One of the great things about Salmon Arm is the Fall Fair. Not only does it have the best photo competition/exhibition in the interior of B.C., but it also has fun events like the mini chuck wagon races.

My posting is as intermittent as usual. This will likely be the last of this particular series as the house is sold and we are soon to set off to a new location.

The past few evenings have had beautiful sunsets but I was otherwise occupied. This evening I was able to get out, but the sunset didn't cooperate. I did, however, find a cow.

Another shoot this past weekend with the Hobos with Nikons. A number of us took advantage of an invitation to visit the Central Freemason's Hall in Edmonton, a beautiful brick building from 1930. As much as I like the building, I think the library is my favorite part. Just reading the titles on the spines was fascinating.

Time to get 2015 under way, and maybe I'll manage to post a little bit more regularly. Went on an outing this afternoon with my "Hobos with Nikons" friends to shoot a pond hockey rink at blue hour. As it turned out my favorite shot of the afternoon was taken before blue hour really got under way.

I especially love exits like this where there is such a marked contrast between the inside and the outside. The beautiful old brick in the Starlite Room (which began life in 1925 as the Edmonton Salvation Army Citadel) contrasts wonderfully with the harsh green light of the entrance hallway.

Spent a gorgeous fall day in Hawrelak Park on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton. I had forgotten just how extensive and how beautiful the Edmonton river valley parks are.

Near Millet, Alberta

With the past few mornings being misty I thought I'd try a dawn shot for this entry in my 360x50 project. The numbers that came up led me to the country SW of Millet, which is a good place to find misty mornings due to an abundance of wetland. The sunrise wasn't spectacular, but I think this photo gives a good feel for the moisty September morning.

Josh Hughes of Savage Playground

Vacations are over and it is time to get back on track. Part of our vacation each year at around this time includes the photography competition portion of the Salmon Arm Fall Fair. My parents are members of the sponsoring club so I help out and to keep things interesting I enter some photos. This year I didn't have any suitable sports shots for the "Sports/Action" category so I thought I would put in this favorite from this summer's Beaumont Blues and Roots Festival. Concert photos don't usually do well in the competition but this time I got lucky and won first in the category.

My handy little program, The Photographer's Ephemeris, indicated that sunrise this morning would occur straight along the length of the Salmon Arm of Shuswap Lake. The forecast was for mostly clear so I set my alarm for 4:44 and popped around the end of the lake to see what I could see. As it turned out the sky was more cloudy than clear but there was enough interest to make it worth the early rise.

Today we went for a trip up Shuswap Lake. Missy had a great time exploring, but she paused for a while to do a bit of posing for me.

This weekend is one that I look forward to every year, the weekend of the Klondike Classic carriage driving trials. This is my fourth year photographing the competition and as always the people were friendly, the weather beautiful and the horses absolutely gorgeous! This pair of Friesians were standouts this year, beautifully matched and moving elegantly in unison.

The 2009 Beaumont Blues Festival was my first real concert shoot, as well as the beginning of new things for me. For one it was my introduction to many musicians and bands that I now count among my favorites, among them Boogie Patrol, Raygun Cowboys, Eve Hell and the Razors, Bobby Cameron, Marshall Lawrence. For two, I got to see and hear Bill Bourne live for the first time and with the added bonus of the great Madagascar Slim playing with him. For three, and the most significant, here I first met Larry who in turn introduced me to the Edmonton Flickrmeet group, a great bunch of people who have made photography much more fun than it ever would have been going it alone.

My photos from that festival are pretty much what you would expect from a beginning concert photographer, but there are one or two that remain favorites of mine. In particular for this one, the stage lights hit the perfect colour as they were passing behind Madagascar Slim and his face has a great expression as he looks over at Bill Bourne.

Yesterday evening was the 2014 edition of the Edmonton Steampunks summer photo shoot, held once again at Fort Edmonton Park. Amidst the usual chaos and mayhem much fun was had and bold photos were taken. Of those taken by me, this is one of my favorites. Something about the pose just seems to work.

Pascal Lecours at the Hilltop Pub

In the corner of the pub where the band played it was close to impossible to keep the signs out of the photo so I tried to make them part of it.

This photo is where my attention was drawn to the EXIT sign and I conceived the notion of a project incorporating signs with the word exit on them. As I mention on the blog welcome page however, these ideas seldom went far so now perhaps after several years of being just an idea the project will become fleshed out.

In his Planet of Light workshop that I attended recently, Dave Brosha encouraged us to work on personal projects in our photography. This reminded me of a number of projects that I had thought of, possibly toyed with briefly, and then allowed to slip away. So I came up with the idea of using this blog to capture some of those ideas and possibly even keep a few of them going.

This project is one I call 360x50. The idea is that I choose at random a compass point from 1-360 degrees and a distance from 1-50 km. I then travel to the selected spot using my house as the centre point and photograph whatever I find there.

For this first photograph the numbers that came up were 125 and 34 which took me to a spot near the junction of Highway 21 and Range Road 214, close to Hay Lakes, AB. It had been raining and windy all day but the rain died away in the evening so I put the dog and the camera into the car and went for a drive. What I found when I got there was about as typical north-central Alberta farmland as you can get. I love the motion in the grasses as the wind whips through them and you can feel more rain coming.