I’m not a big “appeal to emotions” kind of guy. That’s the biggest reason why I struggle with Drime (drama+mime). This stuff is all about the emotional hook. Done well it’s good at it too. But, just being honest here, I just have a hard time with it. To me, its problems and its solutions seem so simplistic. And then I went to Buffalo Narrows. Suddenly this sketch is no longer over the top at all. In fact, it’s pretty illuminating.

All of the issues are at hand there. Substance abuse, mostly in the form of alcoholism, is highly prevalent. In fact someone working in corrections there said that if alcohol were removed from the equation, about 70% of inmates would not have ended up where they were. But that’s just the beginning.

Teen pregnancy an immense phenomenon — an estimated 65% of girls are mothers before they’re 18. Statistics tell us that amongst the youth of the 3 million people in northern Canada, 40% are under 14. And of course you put all that together, and it makes sense that lots of kids have evident signs of fetal alcohol syndrome.

Buffalo Narrows has about 65% unemployment. Actually, that’s comparatively good. Other communities nearby have rates as high as 85%. Poor, desperate and depressed — it’s no wonder there are issues like those presented in the video. But trying to imagine solutions is not at all easy. Though healing faith is available to all, you have to choose it. And as that would apparently end the party early, it’s not an attractive option. It’s abundantly sad, and I was spared the worst of it. There’s very little between people and their various abysses.

I’ve seen so many bad pictures (several I’ve taken) shot from the windows of airplanes. In case you haven’t noticed those windows are far from optical glass, and they’re not really great at enabling the camera to see what the eyes see. So when we were taking off from Edmonton and I saw this scene I debated about getting my camera out (it was sitting at my feet). Finally I thought the sun is filtered enough, and the colours are rich enough, I’ll just try it and see. Well now this scene is running “double truck” across my pair of monitors. Five seconds (at most) after I took this we were banking and the scene was gone.

I hereby promise to never use white seamless ever again. There is too much available in colour, texture and/or context to leech it all out with a white paper background. For my own work, for the stuff I’m really working on, I will not be using a plain white background at all in the future. Unless I can find something really special to do with it, which I’m not convinced is possible.

I’ll be back from Buffalo Narrows, SK very soon. But in the meantime this is the kind of beauty that’s filling my eyes. I’m so far north that this sunset lasted for the best part of an hour, and covered about 160 degrees of view. I shot like mad, and then it dawned on me that this moment wasn’t bound to end suddenly — much different than the fleeting moments I’m used to.

Mike Delorenzo is someone that I’ve been following over the past number of months. He’s a bush pilot flying with Africa Inland Mission, who also happens to be highly involved with their media wing (danger: bad pun alert!). So not only does he get to cover the stories in his region of Africa, he can just boot over and take pictures and/or video of it first-hand.

You can see the work that the On Field Media team is creating on their site, and through their Flickr feed.

Mike’s the kind of guy I want to be when I grow up! I wonder if I could just slip an aircraft and flight school into my organisation’s Communications budget. “Hey Brad, can you explain this 2,500% jump from last year? I mean, it’s cool. We’re just curious…”

We recently had a conversation in which you said that there are experiences that you would rather not write about. They’re too special, or too ethereal to be confined into mere words. And just the action of encapsulating those thoughts and experiences would tarnish them somehow — to reduce them into comprehensible ‘human’ terms. The words to describe them are frustratingly elusive, and you’d rather not try. I get your meaning. I just feel entirely differently.

I think those are the very things that you should concentrate on. There’s a reason why you’re having these experiences. And if it takes no effort, then it’s meaningless. You don’t own it, so it doesn’t own you. (And it doesn’t own you, so you don’t own it.) It’s only the stuff that makes you work for it that has any worth. It’s the stuff that you have to analyse. To back up and think about it. To start out ten different ways. To edit for an afternoon. A week. A month. And still not be satisfied.

It’s the things that fill you simultaneously with the drive to create and a myriad of creative uncertainties — only those things end up being the ones that matter.

I knew before it started that 2009 was going to be intense, but the distance I’ve been travelling this years is verging on extreme! We just returned from shooting the wedding in Fernie, which is well into the interior of BC. We drove all night to get there – literally. We left at 9pm and got to our destination at 7am. Caught a couple of winks of sleep, and then started clicking pictures at lunch. Clicked away all Saturday (and into early Sunday), and then boogied home over the next two days. The odometer was sitting at just under 2,000kms when we returned the rental car.

It was a trip where the miles felt like hostile obstacles that we had to wrestle ourselves through. We had a destination and a timeline, and not a lot of reserves.

But despite the urgency, I experienced small town rural BC in a way I never have before. I’ve spent countless hours travelling through rural Ontario, but there’s something altogether different about rural BC. Where Ontario has semblances of towns and going-concern farmland between urbanities, rural BC seems like a sort of sprawling dejectedness. There are many forsaken mines dotted around (many of which are now open to passing tourists, though few seem to care). There are a lot of semi-desert areas on the lee-side of mountains. We talked to people that don’t have electricity. Realities seem starker, harder.

We saw a house fire in Osoyoos. We came over the mountain just as emergency crews were landing on the scene. I took a few pictures of the men at work, looking for an angle to document the scene from. Then was told by a very stern-looking 20something: “No more pictures. This is our house.” A switch clicked in my head. All the people lurking around at 2:00am in various states of inebriation looking on because it’s something “important”, and me with a camera in my hands. It wasn’t worth explaining that I was trying to understand an important story here. That I’m trying to use my camera as a bridge. To him, I was just another nosy neighbour gawking at their misfortune. I didn’t want to be that anymore. We bundled back into the car and drove away.

The forest fires are starting up again. We found out on the TV during supper at the local saloon. Some houses had already been consumed. While we watched with curiosity to see if we need to change our route, locals watched with leery eyes, wondering if the wind is going to push the flames their way. Looking around, I had to wonder where they would go. There’s a lot of dry trees around — in every direction. We settled the bill, and started up the car. The fragrant wood-smoke was visible in the sunset as we left.

I have great shots of the wedding. Stunning stuff, that’s at the level of my heroes, again. But somehow on the drive home, that wasn’t enough. I need to do more with this feeling, this thing. When next I have a few days to invest in it, I’m going to gas up my old Coronet and truly explore Highway 3. It deserves fuller attention, and enough time to turn the miles into friends.

We recently shot a wedding up in Fernie. It was a great trip, and a wonderful day. Here are some of the ones that got away.

• The good-natured elderly woman who gave us directions. She told us that we were going the right way, and should just continue “down this road,” which promptly dead-ended. She’s probably still laughing about the city-slickers headed back to Vancouver. Whatever, I’ve personally never seen such a crazy, intense shade of lipstick! So laughs on both sides then. :-)
• I got a few pictures of the absolutely priceless small-town limo. But I missed the driver opening the backseat vanity mirror with his pocketknife! (I even had my camera in my hands!)
• Old ’20s – ’50s automotive relics that are scattered literally all over the place! I’m going to go back when I don’t have a timeline and a peacefully sleeping daughter in the backseat, to do something with those! (Of course I need to something to prevent myself from receiving a load of buckshot in my rear…)

In a recent e-mail discussion on feeling rejection, someone quoted this sign they saw on the cart of a disfigured Colombian vendor:

“I am so accustomed to being put down that any form of kindness absolutely fascinates me.”

It’s the richest comment in this discussion so far. In fact, it would make a great conclusion.

The Guardian has been running  a series of photographers offering their favourite pictures, and give a little of each one’s backstory. It’s seriously great!

Check it out by clicking here.

Via Livebooks, via Gallery Hopper.