Powered By Blogger

Monday, March 8, 2010

Garish: The Cutting Room Floor

Provincial Highway 22, near Gerald, Saskatchewan 
June 2009

Form meets function meets form. Nature and agricultural architecture meet on this slope in rural Saskatchewan.  I enjoy photographing in Canada.  When walking onto property owned by total strangers up North, I have yet to meet paranoid landowners, asking the ubiquitous annoying question, "What are you doing?"

Which is very nice, because while I usually have some sarcastic comeback while in the United States ("You see this thing here I'm holding?  It's called a camera.  See, what you do is you point it at the subject you want to photograph.  A hole in the camera opens, and an image of the subject is captured on film."  Part of my shtick is pronouncing the key words very slowly, as though I were speaking to (in the words of Rahm Emanuel) "f***ing retards."  How I've lucked out by not being brutalized by local and state cops (particularly in Texas) is a testament to either the Due Process clause of the U.S. Constitution, or just plain dumb luck (I suspect the latter).

However, in foreign countries, I am always on my best behavior.  I've only had one incident remotely approaching a run-in with police in Canada (Mexico is another story), and good manners have always pulled me out of a potentially awkward situation.  

On the breezy June day I took this photograph, a gracious Russian immigrant farmer greeted me graciously, and she and her husband gave me a tour of the family farm -- from the back seat of their four wheeler!