game, to push you and motivate you to spend more time thinking and creating something beautiful or meaningful that is well beyond what we might create on our own, without outside influence and a challenging environment.

You might believe that art is subjective and of course you are right, but until you have had a selection of your work critiqued by your peers (and betters) and you have truly compared your best to the best that is out there, it is very easy to convince yourself that your work is good or even great and leave it at that. 

After all, it's mine and I'm awesome, at least that's what my mom used to tell me and she should know!

Reno's With Rosie - Creating the Curator Wall (With 2024 Updates)

If it isn't decorating magazines or pinterest, it's television or just talking to someone about what they're doing that inspires my wife Rose. She's always thinking. First comes the inspiration, then the planning, then dropping little hints around the house, "running it by me" just a little bit at a time so I won't get alarmed and the "fight or flee" instinct won't become active. 
Apparently it's a delicate balance.

As for me, usually I have no idea what's going on, I'm just minding my own business and then...wham o! And I have apparently agreed to some kind of expensive renovation, decorating project, major purchase, or vacation, somehow without even being aware of the fact that a decision was in the process of being made!

Oh well, mostly it works itself out and every once in a while I do exercise my veto vote, but not without careful deliberation, at least 5 seconds anyway. Rose gets her own veto vote as well so don't worry, we are an equal partnership (mostly, with a lot of zig-zagging back and forth).

But this particular project was really an excellent idea and it took no convincing at all. I took one look at the picture of the "curator wall" in Rose's magazine and I was on board.

The finished art wall.

After our trip to Italy in 2013, I have been itching to get some of my photographs printed, mounted and displayed around the house. I had already printed a bunch of calendars that turned out pretty well and I had enjoyed some success entering some images in the St. Albert Photo Club monthly competitions in November. One image of the snail or Momo staircase from the Vatican Museum won first place in digital images and another of a woman walking through the early morning mist in Piazza San Marco won second in printed images. Pretty heady stuff, let me tell you!

So when Rose mentioned her idea for showcasing my work, I jumped at the chance. Our first task was to find a suitable piece of galvanized pipe and the mounting flanges to get it up on the wall and properly supported. I looked around and finally found a nice, 6' piece of 1/2" galvanized pipe as well as the elbows and mounting flanges.

Galvanized pipe mounted on the wall from which the artwork hangs.

Meanwhile, Rose had been working on selecting and cleaning up some frames we had recently taken down when we repainted the house. She marked out an area on the floor approximating the size of the wall area we had to work with and we laid out the frames into the most pleasing arrangement we could come up with. 

We didn't want to spend a lot of money on new frames or new mats so she re-painted some of the old mats and painted select parts of the old frames, getting rid of any gold accents and replacing it with silver or black.

Frames with old artwork laid out on the floor.

Next was the hard part for me, choosing what to print, finding good images that told a bit of a story about our trip to Italy. We had this great long narrow frame that had a space for a 12"x36" image and I decided to crop a vertical shot of a man walking up a steep lane in the rain with a bright blue umbrella. It was shot in one of our favorite places in Italy, the town of Belagio on Lake Como in Northern Italy. We both loved the pop of blue and the wet cobblestone steps leading up to the bright opening at the top of the image where there was perhaps a little sun filtering through and illuminating the yellow walls.

Hanging the Images.

Most of the other images weren't hard to decide on. We both love the image of the grand canal in Venice from the foot of the Pont del Accademia with the blue gondolas in the foreground and the sun rising over Piazza San Marco and the Santa Maria della Salute Church.

We printed it in 24"x18"  at London Drugs (along with all of our other printing) and they did a great job. We went with 2 11"x 14" images along the top, the one on the left was taken in Rome, we had just arrived after a bit of a kerfuffle at the train station and then a mix-up picking up our keys and a rude person at the gelateria. While Rose kindly waited in line for some delicious gelato, I listened to the cello playing, tuxedo wearing busker in the most picturesque little alley staircase, it was quite magical and I took a couple of quick pictures (after depositing a few euros in appreciation).

Also in the top center is another shot of Venice taken on a misty morning on one of the smaller canals that criss-cross the city. Our first morning in Venice we woke up to some gorgeous fog blanketing the city and I loved it! On the top right side is a smaller shot of the ceiling in the Pantheon with a nice little beam of light shining through the 27 foot wide oculus. What an amazing building, we visited several times at different times of the day and it was always beautiful. 

