18 pics from ’18

Peter Morris jumps over Waterton Lake © J. Ashley Nixon

 

My year of image making in 2018 was dominated by people, places, and performance. With just one international trip, to England and Scotland, the majority of my 18 photos selected from the year come from Canada. Here are some of the highlights, taken from Writing about Images in my blogs in 2018.

People

On New Year’s Day, I was photographing the final of the Macs Midget AAA hockey tournament between the Regina Pat Canadians and Red Deer Optimist Chiefs at the Scotiabank Saddledome. One series of images featured two young men who tragically lost their lives just a few weeks later. Ryan McBeath died in a car crash on March 13; Adam Herold was one of the 16 killed in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash on April 6.

In August, my university friends, Peter and Dave came over from England for a visit with their wives, Suzanne and Nancy. It was a smashing reunion, involving a road trip over the Rockies to Osoyoos, a journey down to Waterton, where Peter Morris jumped over the lake (see featured image, above), a birthday party to remember out on our back deck, and the retake of a photograph I took decades ago when we were students living in the same house in Coventry.

Places

In February, Jennifer and I made a flying visit to see my Mum for her 90^th birthday and our family in England and Scotland. A pub near Leeds provided the setting for some fun testing out my newly acquired 50 mm lens in the dark as we got fish and chips to eat with our pints.

That same month we headed north to Fort McMurray for Jennifer to play hockey in the Alberta Winter Games, which included a great opening ceremony in the freezing cold, and a range of sports to photograph, the most impressive of which was wrestling.

After another hockey road trip north to Grande Prairie in March, the Calgary Fire White Bantam Elite team came back home with the winner’s banner for the Alberta Provincial Championship.

At the beginning of June, I had an appetite for landscape photography and came back home with some delightful shots from the Plain of Six Glaciers, high up above Lake Louise in Banff National Park.

Performance

In May, I was photographing Eva Ayllón, the iconic singer from Peru during her Calgary stop on her North American tour. Another hectic and fun weekend shooting many bands at the Sled Island Festival in June included a nice gig beside the grill at Tubby Dog and an entertaining industrial post-punk performance at Palomino’s by DRI HIEV.

In July, I participated in the Calgary Stampede Parade, embedded with Raíces del Peru, who once again won the Best Cultural Entry. As well as stills photography, I shot a short film that was entered in the Røde Reel international short film competition, which you can see in my Video selection using this link.

In August, a visit to the Canmore Folk Festival revealed some great new acts to me, non better that Steve Poltz who’s playing was finely matched by his banter and genuine interaction with his audience. There was also Expo Latino, which featured some nice dancing, including Brazilian Capoeira, Luis Enrique, the Prince of Salsa, and Paula Zuleta, playing a great, diverse repertoire of Latin rhythms.

The gig of the year for me came in November, when I was able to capture Steven Wilson performing at the Palace Theatre, Calgary as part of his world tour of his To the Bone album plus quite a few songs from his very own back catalogue from Porcupine Tree.

It was another year filled with rugby including the Canada versus Scotland international in Edmonton, Prairie Wolf Pack at the Canadian Rugby Championship and a special year for the Calgary Canucks celebrating 50 years of playing the sport. William Nixon got his inaugural try for the Canucks 1^st XV and I was there in Cochrane to capture it. Stay tuned for a book to be published about the history of the Canucks, coming out in 2019!

Gallery of 18 pics from ’18

Here is the link to my photo gallery with my 18 selections from 2018.

Thank you for reading my blog articles from 2018.