Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XXII (The Badlands, Alberta)

As we drove from East Coulee further into the Badlands, the landscape only got wilder; the multicoloured layers in the slopes became even more pronounced. Like Writing-on-Stone, the biggest impediment to working in the Badlands was tourists. Though we selected a spot to work off the beaten track, we'd only been photographing for perhaps an hour when a truck drove up with a family bent on exploring. Victoria had just begun to hit her stride when they arrived, and unsure how long they were going to stay, Victoria and I decided to wait them out. An hour later, they drove off, and rather than risk a similar incident, Annie parked her truck across the only access road to where we were working, thereby guaranteeing our privacy for the remaining hour or so.

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The sand here was far more stable than at East Coulee, though whether this was because the area had less rain, or simply because it had baked in the hot sun for longer, I am not sure. Regardless, in the final space we worked in, the sand was like rock, and far easier to move about on. The only down side of this was that it was very hard on Victoria; adjusting poses was not dissimilar to slide about on pieces of very harsh sandpaper!

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Like the formations at Writing-on-Stone, everywhere I looked in the Badlands, I saw potential images; the fluid lines and repeating patterns suggested so much, and the last three hours of working in Alberta were spent selecting which possibility to explore. With a definite time limit in mind (we had to be back in Calgary in time to make our flights back to Halifax), I tried to work as efficiently and swiftly as possible, not taking the time to work with "might-be's", and concentrating on what was clearest to me. As has happened before when provoked to work fast, the work in the Badlands seems very true to my intent, with little divergence from my goal. With time and patience, I might very well have produce much stronger work, but I suspect the images I left behind were only subtler variations of those I came back with.

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Two new problem reared their heads in the Badlands: heat and bugs. Most of the time I was in Alberta, it was cool and overcast; in the Badlands however, the temperature soared, passing well into the 30's. We'd seen cacti at Writing on Stone and the Red Rock Coulee, but this day was the first time we'd experienced the temperatures that came with the flora. And then there were the bugs. Elsewhere in Alberta, we hadn't encountered a single mosquito, but as soon as the sun was behind the hills, Victoria and I were swarmed by them. Foolishly, after seven days of bug-free environments, I'd left the bug-spray behind, and in the end, it was the bites, not our departure schedule which ended our last session in Alberta.

Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XXI (East Coulee, Alberta)

It was on my last day in Alberta that Annie, Victoria and I finally made our way more than half way across the width of the province, to the Badlands, near Drumheller. Like the mountains, the Badlands had been what I had envisioned working with in Alberta, multi-coloured strata of mud and sandstone being worn away by wind and rain; perfect for moulding the figure to.

35mm infrared film

Like our other drives around the province, much of the landscape we saw traveling to the Badlands was flat, endless prairie. At times we would sweep down into a green, tree-filled coulee, but on the whole, for hours on end, the driving was along straight, flat roads between seemingly endless fields. Then we turned off the main highway, and wound our way down into east coulee.

To try to describe the experience (in photos or words) is futile. What the plains are, in all their flatness and expanse, the Badlands are not. Driving down from the plains towards the Red Deer River, the sides of the gully, normally green and delicate, became multi-ridged and colourful. The sides of the valley gradually became a continuous erosion-scape, with the chaotic trails of hundreds of rivulets shaping the landscape.

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Just before the East Coulee opened up and spread to either side of the river, we stopped so Victoria and I could make some images. What I had thought was sandstone, turned out to be mud; when dry and hard, it is as solid as sandstone, but we arrived the days after a rain, and it was quite soft, and it was only with care that Victoria and I managed to get up to the areas where the flow lines in the rocks were most pronounced.

35mm infrared film

Because of the tight time-frame, I only worked with 35mm infra-red at East Coulee; the climb up was treacherous, and I doubt we could have hiked the view camera and tripod up without taking considerably longer. The afternoon was the hottest since I'd arrived in Alberta, and combined with the near-desert conditions, it made for a scorcher of a day. As we were working, I mentioned to Victoria how great it would be if the film recorded the sand darker than it was - which was just the case. The direct sun, combined with the dark sand and contrasty rivulets made for a series of very dramatic images. Because of the slope of the coulee side, and the slippery nature of the ground we were on, only a limited number of poses and camera positions were achievable. After finishing a roll of film, we scrambled down to the truck and drove on, hoping to find even more drama further up the river.

Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XX (Red Rock Canyon, Alberta)

After working up in the high mountains, and before leaving the park, Annie drove us to Red Rock Canyon, where a river has cut through soft red sandstone, and left behind a wonderful canyon of water-carved rock. Like the Red Rock Coulee, I had seen photos of the space at Annie's, but nothing in the images had prepared me for the rich colours and shapes of the canyon. Due to the Canyon's high sides, the path that the tourists take is high above the stream; Victoria and I clambered down into the canyon and crisscrossed the stream to move into the spaces we wished to work.

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The strongest image, above, has an almost static or pasted-up quality to it, because of the pose, yet the dynamic nature of the composition, with all the lines leading directly to Victoria, combined with the static pose, and the vibrant, fluid landscape, add up to a very vivid image, almost in spite of its simplicity.

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Because the Canyon was so deep, and the hour so late in the day, the exposures were a full second in length. This strengthened the images, in that the motion blur of the water was not an option, but a requirement, but it also influenced the poses that were possible,

Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XIX (Waterton National Park, Alberta)

From Annie's very first invitation to visit Alberta and work with the Nude in the western landscape, the Rocky Mountains had been in my mind's eye as the ideal setting. Working out the logistics of our visit to Waterton, however, proved to be a challenge, and it was not until the day before our return to Halifax that Victoria, Annie and I finally ventured into the mountains.

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Having never worked with anything remotely similar, I had no point of reference on where to begin with the mountain Nudes. The first image, made a couple of hundred feet from the road, by a mountain stream, show little of the setting, and draws more on the familiar territory of water nudes than anything else. It really wasn't until the second stop, further into the mountains, that we really began to get images that met my expectations.

The apparent contradiction of mountain photography is that mountains are so big they need a wide angle lens to get them all in. The problem this creates is that wide angle lenses also make far away things loom smaller, and farther away. The dramatic mountains which surrounded us were reduced to small hills in the background. While both Victoria and I tried hard to work with the spaces, inevitably, the mountains overwhelmed the Nude, or the Nude overwhelmed the landscape. It seemed to be a difficult problem to overcome, especially with only one session to get it right.

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As it turned out, the wide angle approach worked better than I had anticipated. My favourite image, an infra-red with a wonderfully contorted figure and a dramatic sky, uses the spatial distortion inherent in ultra-wide angle lenses to great advantage. The sense of foreground and background is muted to the point of malleability, making the image a delight for the eye to wander.

The most time consuming image of the day was also the last. As we returned from deeper in the park, we drove past an outlook which was on a rock outcrop, hundreds of feet over the river below. The scene was stunning. It was also a major tourist stop, with cars pulling in and out by the minute, with very little, if any, time between. Victoria, Annie and I all conferred and decided that the vista was too great to pass up, and began planning the shot.

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We could see traffic in both directions about 30 seconds before they would swing into view of the look-off. I set up the camera, framed the image (again using a 75mm wide angle lens on the 4"x5" camera) and Victoria posed the image, fully clothed. Then we waited. First people stopped for the view. They then asked about the camera. Then they had to take their photos, then they asked more questions, took more photos, ate food, drank drinks, walked the dog, played backgammon...well, you get the picture. After almost 35 minutes of patience, however, there came a gap - a full minute or more, without cars. We sprang into action, and made a swift series of images. These were the final images of Waterton, and the most elaborately planned!

Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XVIII (Belly River Coulee, Alberta)

After the exhausting previous day, Victoria and I decided to stay closer to Annie's ranch on this day, walking down to the coulee and working with the trees and riverbank. It was a little cool, but there was the promise of sunshine, and warmer weather in the air, so we proceeded with optimistic hearts.

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Often, when working with a space that hold great potential, it can take some time before a model unwinds and become in tune with the surrounding, a process which can be crucial in finding the right poses for a particular place. This particular morning the first images were stiff; both Victoria and I trying too hard, and even at the time (I didn't see the negatives until over a week later) I could feel that the images were forced. Then, between images, Victoria paused to put more sun-screen on. As she bent over, applying the herbal salve to her legs, I looked over and instantly asked her to pause. Working quickly with my 35mm camera and infra-red film, I made a number of images, all strongly referring to Degas' dancers and nudes from a century before. The grace of the line, from Victoria's legs to her shoulders, is what pulls this image together, with a show focus separating her figure from the surroundings.

