Lake Louise and Victoria Glacier: Three Visits

Day 1 - Late afternoon, 4th June 2014: Clouds

We did not anticipate the sheer amount of snow and ice that had not yet melted. It was cold (highly reminiscent of the awful Midwest winter) but undeniably beautiful. I did not break out the camera (other than the iPhone photo above) until the next day when I hoped for sunshine.

Day 2 - Early morning 5 June 2014: Frigid Water (particularly if one is collecting samples and floating paper)

Clear water samples for my wooden box and some for those that requested them when I announced on twitter my excess of specimen bottles.

Victoria Glacier: wishing I could see an avalanche (from far, far away).

This is what 9 AM looks like (I have to remind myself because I seldom know).

Day 3 - Late Afternoon Saturday 7 June 2014: Ice

My quintessential Canadian photograph (and the scene I will long to return to for the rest of my life).

Canoe as Ice Breaker

Ice in the Sun

Ice and water reflection in the shade

Trying to Survive

Surprised the phone didn't freeze while taking this photograph in -14º.

Sheila Newbery's "Ohio Woods"

Sheila Newbery, Nest, 2013

As I compile images for a lecture I will give next week in Cincinnati and eye the new fallen snow outside, Sheila Newbery's Ohio Woods is on my mind. From Sheila's artist statement:

"Ohio Woods is a selection of platinum-palladium prints of images made during a cross-country journey by train. The route was from New York City to San Francisco via Chicago: the first leg of the trip took us winding up the Hudson Valley on a spectacular January afternoon, but the brilliance of the day was soon obscured by heavy clouds sailing in from the west. By the time we reached the Ohio border, we were rolling through the woodlands under a veil of twilight snow; the train had slowed because of poor visibility; and everything had softened to a kind of translucence. I had an idea about how to make a few pictures..."

I only knew forest before moving to Indiana. Everything is dense in the Northwest and woods were not part of my periphery. Conifers are not the primary foliage here and the act of seeing through trees to parts of the landscape beyond, still startles me. The absence of leaves in the winter is stark and unwelcoming. It, coupled with the flat horizon, is deathlike in appearance. Perhaps that is why I searched for Robert Kennedy's funeral train photographs when I first encountered Sheila's work. Photographing this particular mode of transportation also recalls a less abstract version of Sharon Harper's Flight.

Ohio Woods is a close inspection of the view outside my window until late April in Indiana. It is Nancy Rexroth's Iowa in remembrance of Ohio. It is Masahisa Fukase's grainy trees without the ravens.  It is also on view in San Francisco this month. See it if you are there.

From the series Ohio Woods (all photos courtesy of Sheila's website).

Snow Encore

 Paula McCartney's A Field Guide to Snow and Ice

 Lisa M. Robinson's Snowbound

Sonja Braas, Forces

Michael Itkoff, Ice Crack, Lake Wallenpaupak, Pennsylvania

Laura McPhee, Igloo Built Following Plans Downloaded from the Internet, 2005

Anne Massoni, Hanna to Snow XXIV, 2009

Snow Part 2

Rune Guneriussen, Evolution, 2005 (Thanks Laura for the link!)


Paula McCartney, On Thin Ice in a Blizzard


Mike Rebholz


Alec Soth, Untitled, 1995


Joseph Cornell, Untitled, 1967


Doug and Mike Starn


Deborah Parkin, September is the Cruelest Month


Daniel Marchand


Justin James Reed, The Real Unknown

The Last Post on Snow for the Season

Images by Anderson Wrangle:

Spring Break Here at Last

I feel like the main subjects in Edouard Boubat's Nazare, Portugal from 1956 = EXHAUSTED (and able to fall asleep on command in any public venue)!



Now it's time for a ROAD TRIP and a real vacation. Going somewhere new, seeing an old friend, and attending a photo conference where Nancy and I will be giving a big old talk.

Note to self: acquire a cowboy shirt.

Realization: I'm so tired of winter and uninterested in this season that snow cakes are no longer in my future. Alas, I tried but that is all it was... a trial with lots of errors. It will have to live on as a movie, a brand of soap, and this lovely image from the Tibetan plateau. I detect another post about swimming pools in the near future.




From the website: "To study the affect of snow on the grasslands, Hopping and her co-researchers placed 64 “snow cakes” on the grass. The snow cakes resemble icy, over-sized hockey pucks, 1 meter across. Underneath these chilly micro-climates, Hopping monitored soil moisture, temperature, nitrate levels and carbon dioxide fluxes. Once the snow melted, she recorded the health and species composition of the plants underneath."

Snow seeping in the doorway...

Bernard Faucon, La Quatorizieme Chambre d'amour la tempete de neige, 1985

RIP Dennis Oppenheim

Sad news discovered this evening. Dennis Oppenheim died last Friday at the age of 72. From the New York Times:

"He first became known for works in which, like an environmentally inclined Marcel Duchamp, using engineers’ stakes and photographs, he simply designated parts of the urban landscape as artworks. Then, in step with artists like Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria and Lawrence Weiner, he began making temporary outdoor sculptures, soon to be known as land art or earthworks. “Landslide,” from 1968, for example, was an immense bank of loose dirt near Exit 52 of the Long Island Expressway in central Long Island that he punctuated with rows of steplike right angles made of painted wood. In other earthworks he cut abstract configurations in fields of wheat; traced the rings of a tree’s growth, much enlarged, in snow; and created a sprawling white square (one of Modernism’s basic motifs) with salt in downtown Manhattan."

I have been thinking about Oppenheim's Annual Rings seen recently in a previous post. While perusing his website I found One Hour Run also featuring snow. Like much of his earlier work, it is a duration piece. I've always been drawn to his ephemeral approach to earthworks and body art.


One Hour Run, 1968 (six mile continuous track)

Here are four of my favorite Oppenheim works of art:


Rocked Hand, 1970



Parallel Stress, 1970


Reading Position for Second Degree Burn, 1970




Annual Rings, 1968 (a better version)

Douglas Huebler is the Man

"By late 1967, I was looking for an alternative to object-making and found it in the idea of the map; the perfect conceptual model, with its reduced visual signs juxtaposed with descriptive language. I created a new body of work which added photographic “documentation” to the implications of mapping." Douglas Huebler

Slightly Pink Snow Cake

I brushed off the new snowfall and the yellow is completely gone but there remains a trace of the pink. I don't care about longevity with this project but was curious to see how long the color lasted.

Snow Cakes Attempt #2

These are color tests only (a learning experience nonetheless) so ignore the shape. I was trying to get them out of the house quickly before they melted and wasn't as concerned with the structure. The pink Kool-Aid worked perfectly as far as the hue I wanted. The yellow looked a little green so I'm not sure I like that as much. The downside is that it required too much water to mix with the snow to get the right color. This resulted in material resembling a slushee. The texture was nowhere near the "polenta cake" made earlier but that could have also resulted from more powdery snow and a warmer house. In any case, I am relieved that I only want to do one of these. I was getting overzealous with the last two images and just wanted to cover the bush in the front yard. They look like gumdrops from Candy Land through the front window.