Clowns

Q: Why did the girls dressed like clowns cross the road in Waterton Park?
A: To get to the other side.

See their Australian cousins here

Black Bear

Q: Why did the black bear cross the road in Waterton Park?
A: To get to the other side (probably to get away from the girls).

See another picture of this Waterton Park bear here

Waterton Service Station

Pat's Park Service Station and Gift Shop in Waterton sells gas, repairs bikes, rents scooters and bikes, sells gifts, etc... Plus, on this particular morning there was a mountain getting nice light in the background. You can't really see it on this downsized web version of the photograph but there is also a mule deer just above the hood of the red pickup that I didn't see until I opened up the photo on my computer.

Goat Haunt, Montana

Upper Waterton Lake lies on the border between Canada and the United States. At the south end of the lake lies Goat Haunt, Montana in Glacier National Park and you get there from the town of Waterton in Canada by boat (or by foot if you care to walk). Goat Haunt consists only of a ranger station that is staffed in the summer.

The name comes from the mountain goats that used to be common on the mountain range along the southeast side of the lake. Unfortunately, they were fairly easy targets up there for hunters and are now uncommon. Haunt used to have an English language meaning of "hang-out" and it doesn't refer to ghosts in any way....

Crowsnest Pass, British Columbia

On the way back from Waterton we detoured west to British Columbia to take a picture. It isn't far, so I expect to be back.

Bridge over Bow River

We're going on an international road trip. More pictures to come....

Coyotes Frequent this Area

A public service message provided to you by the city of Calgary (down by the footbridge across from Princes Island).

Bird in Flight

This seagull was sitting on a rock and I had taken a shot or two. Then it took off just as I snapped the shutter and this is what I caught. At first I was disappointed but when I got back home and looked it seemed kind of artistic. Don't tell anyone it wasn't on purpose....

Blackbirds

These two blackbirds were part of a large flock down by the beaver lodge on Princes Island. I'd been trying to get a good picture for a day or two. The light was low and getting dark so the lens is wide open and I used a flash to provide a little pop. The background is nicely out of focus and the colors contrast well with the birds I think.

V=12,000 !

Peace Pole Unveiling

Today was the Calgary Community Peace Pole Unveiling Celebration in the park down below the apartment. Besides unveiling the Peace Pole (a sculpture that I don't quite get) these pinwheels made by "Ms. Drisdelles's art class" were out on the grass. When the wind blew, they sent "their messages of peace out onto the world."

First Snow

Last night it cooled off and rained. It was cloudy and windy when we woke up but by afternoon it had cleared and warmed up. The first snow fell and stuck in the mountains as you can see in this photo taken from the balcony.

Calgary Fashion

Oh yes... we have fashion in Calgary. They don't do it like this in Paris that is for sure. These mannequins are in a store window on Stephen Ave. and wearing haute couture collars representing different well known areas, cultural events, and industries in the area. Click here for the rest of the set.

Weeds are going to Seed

Weeds are going to seed. So is the grass. Hay is being collected. Must be that fall is coming.

Canadian Graffiti

Canadian graffiti doesn't seem quite as gang related to me - at least what I've seen here in Calgary. I'm no expert of course. But look at this - a heart with a peace sign? It is located under a bridge in Fish Creek Park. The artists seem to practice good etiquette and don't paint over other's work.

If someone deciphers this and it has inappropriate content for a family blog then let me know and I'll take it down :-)

Jackrabbits

This white-tailed jackrabbit lives in Princes Park, and he has a buddy that lives around the car park just down the street from us. He was chewing on a leaf for dinner when I disturbed him.

Full of Myself

The illustration at left shows what can happen if I am left alone over a long weekend without supervision. What I've done is taken a photograph and using the color range tool in Photoshop turned it into a graphic with black, white, and 50% grey. Then I stamped my name all over the place on it using a custom paint brush with the graphic being used as a mask. Finally I tinted it a bit.

