Here we go again....

Industrial time once again. Getting bored means having to go out and take pictures of places you haven't been to yet. Well add this to the list. North end of the city, drive by it many times but never stopped, now I have.

All buildings you see, houses, businesses... all that stuff - have a cosmetic touch, their design has intentional appeal to it. They create most buildings with that in mind, "it should look good" or "will it look good?".

Where as Industrial places are nothing like that. They are built only with efficiency in mind, their only concern is making it all functional, everything has a true purpose or function. How it looks was/is never taken into consideration. I find a lot of beauty in that for some reason and I really like it.













The rest can be found HERE!

Pro-Marijuana Rally 2009

April 20th, or to some who enjoy the smoke, it is called 420. At roughly 4:20pm well over a thousand people lit up joints and pipes down at the Edmonton Legislature grounds. There was minimal police presence, no arrests were made during the whole 2 hour event.

Some live music was preformed for entertainment, and a few people had some words for the crowd, mostly exciting the crowd to a loud cheer.

For a good twenty minutes there was a thick haze of smoke crawling just above every one's head, the smell was thick in the air. Some local media was present as well, asking people why they wanted to come on down to the park on this day.


















The complete photo-set can be seen HERE!!

Guardians of Power

My best friend drums in this band, Guardians of Power. They are a great mix of cheesy power metal and sci-fi themes, fantasy stuff as well. Really good music and a completely original idea, especially for Edmonton's scene here. (that scene word feels so dirty, probably because it's cringe worthy every time you hear it)

I went to take some photos and a high definition video for them. Nothing too fancy. The lighting was cool - but very dark. High ISOs are needed, thankfully the 5DMKII can handle that without breaking a sweat. Although I don't like to, but you often have to use ISO 4000 or ISO 5000 when doing these really dark shows. I'd rather be using ISO 3200 as a max, but flash is out of the question - so you do what you can.

I had a really great time, lot of fun, and great music.
















The complete set of photos from that night can be found HERE!!

Summer

Got word 2 hours ago that I got a photography job up north for the month of august. Pay isn't great, but pretty good. Should be fun, just in time to test out all that lighting gear I'm getting next week. I go to Peace River sometime this month to test out a few things and scout a couple locations. The small fortune I spent on camera gear is paying off, finally. Haha. More details coming soon.

Earthquake in Italy: Community level

L'aquila, Italy.

At the time of writing this there are more than 250 dead, and more expected to be discovered. More than 28'000 are now homeless with nothing left to go back to. And to make matters worse countless old historic sites and buildings are lost forever in what can only be described as a tragedy.

Rescue efforts were halted for a few hours as aftershocks hit the area, sending fear back into the residents of L'aquila. Many people were afraid to sleep indoors and found open areas to make tents or make shift shelters, many slept in their cars.

Search dogs and robots are being used to locate survivors, but so far it has been mostly the dead who are being found. Efforts to find people go on through the night, the citizens of L'aquila hold a lot of hope and look ahead to a slow recovery for their town.

Many Edmonton families have relatives in the effected areas of Italy, so far there have been no reports of anyone dying that is related to a local family.

This service at the church here in Edmonton was held to remember the dead and pray for the people who will have to fight back in order to gain some ground in their new life, many being left homeless and with great loss.


























More photos are here: Click HERE for more Photos

Internal...

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Investigating+conduct+debate+police+meeting/1465347/story.html

Does anyone seriously think the police should be allowed to run internal investigations against their own kind? Seriously? I doubt it.

You can bet they help each other out, you know what I mean. They have their preferred judges, they have their own investigations. If the public pushes them hard enough someone gets made a scapegoat and ultimately pays the price for other injustices by other police.

Run a red light, crash a car, beat someone up, sexually harass someone, kill someone in the line of duty, etc. Lie.

Whatever. I understand the need for some sort of "policing force" in society, we cannot police our selves. But there is no reason why these people should be responsible for their own problems.