35mm infrared film

From then on, the session went swiftly, we moved through four different locations with a fluidity that pointed out how stiff and posed the initial images were. With the infra-red, we explored a low tree/high bush on the coulee floor, setting Victoria within the spreading trunks and against the brilliant glow of sunlit grass.

The best series of images made on this day were created with Victoria upon a fallen cottonwood tree. A swift-growing deciduous tree, the cottonwoods are especially vulnerable to the high winds on the prairies, and with every wind storm, more split and crack, some lose branches, while others fall to the ground all together. This particular tree had fallen totally over, its three diverging branches presenting a perfect platform to work on. Using my wide angle 75mm lens on the 4"x5" camera, I made four images, all working with the strong lines generated by the tree and the body upon it.

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While the images in the coulee do not ring with a sense of the unique landscape of Alberta, they are none the less a strong component of the project as a whole. Perhaps the most restful of our days since Victoria's arrival, the hours we spent in the coulee neatly wrapped up the potential I had seen previously, but have been unable to address.

Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XVII (Red Rock Coulee, Alberta)

After finishing up at Writing-on-Stone, Annie, Victoria and I set out for Red Rock Coulee, which lay over an hour to the northeast. I'd seen some snapshots of the place at Annie's, and was very curious about the bizarre spaces shown in the photo album. When we left Writing-on-Stone, it was mid-evening, but again, given the driving distances inherent in working in Alberta, we didn't pull up into the deserted parking lot at the coulee until about 20 minutes after sundown.

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I had seen some photos of Red Rock Coulee at Annie's house, but nothing had prepared me for the wasteland that presented itself when we walked up to the top of the ridge. The arid desolation of the space, combined with the bizarre geological formations which were strewn around added up to a unique landscapes. The soft windswept bedrock hill, made of Bearspaw shale, has large (1.5m to 4m) round red sandstone boulders in various stages of emergence. As the sun had already set by the time we arrived, Victoria and I hurried through the rolling field, quickly noting which formations caught our eyes.

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The fact that the sun had already set before our arrival presented some distinct challenges, forcing both Victoria and me to work fast to catch the last light. With little time to experiment with poses, we worked on the fly, making an image or two at each boulder, and then moving on to the next.

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When we started the exposures were a quarter of a second at f/16, which is more than manageable, but by the time I made the last image of Victoria under the darkening sky, the exposure had lengthened to a second at f/11 - in the half-hour we worked, the light had decreased by a factor of eight!  Because of the overcast sky, there was no problem with the over-all contrast over the time we worked, as the fading line of the sunset on the horizon was the only direct light source, but by the time we were packed up and back in the car, it was pretty much dark.\

Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XVI (Writing-on-Stone, Alberta)

When I began planning to go to Alberta, most of my hopes were set on the Rockies, anticipating working with the Nude against their rugged heights. After my first taste of the hoodoos near Cardston, however, I had far more interest in continuing to explore these strange rock forms, drawn to their soft-carved shapes and dramatic stratification.

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It seemed like most of Alberta was miles away from Annie's, and Writing-on-Stone was no exception, being over two hours away by car. The drive was more than worth it, though, for as we came down off the plain into the coulee, the rocks literally made me gasp. The Cardston hoodoos looked like child's models compared to the hundreds of varied shapes which unfolded before us as we traveled along the top of the rock-forms. The space was even more amazing when we moved off the road.

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Being a national park, Writing-on-Stone was a more populated than most of the places Victoria and I have worked in the past but, with Annie watching from above, we started working immediately, totally entranced by the multiplicity of potentialities. Our enthusiasm was a little premature, however, as time and time again we were interrupted by Annie's casual comment of "Group approaching" or "Family coming up." It seemed like every image or two, Victoria would have to huddle back into cover and we'd wait for people to pass. It was only at the end of the session that we discovered it was not the large format camera and possibly nude model that was attracting all the attention, but a small grey rabbit, huddled under a rock just above where we were working.