Click on picture to enlarge it to see the detail. This is the original photo that I started with. There are directions here if you would like to try it yourself.

And that is how I became full of myself.

Things that strike me about the Alberta Landscape...

On a clear day, the Rocky Mountains are visible from many places on the Alberta prarie. But if you aren't looking West, it is wide open with grain as far as you can see in many places. There has to be a place to put that grain, and if you can see something on the horizon, there is a fair chance it is a grain elevator.

The picture at left is from the town of Nanton - still a thriving community. All along the old railroads they built grain elevators. And small towns, some of which are no more. And in between there are interesting old barns and farm houses, many neglected. I've posted some new pictures in the slide show or you can see them by clicking here.

Hey wait a minute! How did the starship Enterprise get in there? That is because the town of Vulcan has tried to build a little tourism off of it's name. The visitor's center has a sign with the following message out front:

WELCOME TO VULCAN
Information Trek Center

Live Long and Prosper

Internet Service Available Inside

One of the things I always try to do when I am in a new place is to give my blog a hit so it will show up on my map. And there I was in Vulcan and I didn't even go in the visitor's center and give my blog a hit. Guess I'll have to go back....

World Skills Calgary 2009

The other day I was out for a walk at lunch and stopped to listen to the fellow on the left who was talking to a small group of people about sculpture. Today I went back and photographed him.

It turns out he and two other artists, including the one posing on the right, had been commissioned by the city of Calgary to sculpt a work for the World Skills contest. Let me step back for a minute and explain that. The World Skills is a demonstration / contest of skilled trades that started in Madrid, Spain in 1950. Today it is a huge event held in different countries every two years and the skills include everything from florist to carpentry. The participants range in age from 17 to 22.

So, back to these two guys and their sculpure. They had a nice demonstration of how they sculpt, but the statute itself is the clever part. The statue is carving herself out of the stone. The part above the waist is finished with a mallet in one hand and a chisel in the other working on the lower half. The lower half is intentionally left rough and shows the stages of how sculpture is done - it is a statue demonstrating how statues are made.

They told me they make a full time living doing commissions, often for cities, but things had slowed a bit with the downturn. In Canada, a condition of building in many places is that public art be added - slow building, reduced commissions.

I was enthused enough by this that I decided to go out to the Stampede grounds and see the rest of what was going on. Turns out it was kind of like a cross between a huge trade show and career day for students. It was pretty neat, but I've seen plumbers brazing before (even tried it myself) as well as painting automobiles. It was my first time to see sculpture in progress though. It took about 3 weeks they said to complete the work.

BBQ on the Bow

There seems to be something going on most weekends down at the Bow River in Calgary. This week it is a barbeque competition so if you are a vegetarian you might want to skip this posting. I am actually quite sensitive in these matters myself as demonstrated in previous postings.

They were setting up for the competition, actually called BBQ on the Bow, when I went by this morning and stopped to talk to this fellow. His shirt is what caught my eye. Anyway, he said they had four types of competition: pork butt, pork ribs, beef brisket, and chicken (I think they also had a category for sauce). Cooking heat has to be supplied by wood or charcoal and the winner gets crowned champion of Alberta.

After having been here a few weeks now I am beginning to think Calgary should be sister city to Houston. After all they like to rodeo, like to eat barbeque, and everybody here is in the oil bidness. It is more like a twin city than a sister city....

View from the Terrace Pt. 5

I will get these views from the terrace out of my system eventually. This happens to be towards the city of course and is in the same direction as this night shot I previously posted.

What is different? The time of day of course, this being late evening along with different framing. Also, I took it with a Kodak Signet 35mm camera approximately the same age as myself and had the image scanned so I could post it here. The nice saturated colors are courtesy of modern Kodak 200 film with Fujicolor C-41 processing.

Kodak Signet 35

This is my "new" camera, a Kodak Signet 35 from the early 1950's. It is a mechanical work of art that was made in the USA by Kodak - no batteries needed or accomodated. Back then, the really good 35mm cameras were made in Germany and most people weren't yet aware of Japanese quality, but this was top of the line for the USA.

