Field · Outdoors

Alberta, and what is reached from it

Most of these frames were taken from an aircraft. The rest are on foot, on skis or on a sled, in the country west of Calgary.

Foothills, Alberta, evening. The Rockies on the horizon and about forty kilometres of cultivated country between them and the camera.

The country, from the air

Foothills and prairie, looking down

Flying is the reason most of this exists: an aircraft is a tripod that goes where a tripod cannot, and a drone is the cheaper version of the same idea.

Hive boxes on six pallets in two rows on rough prairie grass, seen from directly above, with an empty pallet beside them. — **Hives on the prairie.** Six pallets in two rows, set out on grass. From ground level this is a field with boxes in it; from above it is a placement decision.

A red tailwheel aeroplane on a snow-cleared strip, photographed from directly overhead so the wing spans the frame and the tail sits below it. — **Directly overhead, in winter.** A tailwheel aeroplane on a strip ploughed through the snow. Straight down is the only view that shows the whole planform at once.

Calgary and the prairie beyond it, photographed from an airliner window in late autumn with low sun on the grid of roads. — **Calgary, from an airliner, late autumn.** The section grid runs to the horizon in one direction and stops at the foothills in the other, which is the whole geography of the province in one frame.

Winter, which is most of it

Snow, low light, and a machine that has to start

Six months of the year the ground is white and the light is gone by five. It decides what will start, what has to be ploughed before anything can move, and how long anybody is outside. The snowmobile in the first frame is the one the sled note is about.

The handlebars and windscreen of a snowmobile from the rider's seat at blue hour, its headlight lighting the trail ahead through spruce and aspen. — **Blue hour, from the seat.** A headlight, a trail and about thirty metres of usable information at a time. Filmed from behind, under load.

A skier standing at the top of a run in the Canadian Rockies, peaks and cloud behind. — **The Rockies, from the top of a run.** An hour and a half away, which is the reason for living where I do.

The short summer, and the water in it

Backcountry, canopy, a ski lake

The other half of the year is short enough that everything in it is scheduled around it. Three things it is spent on: a tent somewhere with no road to it, the aspen going over, and a boat on flat water west of the city.

Two tents pitched under a yellow tarp in spruce forest, packs and gear stacked beside them. — **Camp, under a tarp.** Spruce, a yellow fly over two tents, and everything carried in. The tarp goes up first because in this country the rain decides the evening.

Aspen canopy from directly beneath, trunks converging into a lattice of leaves against a blue sky. — **Aspen, straight up.** In wind, it shows why aspen sound the way they do.

A boat from directly above on flat green water, its wake spreading behind it and a skier on the end of the line. — **A ski lake west of Calgary, from directly above.** One pass, showing what the wake is doing behind the boat and where the skier has to be to use it.

Further out

Iceland, Kauai, and a gorge

Three places away from Alberta, the same activity somewhere else: get above it, get inside it, or walk down to the bottom of it.

A figure standing in a narrow blue crevasse in a glacier, ice walls rising on both sides. — **Inside a glacier, Iceland.** A crevasse wide enough to stand in, from the entrance. Ice this colour is ice with the air pressed out of it, which is why it is blue and not white.

Green aurora over a dark glacial landscape in Iceland, with snow on the ground and cloud on the horizon. — **Aurora, same trip.** A long exposure: what the eye sees is fainter and grey-green.

Eroded volcanic cliffs on the Na Pali coast of Kauai dropping into the sea, ridges cut by deep green valleys. — **Kauai, the cliff coast.** Basalt cut by five million years of rain into ridges too steep to stand on. There is no road along this side of the island.

The Aguasabon Gorge from above, looking down its length to Lake Superior on the horizon. — **The Aguasabon Gorge, Ontario.** Looking down it to Lake Superior.

Back to Field →