Grazing Lease

Grazing Lease, originally uploaded by Uncommon Depth.

The other day Kelly over at Red & The Peanut asked what it felt like to be there for the image High Ground. It is weird timing that she asked that.

I had just finished writing and deleting a post that day about how I feel at certain times. Specifically my post was about how on Saturday I had driven to my sisters farm and at how incredibly beautiful the scenery between my place and hers was; and I was reflecting on my opportunity to photograph the branding, and that I'd be photographing the rodeo the next day.

I had written about my love of western living and how much I thought it was a privilege to have some aspects of my life the same as my ancestors who came to Canada during it's infancy. I had written of how I am proud of my western heritage; and that I hope someday my daughter will also feel a similar pride in her heritage. I had written about how, despite our horrible weather, we live in such an incredible area of the world that finding inspiration and photographs to make is never difficult.

There are hundreds of photos that could be made in the hour long drive from my house to my sisters. There are thousands more in the 3 1/2 to 4 hour drive from my house to my dads farm on the prairies.

I've written countless posts of a similar nature but always end up deleting them because I think they are too boring, too personal, or just too sappy. When I see scenes like High Ground, or Grazing Lease (as shown here) the feelings I have are almost overwhelming - hard to describe.

It is at once an incredible sense of how lucky I am to be able to witness such beauty. There is a sense of nostalgia thinking about the generations past that have also witnessed this exact same beauty over the centuries. There is a sense of sadness at the uncertainty of whether or not future generations will have the freedom to see the same scene - or if the scene will exist at all. There is a sense of strength at the power of nature. A sense of urgency in recording this living history before its gone for good.

There is also this sense that if I could just make the rest of the world see and understand what I see and feel that maybe, just maybe, the world could focus its energies on what is right. And we, as people, could learn to be more tolerant and forgiving, and be at peace with each other. There are a lot of aspects of the world that are broken. When I take a photograph, there is a tiny wish inside that it could act like a band-aid to help fix what is broken.

Those cowboy codes I posted yesterday play into that. Although at first these mantras seem very idealistic and old fashioned, don't you think they still apply today? They aren't taught and they certainly aren't practiced, but how much more pleasant a world would it be if they were?

As an artist, that is how I feel. (And once again I'm tempted to delete this thinking it is TMI - but I won't!)