The last two images from this new series titled "Land of Plenty" for now, although the title will eventually change. The above images represent water and plastic. They definitely feel different than the other images. The connection to the earth is not as strong and they look more like garbage or polluters than products of the landscape. Perhaps they will bring me in a new direction. These were some of the last images that I made and other than the looser tie to the concept I find them to be aesthetically very successful. The plastic bags mimicking the clouds in the sky is fantastical and wonderful to me. In the water image I included some sticks recently gnawed by beavers, with the hopes of evoking the hydroelectric damming of water that is so prevalent here in Quebec. The sticks are not so noticeable here in these small web-size images, and are more present in the prints. One thing to mention on that note is that the final print size for this series is 28x28 inches.

Coal in the woods. Another image from this recent series where I added materials back into the natural landscape from which they may have come.

Two more (wheat and milk) from my recent series which I had tentatively called "Land of Plenty". I realize now that this name doesn't really work. For one thing I didn't really exhibit plenty in these images. I had trouble working with large quantities of materials. Since this was all a new way of working for me it seemed easier to work with a small quantity of each material. I am hoping that with more work, time and practice I will be more loose and allow myself the chaos of real plenty.

More from this recent series of adding materials/products of the environment into the natural landscape. Above are beef and lumber.

One of my primary motivations for doing this series was my internal conflict over uses of the land. Here in Canada extraction and other commercial uses of the landscape are a vital part of our economy. Forestry, mining, etc. create lots of jobs and and make up a large part of our exports. And yet as someone who is not connected to these industries I have a really hard time accepting any loss of wildlife habitat. In thinking these things through I fantasized about a perfect situation where wilderness and products could coexist. This imaginary place is what I attempted to recreate in these images: a locale where we could extract AND keep the natural landscape. Of course this is a place where everyone could be happy: commercial enterprises and environmentalists alike. And yet it is never possible to have it both ways, although now I think that attempts are at least made to work sustainably. Hopefully with thoughts of sustaining the environment and its citizens as well as sustaining the industrial extraction of materials.

So recently I've been working with adding materials to the environment and photographing them there. This really started with the potatoes, which were fun but I wasn't really happy with potatoes as a choice of material, they didn't have the meaning that I was looking for. And so I started using materials that could be seen as products of the environment and adding them back into a natural landscape scene. Above are two examples, with paper being the top image and aluminum being the bottom one. This somewhat sculptural way of working has been really interesting and challenging for me and I am going to continue shooting in this way this summer. It will be so nice to be able to spend lots of time outside and not have to worry about freezing my fingers off as I did a few months ago when shooting these images.

I will be away for the next week so I'll resume blogging next Tuesday. Have a good week!