Below that is another image from Rome, this one was taken in the Capitoline Museums but I don't remember who it is. The one below it on the right is a fairly modern statue built into the hillside in the town of Monterosso al Mare, Cinque Terre, Italy. This statue called Il Gigante, was built from concrete in 1910 but rough seas and allied bombs during WW2 have left this image of Neptune holding the waves at bay looking pretty forlorn and shabby. We both loved finding the statue there at the end of the beach and we visited it several times (gelato in hand) during our 4 days in Monterosso.

The living room with the couch half finished, but the art wall complete! - 2013

A few years have passed since we put up our Italy photographs and since then we have changed them out twice. The first time we changed it in 2018 to photographs from our Eastern Canada trip that we did with our trailer.

Eastern Canada scenes except for one of the Grand Canal and one of California - 2018

Then in 2024 Rose tired of those images and in an effort to bring the forest into our living room we replaced them again with a mix of B.C. and Alberta forest scenes.

Western Canada forest scenes 2024

In the photo of the 2013 Italy photographs up above a ways, you may notice the partly reupholstered couch. Here it is in late 2024 now and Rose has just ordered fabric to once again re-cover (for the 3rd time) a very comfortable, durable and well loved sofa.

Time just keeps marching on and while some things do change, some things (like that sofa frame) still stay the same.

A Saturday in the City

It's Family Day weekend in Edmonton, the dead of winter, the weather is a little perkier but spring still seems a ways off, oh what to do? Well if you are like me and you have an expired groupon for the Art Gallery of Alberta that you want to use, the farmers market is running at City Hall and you have a new fish eye lens for your camera and your daughter calls and asks what you're doing Saturday, you say, "I'm going downtown, you should come too."

That's pretty much what happened this past Saturday and it was a lot of fun. Kait and Nick met us at City Hall and we puttered around the farmers market for a while and then Nicks dad and sister met us and the six of us spent the day together.

Rose and I love farmers markets and we always spend too much and get into a little trouble buying delicious home made goodies to take home for later. This time though, we were on our best behavior. We are trying to make healthy eating choices and are doing a lot of juicing and smoothies and that sort of thing, so baking and sugar and all of the usual unhealthy choices are out! (mostly)

So we spent most of our shopping time looking at stone milled heritage grain products and fresh vegetables, chocolate ambrosia  (how did that one sneak in there?) and chipotle rhubarb ketchup. While Rose sampled home made Indian food from two different stalls I wandered around taking pictures of our remarkable city hall. It is a very impressive building, bright and airy, with some great chromed benches and beautiful artwork and of course some impressive stairs and columns that photograph quite well.

City Hall Farmer's Market



Our plan was to go for lunch at Tres Carnales, a Mexican restaurant that I've heard quite a few good things about, but when Nick checked their web-site we found out they don't open until 4pm on Saturdays, oh well. We decided to walk over to The Blue Plate Diner and the six of us paraded through some rather grungy scenery over to 104 Street, just in time for the tail end of their brunch menu.

Lunch was quite good but for a variety of reasons, Rose and I opted to split the Elk/Bison burger and have the house salad with it. That would have worked out quite well.....except we were surrounded by plates overflowing with delicious looking fries that were calling out to us to gobble them up and thereby putting us both out of our misery.

Rose weakened I'm afraid and wanted to order some of our own, but I stood firm in the onslaught of tantalizing aromas and sounds of people all around happily munching on fries, only slipping a little bit and "borrowing" a few fries from Nick and Kait's basket of golden deliciousness.

That minefield avoided, (mostly) we headed across the street to evoolution, a delicious way to spend a Saturday afternoon, sampling premium olive oils and aged balsamic vinegars in cute, tiny little paper cups using bits of bread to soak up the mixed flavours and eventually choosing a few combinations to take home.   http://www.evoolution.ca/

                        Espresso Balsamic Vinegar & Blood Orange Infused Olive Oil

I LOVE that place, the only problem is, there is so much variety and everything is so tasty that it's hard to make a choice and exit gracefully! Eventually we did make a choice, a few choices actually and I can't wait to try them out at home, delicious.

After that it was a walk back to drop off a few parcels at the car and then on to the Art Gallery of Alberta. I confess, I am far more interested in the building than most of the art inside of it and so, as everyone else enjoyed the art, I thoroughly enjoyed the building itself. Of course I can't resist trying out some of the art filters that can sometimes jazz up pictures and give then a little bit more punch. Check out a few of the pictures below: all shot with a Sony NEX 5n and a Rokinon 8mm Fish Eye lens.

High contrast black & white filter



Colour Polarizer Filter



Partial Colour/Yellow filter.



And that was about it, just another Saturday in the city.