Well, I'm back, not that any of you people probably missed me. ;-)
The cameras have seen fairly extensive use since leaving the List for awhile --
I got some good stuff out of The Worlds, and enjoyed the whole experience, even
if some British journalists kept slagging my fair city in UK newspapers by
calling it "Deadmonton," a sentiment echoed by (the otherwise illustrious and
well-informed) Phil Greenspun of "photo.net" fame in his "Travels with
Samantha" travelogue [see Chapter 7 in particular -- he takes to calling
Edmonton "Houston without the charm," which is a slag on both our fair cities
and undeserved by either]. Must be something to do with bad advice -- everyone
I know who's visited the city and hated it did one of two things that I would
*never* recommend: (a) visited West Edmonton Mall (or as us locals describe it,
"Worst Edmonton Hell"), and/or (b) assumed that Edmonton's downtown core was
where the action (and beauty) was.
Never, ever, EVER do either of the above two things when visiting Edmonton,
unless you're a shopaholic or actually like standing on street corners asking
passersby, "Is *this* the MAIN street?". Trust me, you'll enjoy the experience
a lot more.
On to photographic experiences.
Went to Drumheller just last week -- a small badlands town in south-eastern
Alberta with one of the most impressive dinosaur museums in the world, the
Royal Tyrell Museum (smack dab in the middle of Midland Provincial Park, which
is simply *lousy* with dinosaur fossils). Visited one of the digs, on a strata
of slate where they've discovered a "bone bed," apparently the site of a mass
juvenile dinosaur die-off around 100 million years ago. Back-breaking work,
with dozens of volunteers (who actually pay for the experience!) slowly
chipping away at the bed under the watchful guidance of three or four experts
from the Tyrell. So far, they've counted something like sixty juveniles in the
bed, which leads some of the folks at the Tyrell to assume that it was a herd
of youngsters who tried to cross a river that was a little too much for them,
and died in the attempt. Hopefully got some great pics of the work.
I say "hopefully," because I have a sad announcement.
Last week, my beloved Olympus Centurion S experienced a life-threatening
accident, as it tumbled out of a poorly-designed camera bag and did a header
onto hard pavement. That silver plastic housing only looks tough -- it smashed
in like a sheet of tofu, even though it only fell less than a metre. Ouch.
Ow. Owie. Man, that sucked. It still "worked" afterwards, which is when I
went on the dig, but who knows what it did to the internals. Went to the local
repair shop the very next day after getting home, where they clucked over it
for awhile and then announced it had to be sent to Olympus USA. No guarantees.
After all, it's been out of production for almost a YEAR. Goodness knows,
there might not be any replacement parts anywhere in the Near Spiral Arm
(though there's possibly a couple of camera shops in the Lesser Magellanic
Cloud that might have a beater I could use for parts). Whatever happened to
the rule of thumb that manufacturers kept spare parts around for a decade after
the discontinuance of a certain product?
Oh well. Tomorrow, I head back to the badlands for some real photography, with
all three OMs in tow, loaded with Delta 100, Velvia and Astia, plus lightmeter,
tripod and assorted goodies. Midland, here I come! Actually, photography is
perfect for that destination -- it's illegal to pluck fossils from any park in
Alberta (six months in prison and/or a $50,000.00 fine if you're caught). And
on Thursday & Friday, I'm off to the southwest for some shots in and around
Kananaskis Country or thereabouts, assuming something more compelling doesn't
catch my eye further north.
Ciao, d00ds and d00dettes.
Garth
P.S.: Gallery updates coming sometime in the next ten days.
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