Just a few minutes past yesterday's Mourning Dove, I had to stop again when I noticed a Great Horned Owl in the window of an abandoned farm house.
I felt right from the start that it was going to be a good day. Pulled out of my driveway in the dark, drove the 2-lane country highway in the dim pre-dawn, and as soon as I turned onto the dirt-and-gravel access roads that lead to the two prairie lakes that were my destination, the first direct rays of dawn swept the landscape and I started seeing critters.
Photographed near Bracken, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2022 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: Great Horned Owl Bubo virginianus wildlife bird raptor owl perched window abandoned house farm house dawn dawn light warm glorious beautiful wild prairie Bracken Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page
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After trudging across hilly fields for a couple hundred yards, I found myself unwilling to enter the old barn - it looked like it was on the verge of collapse. But shooting from the main entrance worked well enough. I exposed for the highlight areas and allowed the shadows to go black, then tweaked the image further in that direction during processing.
Photographed near Eastend, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2022 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: abstract abstraction light shadow barn interior old barn falling down decrepit window gaps shapes black on black winter prairie square Eastend SK Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page
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My Alberta series was rudely interrupted Monday morning when I experienced a computer crash and a fried hard drive. This is not unique; it happens to everyone at some point. It's disconcerting, though, and disruptive, and I'm still picking up the pieces.
My new computer won't be delivered until September; until then, I will shift to some other items, old and new, that are already processed and waiting to share. For example, the image on this page: a view of the sunburnt prairie from an abandoned barn. Thanks to my friend Madonna for suggesting I poke my lens in there. A lot of prairie dreams die when drought hits hard, as it has this summer - although this particular piece of land gave up the ghost many years ago.
More from this location tomorrow.
Photographed just off Hillandale Road, a few miles north of Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2021 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: doorway old barn view vertical prairie drought abandoned bleak parched summer Hillandale Road Val Marie Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page
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Continuing my set of square crops - couple more to go, then on to something different - I found this shot two years ago while searching for migrating Sandhill Cranes. It had been a productive morning, so I didn't mind being distracted by this eye catching, dilapidated beauty.
It was actually not a barn, but an old shed, presumably once used for grain storage. Today metal bins are the norm. I didn't look inside, but those bolted-on pieces of wood and metal plates are probably connected to long steel rods that run through the interior of the structure and are affixed the same way on the opposite side. This was necessary because the pressure from a big load of grain would cause the wood planks to bow outward. An old prairie farmer made me aware of this practice years ago; often old seeder discs were used to anchor the metal rods.
That's the practical part. The aesthetic part, well, it's mostly intuitive, isn't it? You can't create art via logic; you have to feel it. The straight lines, the squares and rectangles that form the main shapes within the frame, these can produce a symmetry that doesn't appeal to me very much. But the peeling paint (texture and colour) and uneven distribution of other elements in the frame offset these geometric qualities, I think.
Photographed at the north end of Last Mountain Lake, near Govan, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2020 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: barn shed door red doorway wood old weathered textures shapes asymmetry square crop farming history past grain storage prairie Govan Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page
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Two more shots from my walk in the falling snow last February. I was thinking square for both of these and composed accordingly. There is something about big fat flakes falling - anywhere, be it city streets or a forest or a small prairie village - that I really like; at best it can produce a pointillist effect.
I thought these two images might go together well. The first is built mostly on vertical lines, the second horizontal. And the blue and yellow, being opposite on the colour wheel, complement each other.
One shot to go in this set, then it's back to the wild prairie.
Photographed in Val Marie, Saskatchewan (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©2020 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
Tags: snowfall snow snowing winter buildings shed wall fence ladder window door blue yellow square diptych two colour contrast vertical horizontal prairie village Val Marie Saskatchewan Canada copyrighted James R. Page
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