Just A Man With A Camera

Last weekend my wife and I took a drive out to her family farm to do some shooting. I had been in not the greatest mood, and getting a little down on myself, but my wife encouraged me to get in the car and take the drive. Naturally she was right to push me out the door, because I came back not only with some images that I enjoyed, but also some plans for a future shoot.

This place has been in her family for generations and is full of old trucks and cars, old tractors and equipment, a barn that's collapsing, and farmland as far as the eye can see. Before driving out there, I had ideas for different landscapes to shoot, but being that it wasvery hazy and overcast alot of the interest that Saskatchewan's prairie skies can provide were not an option. That being said there was a lot of different subjects to take in and work around.  I hoped to find a way to feaure the large collapsing barn, but unfortunately could not quite find the right angle for today, but it inspired plans for the future. What I wanted to do was make a littel project of attempting to document what was once a thriving farm that has become overgrown because of inactivity.  There is machinery and equipment scattered all over, but no activity for one reason or another. This is likely just one of many farms like this scattered across the prairies.

The thing with a location like this, I could easily come back here at a different time of day or with different weather and come out with totally different series of images. For instance take that photo of the orange tractor, I shot several different versions of that from differnt angles and with different lenses and which created very differnt images. Additionally, there are so many small details that can be shot all over the place. You could probably shoot a couple hundered images all over the property and not incorperate a landscape at all (which I did, and will likely be an entire post and discussion on it's own). We are planning to come back later in the month for my next attempt at milky way photography and the auraura borelealis. It's close enough to the city that it's a reasonable drive, but far enough out that there should be little light pollution. Additionally, I was able to use the PhotoPills app to find where the milky way will be during this months new moon and it will line up perfectly with the barn in the foreground.

So it turned out to be a good morning of shooting. It's not often I get out of the city and just go walking around a new area so full of photographic oppourtunities which was refreshing. I came back with some good images, a bit of a renewed sense of purpose, and as a solid bonus, on the way home we stumbled across a llama farm who were kind enought to stop and pose for us.