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Eventually, we gave up trying to work in the spaces that called to me directly, and changed our approach. Annie found an area that was well shielded from view, and stationed herself as lookout between us and the main path. This permitted us more freedom to work, and lead to the strongest poses of the day. Where before I time and again found the perfect space, and was unable to work with it because of the random appearance of tourists, here Victoria had freedom to find the poses which worked, and though the rockscapes were less dramatic, the end results were more than pleasing.

Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XV (Waterton, Alberta)

From the very beginning, one of my hopes with the Alberta trip was to work with the Nude in mountains. I'd gone through the Rocky Mountains over a decade before by train, and ever since, their majesty has haunted me. That said, it was three days before Victoria and I had a chance to work with the mountains, and even then, they were only a background.

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Earlier, in my exploratory drive through Waterton, I'd walked out on a beach below Vimy Ridge, hoping to find a secluded spot where I'd be able to work with a model. The beach was littered with driftwood, much of which was too small to work with. At the very far end, however, just before it turned into marsh, there was a perfect log. Curving up out of the beach rock, the trunk was broad enough to lie upon, and was at exactly the right angle for the model's body to lead up into the mountain.

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With this space in mind, Victoria and I set off to work. The day was cool, so we worked as quickly as possible, setting up the pose and camera position while Victoria was clothed, and making the image as quickly as possible, to minimize her exposure to the cool air. Though I only had one specific section of driftwood in mind as we walked down the beach, Victoria spotted a second space, which we worked with as well. The final image on the beach was made right next to the parking lot; a wonderfully shaped trunk and root section just called out for a body to intertwine with it. Annie kept an eye on the road and parking lot while we made the image, and after perhaps 30 seconds of feverish activity, we made the final two Nudes on the beach.

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On the whole, I am pleased with the images, though they suffer from an issue that would crop up later, when Victoria and I would finally get to work in the mountains proper. While the grandeur of the mountains is undeniable, the battle between the figure and the landscape for the viewer's attention is particularly evident with these images. Producing images where the two are brought together in a good balance will be the most challenging aspect of working with mountain nudes.

Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XIV (Sofa Mountain, Alberta)

We woke this morning to a surprise: the low foothills and the mountains behind were covered in a dusting of snow! Snow in July. Since the day of my arrival, there had been snow visible in the mountain peaks, but now the entire range was covered in snow.

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My initial disappointment in losing a day's work to cold weather was mitigated by Victoria's offer to do a couple of snow nudes, provided we had the truck near by, and worked quickly. As both conditions were more than easily accommodated, we began the lengthy discussion of where to go. This, along with group inertia, delayed our departure until shortly after noon.

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By group consensus, we headed off to Sofa Mountain, the site of a forest fire in the previous fall. The burn site was covered with blackened aspen, but by the time we arrived, the snow had melted, and the only evidence of its presence was the damp earth and chill in the air. Snow was still visible a mile or so away, but given the air temperature, and the late hour, we stayed close to the road and made half-a-dozen exposures. The disappointment of the melted snow was only surpassed by the realization, after processing the film, that my 120 roll back was scratching film, quite severely in some cases. While the images are printable with some digital retouching, conventional enlargements are out of the question.

Victoria, the Alberta Portfolio XIII (Mountain View, Alberta)

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The final photo session for this busy day took place about an hour after sunset, with the fading glow of the day retreating behind the mountains. For several years, I have wanted to work with sunsets and flash combined, but have never been in a setting at the right time, with the right equipment.

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Alberta, however, presented a chance like no other, as in addition to having a practically captive model and a wonderful sunset vista, one of the other photographers attending the retreat had brought along a portable flash system. After a detailed technical discussion of my plans, and a rundown of the flash kit, he generously permitted me to use it for my planned sunset imagery.

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Setting the camera upon the edge of the coulee, Victoria selected and held dance poses for the entire exposure (8-16 seconds) which began with a single flash burst. The goal was to have a well lit profile of her body, with a soft blur around her, against the fading sky. The effect was less than successful (the 8 second exposure overexposed the sky, making it look more light day than the last moments of a sunset, but it is a start. If I get a chance to do similar imagery again, I will bring along a Polaroid back for the camera, to test the exposure/flash combination prior to making the final exposures.