Something You Dont See Everyday!

Once upon a time, there was a company in Montana called "Northern Manufacturing Company". The company began building tractors in the 1970's if I remember correctly. They produced a line of tractors called "Big Bud". In fact they built one tractor that still holds the record as the largest tractor ever built. But they also made some more modest sized tractors that are pretty rare to see today. They stand out in the fields because they are painted bright white.

I was returning home from an art sale in Medicine Hat, Alberta when I spotted a white tractor on a hill. It took me a moment to realize I was seeing a rare Big Bud tractor sitting in a field waiting to goto work.

With a large set of disks hanging on it, this Big Bud is in fabulous shape and made for a couple of beautiful images of this beast waiting to get out and stir some dust again.

Just waiting to "Giv Er".

The Gallery In Early October

Well the outside of the gallery is pretty well finished the construction phase. Some details here and there like skirting the deck and parging below the siding remains, but you can really see how things are going to look now.

Our fabulous contractor (Tim Hovdestad of Westward Homes in Moosomin) has done a brilliant job of managing the project and some incredible carpentry work outside on the deck where we will have seating for customers of the cafe. Tim's work is second to none and he is a super nice guy as well. We were blessed to have him on the job. The handicapped ramp is totally amazing work.

This shot was taken a day before the final grading of the site was to begin.

More Gallery Pictures From The Early Construction Phase

This is myself and my older brother at the end of his stay helping me. He busted his tail (And elbow, one thumbnail and a mysterious scrape that got infected) with me making my dream come true and I will forever be in his debt and of course his wife Pearl who fed us and kept us working. Thanks you two!!

Very Late Update On My Gallery's Contstruction Progress

Well this update is long overdue. I seem to have a bear of a time posting multiple pictures in the Blog so I will add a couple of entries today just to show where the gallery has progressed to.

I also need to thank my oldest brother Garry and his wife Pearl for contributing most of their summer holidays to helping with the construction. They were awesome and I am in their debt.

The summer rains held our contractor up continuously and when I arrived on site in the second week of July, I was not met by a building shell that was closed in and ready to work in as I had hoped. But, it was closed in enough for my brother and I to begin the interior work.

We threw ourselves into the job and began building all the interior walls on the main floor and then the walls downstairs. Followed it up with insulating and vapour barriers and then hired some awesome guys to hang the drywall. Here is what things looked like as we arrived on the job site. Definitely not the closed in shingled shell we had hoped for. But it didn't slow us down.

What I did last weekend

I had a few hours to spare last weekend so I took advantage of it and did some back road touring. I found a few neat places to photograph and thought I would share them.


This old elevator is located near the nearly lost hamlet of Thunder Creek in Saskatchewan. The elevator looks to be in private hands now with what looks like a family name on the side of the structure. I loved the reflection on the water which is probably much higher than normal due to the biblical quantities of rain we have had this year.



This old homestead is located north of Chaplin, SK along highway 39. I loved the look of the porch spanning the entire front of the home. I bet many an evening were spent looking out on the vast prairies when people lived here. The work was hard in those days I'm sure, but some aspects of that simple life are so appealing at times.

Here is another lovely old home. This one was located to the south and east of Chaplin, SK. I found it by just wandering backroads trusting that my GPS would get me out of the area once it was time to leave. This old home has cattle living all around it now, the farm yard is now pasture for the next generation of McDonalds hamburgers.

And last but not least, I thought I would show off my trusty ride for these journeys. This is my wife Heather's car, but I borrow it whenever possible for these trips. It's an economical fun ride and when it gets 80 mpg at times, who can complain. It's a great photography vehicle. I just put the top down, plug in the iPod and enjoy the day. Oh and the car's name is of course... "Smartie". She's a lovely little girl.

Does this happen to other photographers?

When I am not busy with my own work, I do like to cruise other photographers WEB sites. It motivates me seeing other nice images. Sort of a Pavlovian response to make me get out and go make some art somewhere.

Admitedly I travel far and wide around my end of North America to find things that interest me and of course hopefully stir my customers in a way that they will purchase an image. There is nothing like sharing something that made me excited with others and then have those others purchase a piece for their homes.

So being reasonably well travelled I have noticed lately that I will be on some photographers WEB site viewing an image when an alarm goes off in my head that says.... "I know this spot". I don't mean your everyone has been there spots like the Oxebow Bend in the Grand Tetons or Lake Louise in Alberta. I mean an out of the way place, sometimes in a forest or along a country road. A spot that is not a giant draw for photographers. It's an odd feeling that I have been experiencing more and more.

