23 pics from ’23

Since 2010, I have compiled an annual collection of photographs that matches the year in number. I selected 23 photographs for 2023 based on their narrative message, some visual quality that appealed to me, or for their recording of people, places, things and events that are important to me.

In the Darkroom

I ventured back into the darkroom during the winter of 2023, to relearn the techniques of developing and printing monochrome photos. The excellent course at SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) was run by George Webber and gave me the opportunity to experiment with making rayographs like Cheese Grater and Scissors.

The first darkroom print I’ve produced in over four decades.

Ilford Multigrade Delux paper was exposed for ten seconds, then developed, fixed, washed, and dried. Like all rayographs, it is a unique product. This one is particularly special: the first darkroom print I have produced in over four decades.

Elbow River

Photographing local places clearly saves on travel time, energy and carbon costs and allows you to keep going back to find new things or changes through the seasons. The Elbow, the nearest river to where I live in Calgary, continues to attract my attention, including Beaver Flats featured in the opening photograph.

Sometimes, with all the effort involved, you make photographs.

In 2023 I realized my ambition to hike from its source in Elbow Lake. Jennifer and I ventured to Tombstone Lakes then a long, exhausting walk carrying all of our camping and photographic gear down through forest roads to Little Elbow where, without cell phone service we waited hours for our scheduled pick up to get back home. A reminder that sometimes, with all of the effort involved you are allowed to say that you make photographs as well as take them.

I returned to my roots in Yorkshire to make a documentary film about the River Worth, the local river of my childhood. A two-day trek got me from its source up on the Pennine moors on the borders between Yorkshire and Lancashire to its confluence with the River Aire in Keighley.

Oakworth! Oakworth Station!

Travelling back up the valley on the train was much quicker! Shown here is Oakworth, a station on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, captured in perpetuity in the 1970 film The Railway Children. Whenever I am there I recall my Uncle John, a station porter (at Haworth) and the calm, comic lines of Mr. Perks, the station porter (at Oakworth) lovingly played by Bernard Cribbins, who passed away in 2022 after a long career as an English actor: “Oakworth! Oakworth Station”

Return to Rum

I returned to the Isle of Rùm in 2023, over thirty years after my last visit, to explore the places I studied in the 1980s for my PhD.

The relict woodlands of Glen Shellesder, the tree plots in Kilmory Glen, Primrose Burn and the North Side Exclosure are featured in my short documentary film which you can see on my YouTube Channel.

More pics from 2023

You can view my other pics from 2023 on my photo website.

Thank you for reading and your support and interest in my books, photography and films in 2023. Wishing you a good and better year in 2024. Enjoy life’s journeys and keep well.