The people of the S Alberta road trip

Last August Neil and an amiable group of photographers headed south for a several day road trip. I've blogged about parts of it before, look here for an overview. For me one of the fun parts of such trips is catching photos of my fellow travellers as they do their thing. Neil takes us to interesting places and interesting things, but sometimes the people are the interesting bit. With one exception, none of these are posed shots; they are all taken on the fly, no do-overs. And yes, given that everyone else has cameras I'm probably in some of their shots.

I'm sure looking forward to taking more of these. Neil does a great job organizing them, and even on trips that cover similar ground there will be new things to see. The last two years have been brutal on everybody, what with not being able to make firm plans. All too often events have had to be cancelled at nearly the last moment. Now that we can go, he is having trouble rounding up the appropriate vehicle.

As an aside, it's going to take a long time for supply chains to get over this disruption. We're used to being able to order something and have it delivered next day, or within a couple days. Even if it hadn't been made yet and has to come from China. There was no slack in the system, and as soon as some of the links are broken or delayed, the delays ripple out. Remember that ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal? That was just the beginning.

1.

One of the things photographers are not supposed to do is 'chimping'. That is, taking a photo and then looking at the back of the camera saying 'ooh, ooh!'. Except we all do it. Every single one of us and if you say you don't you're a liar. Unless you've put tape over the camera view screen. Even people shooting film will look at the back of the camera after a shot. I'm not sure what Bart has here, but Ann is interested.

2.

Reading the info on the Sundial Medicine Wheel before walking up the hill. 

3.

Monica is the subject here, but until today I'd never noticed Neil giving me a bit of side-eye.

4.

A buddy of Neil's showed up at the full moon rise over Cottonwood Park in Medicine Hat. This is the closest thing to an actual portrait photo in this series.

5.

I still don't know what was so interesting about that sign.

6.

Neil and many other people have a thing about trains. We pulled into a side road to catch this train rumbling past the grain elevators north of Warner, I think. It was near a facility unloading those giant windmill blades.

7.

Getting ready for our tour of Writing on Stone park. It was pretty amazing, even if many of my photos of the actual stone were kind of disappointing.

8.

9. One of our guides telling the story.

10.

Neil and I had been wandering through the hoodoos together. This is the posed shot, and no, I didn't do anything in processing to create that halo. It's just there.

11.

Another of our guides. 

12.

The herd trudging up the hill back to the van.

13.

Ann working on a shot out the window as the van is zooming to the next place. This was a bit of surprise to us all, that photos taken this way could be so good. Just to save you the math, a vehicle moving at 100 Kph moves about 7 mm in 1/4000 of a second. Not going to see much motion blur from that. The bigger question is how clean are the windows.

14.

Birds of prey sanctuary. All of us are fascinated by George the owl.

15.

Coffee and lunch along the way. It was windy. I think this is Champion, and I can't remember how many toilet paper rolls were assigned to the washroom in the background. Yes, this is a subject of discussion along the way. Some people think that Neil knows where every public washroom is along a trip route. Sometimes that's really important.

16. Heather, someplace.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily

Film (35mm) During a walk in Inglewood.