It sports a single coated f/3.5 44mm Ektar lens that stops down to f/22. The shutter has to be cocked manually before each shot and has speeds of B, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, and 1/300. The rangefinder apparatus still works fine for focusing down to 2 feet or all the way out to infinity. It winds with a knob, has a film frame counter, and features double exposure prevention.

Of course there isn't a meter, but there is a neat multi-slide scale on the back that can be adjusted for the film (Super-XX, Plus-X, Pan-X, or Kodachrome) and light conditions. By the way, none of those films are made anymore but by knowing the film speed it still works and is easy to use but I cheated and used my Nikon D3 from time to time as a very expensive light meter. It has a case with a leather strap that I need to fix. The lens is plenty sharp for snapshots and the internet. The ergonomics aren't great but it is fun to use. I've posted a photograph I made with the camera here.

The best part, I only paid $17.50 for it. Of course that is quite a bit more than I paid for my Agfa Optima 1a. But what is really expensive about these cameras is the film. It costs at least $10 to process these days, not to mention the film cost itself. I'm spending more on film and processing than I am on the cameras....

Lake Louise

Lake Louise is in the Canadian Rockies and a beautiful place. It is a natural lake formed by the glaciers above it and there is a beautiful hotel located just behind where I took this picture. We'll be back for sure....

V=16,061

Seagulls

I guess I had never thought about seagulls so far from the sea. But there are a lot of them here on the Bow River in Alberta.

There is a definite family resemblence between this fellow and the Aussie gull I put on my Christmas card a while back.

Black Grey Squirrel

According to my extensive research on Wikipedia, black squirrels are a melanistic subgroup of the eastern grey squirrel. I have seen a few of them before but never as many as I've seen in Calgary. That is all I've seen here.

Wikipedia says that before European colonization they may have outnumbered the grey variety. They are still locally common, especially in the North where the coat may be beneficial in colder climates by absorbing heat.

Sorry for the crummy picture. they won't let me near them and they are quick. The urban squirrels in Texas are a lot less wary.

World's Biggest Dropped Rock

The name of this rock is Okotoks, derived from the Blackfoot name for rock okatok.

It is sitting here on the edge of the Alberta prarie after origininating in a landslide that fell on a glacier somewhere between 10,000 to 18,000 years ago (I am not sure exactly when :-). The glacier flowed out of the Canadian Rockies at Jasper, turned South, flowed past Calgary, and when it got warm again dropped the rock here.

Rocks deposited this way are called glacial erratics. This one happens to be the biggest one in the world at 16,500 tonnes with dimensions of 41 x 18 x 9 meters.

View from the Terrace Pt. 4

Here is another sunset view from the terrace.

Calgary's Finest

The Calgary Police were in the air protecting the city in the Eau Claire area down by the river. There is a helicopter pad where they landed for a moment and the photo shows them taking off.

The Calgary Fire Department patrol the Bow River in a jet boat making sure nobody gets in too much trouble there. We don't have a Navy, although we do have the Naval Museum of Alberta (question: why is there a Naval Museum in Alberta?).

Rafting on the Bow River

Today was a day for rafting on the Bow River. There are almost as many people floating the river here as on the Elk. We also had the Bow Flow which was a mini festival along the North bank in this photo and a Bike Fest just below the apartment.

Cricket

and today was a day for playing cricket in Calgary.

A Midsummer's Night Dream

The Shakespearean plays on Prince's Island are free as I've said before and they are also "dog friendly." This means you can bring your dog with you to sit and watch the play. Or your kid.

Here the actor's are "going to sleep" in A Midsummer's Night Dream. Besides staging it in a kind of modern manner, they sometimes stick a bit of modern music in the plays as well. Just before they went to sleep, one of the characters lip synchs a bit of Madonna from Like a Prayer: