Just a lazy Saturday. No incentive to blog much, so I’ve gathered togehter some photos I took at the car show yesterday.
Click here for the others.

Spent much of the day acting as amateur tour guide and ice-breaker for an out of province reporter doing a feature article on Saskatchewan.

His identity shall remain confidential, so long as the payments continue….
Took a few photos of my own while we were out on the backroads.

This old storefront is a photographer’s dream. I can’t get enough of it, and will probably do something in watercolor. Today, I risked my neck to the potential of falling broken glass shards and peeked inside.

And just across the street, this;

Colour gravity. Draws me in every time.
Added to today’s traffic jam.

Just some pics along hway 3 from Billings to Great Falls. Full size versions at this directory

One of my commentors left a link to his site.

I think you should go see it.

I left last Tuesday morning – more than 24 hours later I arrived in Rio for the FCI World Dog Show. The 2 shows covered 4 days, and with three days taken up in travel, it was a whirlwind experience.
The Exposition Center is absolutely huge, with the show occupying three gigantic buildings. I regret not taking a photo of our benching area – approximately 4,000 sq feet for several handlers, owners and around 40 dogs. My host has the top winning Mini Schnauzers in Brazil. (I sold him a dog a few years ago and was there as his guest.) There were two full time kennel men who did the heavy lifting, much of the grooming and all the basic care, errands and cleaning. The dogs loved them – a sign of how well they did their jobs. Labour costs are extremely low in Brazil – I was told they were paid around $50 US a month. In Brazil’s heavily class-divided society, they are unlikely to ever achieve their goal of becoming full fledged handlers – they’re black. Each benching area had tents in which they slept at night, so that the dogs were supervised 24 hours a day.
In addition there was a third employee – an armed guard who doubled as a driver. (The drug wars were not that far from the site, and there were armed guards at the gates as well). As it turned out, having high placed “connections” at the show afforded me the luxury of VIP status for the group and best in show judging. We had the comfort of lounge chairs and waiters, free beer, cola and coffee and finger food – and fans – while the rest of the spectators crammed several deep like sweating sardines, and dared not leave for losing their view.
The event was heavy with ceremony – the national dog of Brazil, the “Filas”, were serenaded by a full choir, backed up by an orchestra. There were dancing girls in spectacular costumes. At the conclusion of each group a swarm of press photographers surrounded the winners’ stand. Large overhead screens were up at each end of the main ring those who couldn’t see the judging itself. (Unfortunately, the flash function on my digital camera decided to unfunction, so I didn’t get as many shots of the dog show that I know the curious back at home would have liked to see. )
(Click on the thumbnails for full sized photos)

But, apart from the spectacle and hospitality, the overall experience was deeply disappointing. The quality of most of the breeds that made it to group was poor to mediocre (terriers were an exception), and judging was abysmal. Organization was poor and the venue itself was dreadful. Unseasonably hot, there was no air conditioning – cooling consisted of dozens of ceiling fans that blew intermittent mists of water down on the dogs and people below (in the benching building only – the other 2 exhibition buildings had nothing at all). Temperature inside the show buildings must have been close to 100F – combined with high humidity and a crush of people, it was truly dangerous for the dogs. One top winning Golden Retriever died the first night. I immediately trained my own to lie on an ice pack until it was time to go to the ring.
“Carlos” recieved an “excellent” rating, which is the highest, though no placement. I was prewarned that the judges for our breed were not well thought of. Under the Spanish judge, for example, it came as no surprise when a Portuguese dog recieved top honours. Overall, there was great disappointment about the heavily political nature of the judging all weekend – that coming from judges on the panel as well as exhibitors. At World Shows in the past, host country dogs have had a distinct advantage – in Italy, an Italian dog won Best In Show, the same in Germany, and so forth. Brazil turned out to be no different.
However, when the Brazilian owned Pug was announced as Best In Show, applause was drowned out by booing from the crowd, due to an alleged “set up” that had led to the win. Negative crowd reactions such as this are virtually unheard of in the sport – a contraversial moment that will be talked about for years. But perhaps a necessary one, given the charades of previous World Shows.
Balancing the disappointment of the World Show (I doubt I’ll ever attend another) was the generosity of my hosts. The Brazilians are wonderful people, generous and helpful – I speak no Portuguese and my host no English, so we spoke only through his friends who spent all weekend as translators. It was virtually impossible to pay for anything, and after selling a little artwork, I left the shows with more money than I came with, along with a suitcase full of gifts.

In the few hours before I left on Monday a friend of my host (a professional tour guide) took me on the Reader’s Digest tour of Rio – we went part way up to Sugarloaf, drove past the main beaches and had lunch with him and his housekeeper in his very colourful little “hole in the wall” apartment in Copacabana. I did regret not bringing my Minolta and zoom lens. The shantytowns that cover the hills have to be seen to be believed.

It’s difficult enough to take photos from a moving vehicle – nearly impossible in Brazil, where drivers seem hell bent on mutual destruction. But I have a few more. Visit this directory to see them – the file names are fairly self explanatory.
Directory of photos

Now, I must get some sleep.

Click on the thumbnail for the larger version.

I’ve been away most of the day – dog show in North Battleford. I took a winding country highway, a favourite route this time of year. There is no good way to describe prairie light and colour, but some of these come close.

The route from Asquith to Maymont winds through farm country that has never seen prosperous times. Rocky, alkali, and frequent drought. But it’s a photographer’s dream – a lot of ambandoned farmsteads and wildlife. I tried four times to capture a pronghorn I encountered, but he was a little too far away to register on the digital camera. Saw the first meadowlark, lots of ducks and Canada geese.

The church parking lot at Arelee was full of cars. You’d never know that this old church was still in operation, driving by any other day of the week. It sits at the edge of town in a wooded, overgrown lot. The town, obviously, isn’t, though a handful of people still live there. Quite typical of the hundreds of small villages that once dotted the province.

The ice is still coming off the rivers – this is from the Maymont bridge.

Hope you enjoyed this little slice of back road Saskatchewan. Not all farming areas are this desolate, but it’s not atypical, either.
I’ve put the full sized images in the extended entry to save bandwidth. They are worth checking out. The thumbnails don’t really display the full colors – and these are true, not photoshop enhanced.

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