Here is an example. I was looking through photographs taken by the famous photographer Tony Sweet. He has a wonderful gallery of images of the Palouse on his site. Well I have been to the Palouse and spent days driving up and down every dirt path and back road in the region. So as I scanned his images, I see one of this lonely tree on the side of a farmers field. DING, the alarms went off and I thought... "I know this spot".

I spent a couple of minutes sifting through my files from the Palouse and sure enough, there was the same lonely tree in one of my images!! Does it mean I have no life that I can identify a lonely tree on the edge of a field from some lost back road 1000 miles from home in a different country even?

Here are the two shots for comparison.
























Tony Sweets shot of the tree.

















Same tree, different composition. Weird isn't it?

Brent

Extraordinary Light Gallery Progress

Well it has been awhile again since my last blog. But I thought I might share some pictures and news about the construction of the "Extraordinary Light" Gallery.

It has been a record year of rain in Saskatchewan. So much rain in places that the Trans Canada Highway was washout and replaced by a twenty foot high waterfall in the Western end of the province. Unbelievable rain followed by yet more rain. I think perhaps I should have the contractor change over to building an ark rather than a gallery.

We have a nice fellow managing our project and hopefully he knows I certainly understand the construction delays. He is doing a fine job for us and we appreciate it. But the rain has delayed us so dramatically that we find ourselves happy that 1 1/2 walls were tipped up in an entire week of work. How crazy is that?

The gallery is going to be 1600 square feet and will have a beautiful cafe serving espressos, cappucinos, steamers and french press coffee. We will also be offering delicious panini and deserts. The atmosphere will be much like any other coffee house with comfy indoor seating as well as a covered deck with more seating outside. The cafe portion of the business was originally going to be called the Northern Lights Cafe. However, a casino in Ontario owns the rights to the name and so we needed something new. We have settled on "The Art of Coffee Cafe" now.

There will be an area that I work and print images that is open to viewing by visitors and then of course hundreds of feet of wall space with my art hanging on it. We want the gallery to be a must stop spot along the Trans Canada. A place where we have a great deal of imagery to highlight the prairies.

In addition, the gallery will have an apartment in the lower level that allows us a place to live when we are on location in Fleming. A sort of second home that is comfortable and convenient to stay during the days of the week that the gallery is open.

It's all a dream in my head right now though as the rain slows the work. Here are a few shots of the construction as it stood last weekend.

This is the view of the gallery from the side of the Trans Canada highway. We have a direct turn from both directions that allows easy access to all our future customers.

The last shot is of the area that will become a parking lot eventually. Much fill is needed and you can see the standing water that has been making the site a mudpit for the last few weeks.

I can't wait to get the building closed in and start the interior work.

Brent

Nice when it happens

I have been away photographing in Redwood National Park the last little while. It was a great shoot. But I came back to discover that the Saskatchewan Craft Council decided to use one of my images for the poster advertising a show that I am participating in this summer.

It's always nice to have something chosen for this sort of thing.

I'll post something on the Redwoods trip soon.

Brent

Fleming Elevator

When I was looking for a location to build my gallery, I was certain I wanted to have some other structure(s) nearby that would tie me to the prairie. I wanted a spot where tourists could stop, learn a bit about the prairies and hopefully take a piece of prairie art home with them as they crossed our province.

When I found the land in Fleming, it was like a dream come true. Here was a piece of property located right across the highway from the oldest elevator in Canada. How amazing would that be. Our plans called for having a nice covered deck out front where people could relax with a coffee and see this amazing old elevator.

In fact, the town was in the process of restoring the elevator to its original state. I made several trips to Fleming last year and held off photographing the building because it was not quite restored. A small amount of tin needed to be installed on the upper part of the building. So I waited looking forward to the grand opening this coming summer.

I was anxious to see it finished. The towns people were anxious. They had invested many hours of sweat equity and actual dollars into preserving the edifice with hopes to open a gift shop and attract tourists to the tiny town. It was going to be a grand thing.

Well in early February, someone decided to rob the town and myself of this dream. Fleming's heritage structure was reduced to a pile of glowing coals by an arsonist. A crushing blow for a small town wanting to re-invent itself. A crushing blow to me since I truly looked forward myself to looking out upon the grand restoration.

The truly sad thing though was my reluctance to photograph the elevator before the restoration was complete, means I do not have a piece of art that celebrates my soon to be home town. BUT... I did indeed shoot one photograph last summer that showed the nearly complete building. It was so close in fact that with a little Photoshop help, I was able to clone some of the finished lower building onto the upper part in such a manner that the elvator looks as it would have if the arsonist had not dashed our hopes and dreams.