We all want justice, at least that's what we come to believe. Give us that much. Form some kind of committee, one with power, to govern over the police, one that is completely independent.

Industrial

So I keep going out to these places because frankly Edmonton can be a very boring city, and visually speaking there is not that many great structures to photograph. I don't think that is very pessimistic - just realistic.

Most commercial/business or homes are constructed with style or cosmetics in mind, "does it look appealing?" or "it has to look nice!", of course this fits with your home or a business, it needs to be attractive. And I guess for me the appeal here is a contrast to that very notion, these structures are the opposite of that. They have no consideration for beauty or style, it's 100% function. Nothing more and nothing less. Inside that function are all sorts of things that I personally find interesting. There is a beauty (at least in my eyes) to these structures that others outside of this industry can never have.

How does it all work? What is it for exactly? Who knows these questions? They aren't philosophical - they are literal, I'm sure there are only a small handful of people around the globe that can tell me how this stuff works at these refineries or plants. I'd kind of like to know.

Early last year I was out there with a friend and we were taking video and photos of these areas, at around 2am someone had called the police on us. The police show up and offer us a few reasons why we shouldn't be here, the two main things they said were that the companies are nervous about eco-terrorism and trespassing. OK. Fine. But we weren't there for that, I told them that and they more or less told us that security around there can "tune" (beat up) people for being in that area and the police would not like to "come back and find someone in trouble or tuned up". Strange. Later that evening I parked my vehicle (off the road) so I could get out and walk to a nice vantage point to take a photo of some holding tanks in a refinery, a black SUV with tinted windows rolls up next to my vehicle while we are not in it, it sits there. Ten minutes pass and nothing happens. We finish our photos and videos and walk back, we get in - the black SUV pulls up a bit and the window opens slightly and a man asks "what are you doing" and we say "taking photos", the man pauses and asks "what for? the internet?" and I say "maybe, I have no agenda, I'm not political and this isn't about that", he pauses again and says "OK". They drive off.

So that's about it, the place is awesome for photography and you gotta just get out there and do it, the 2nd last time I was out there with a different friend we were approached by security in a different area and he was friendly about it all, a nice change if you ask me.

I'll be back soon, I have a bunch of ideas for new spots in that area.













You can view much larger versions here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24307312@N04/sets/72157615499659738/

March 23rd Fire Downtown Edmonton

Rose's Gift Shop and National Cabinet (a furniture store) located between 107 and 108 street on 101st avenue, caught fire in the early evening on March 23rd. The fire started at around 5pm, no one was injured in the blaze, but both business were completely destroyed. No information has been released concerning the cause of the fire.

Nearby residents in apartment complexes just West of the fire were asked to evacuate until the air was clear, thick black smoke could be seen across most of the city. The National Cabinet shop had several containers of flammable liquid stored inside, an air safety unit was brought in to monitor the contaminants in the air, no hazardous levels were reached.

The fire took nearly 4 hours to get completely under control, the buildings were mostly torn down in the process in order to stop the fire from spreading.

Next door to Nation Cabinets is a wedding gown shop which did not suffer any damage, however the owner reports that some gowns have a smokey smell and will need dry cleaning. Many of the dresses were getting ready for graduation ceremonies and weddings planned for the near future, leaving some wondering if they will have their dress in time.

The investigation into the cause of the fire is on going and will be released to the public when complete.




High Definition Video of scenes at the fire:


Complete set of images here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24307312@N04/sets/72157615874333988/

a new beginning

New set up on Flickr, the oil refineries and storage facilities on Edmonton's east end. Last time I was out there taking pictures we had the police called on us and security was following us around. No different this time around either, security came out and talked to us while I was taking the video and getting a few pictures ready. The guard was actually a photographer himself and sympathized with us, he was nice, and told us we could stay as long as we did not get any closer to the property. Hopefully when it starts getting warm again I can go back and get a lot more footage and pictures, might write a quick piece about the area.

Click links to view the 1080p HD version at Vimeo:








View the whole set of photographs here: Industrial Photo Set