It's not the normal artsy shot I would have attempted with the finished building. It was just a snap for myself to remember how it looked before the restoration was complete. However with the Photoshop assistence, at least now there is one photo that shows what we might have had. So enjoy it, there will never be another image of the Fleming elevator.

Brent

Beating Winter Boredom

Many years ago some friends of mine out east in Ontario began referring to me as a weather wimp. It's sad really, but I can not deny it. I left the relative comfort of Southern Ontario in the late 1990's when I moved to Regina, SK. That first year, I got up for work one morning and discovered that the windchill had reduced the temperature to a bone chilling -53C. When I went outside and took a breath of air, it actually hurt. Imagine that... it hurt to breathe. Why would anyone want to live where that happens?

So the weather wimp became even more wimpy and as I have aged, I find that I spend less and less time outside when it is cold. I do go out on occasion as you may have noticed in my previous post, but I admit it is rare compared to how much I shoot in the warmer months.

Well, what does one do when the shutter finger begins to itch and the siren call of my camera begins to make me crazy? Obviously the answer is to find something to shoot indoors. Well, the siren got to me and I decided that I would shoot something inside where it was safe and warm. I have always admired Edward Weston's photography. If you do not know of Weston, that's OK. He was born in 1886 and died in 1958 as arguably the most influential photographer of the 20th century.

One of his most famous pictures was a simple photograph of a Nautilus sea shell. It has always been a favorite of mine. So I decided that I would obtain one of these shells and produce my own version of his famous photograph. It seemed like it would be fun and the end result would be something I could add to my own collection of work along with a note of course that gives credit to his idea.

So here are the results of making indoor photographs when the weather outside is... frightful.
I called it "Ode To Weston". But I didn't stop there, I also obtained a Nautilus shell that had been cut in half so that one could see the magical chambers within the shell. The chambers are a stunning example of math in nature. The spiral is perfect in every specimen. Absolutely amazing and beautiful to boot.

Weston also shot a shell sectioned much like this one. I had never seen the image until after I created my own called "Nautilus Transect".

So if the weather is bad, stay inside, grab a cup of coffee and photograph something like a sea shell, it certainly was a rewarding way to spend an afternoon when stuck in the house.

Brent

The Northern Lights Cafe

Well progress continues on getting the gallery built. I have found some contractors and they are reviewing the drawings. Well wouldn't you know it the engineer designing the foundation decided that larger than normal footings were going to be needed. It would seem that most of the people that get involved find ways to spend more of my money.

Now if the bids would only come back so we can award someone the contract to build the place!
But on a good note, we have settled on the basics for the first road sign that will go up to advertise the coffee part of the gallery. Look for this sign on the highway next year!!

Foggy Winter Mornings

We certainly have been having a lot of fog lately. The wonderful frost that it leaves behind cries out to me to miss my regular work day and just go shooting. But I have responsibilities to my job so the frost will have to wait until next year when I am self employed. But it does not mean that I can not get up early and try some shots before the sun rises. This image was captured far too early in the day. But it sure shows that you can capture something special if you are willing to crawl out of bed and pursue your passion. This is the Saskatchewan Legislature in Regina.

The Beginning

Well it all starts somewhere doesn't it. Photography has been a major part of my life since I was a teenager. It has always been there, but only as a serious hobby. Now the I.T. profession that I jumped into in 1987 is about to become a part of my past as photography becomes my future.

In the spring of 2011, I will be opening the Extraordinary Light Fine Art Gallery. Located directly on the Trans Canada Highway in the historic little town of Fleming, SK. The gallery will also contain the Northern Lights Cafe which will be serving the finest coffee, cappucino, espresso and tea you can find on the Trans Canada as you cross the prairies.

While the idea of a gallery out in a small town may seem crazy, I have had such success with my art on the show circuit, that this is the next progression. When I leave my old career behind I might as well do my work where I can share it with an ever changing audience.

Since so much of my work celebrates the prairies, I would like to be a bit of an ambassador. They are welcome to stop and use the restrooms, grab a fine cup of their favorite beverage and if they desire relax in some comfy seating in the gallery or out on the covered deck. Hopefully they will buy an image to take with them as a memory of their trip.

I will use the BLOG as a bit of a way to document the birth of the gallery and coffee house and of course share some of my images from time to time.

Now if I could just find a contractor...

Brent