Gazette photographers document St. Albert through time<\/p>\n
Who can stop the march of time? The photographer can. They can catch the tick of the clock with a click of the shutter, capturing history, and creating a window into St. Albert\u2019s past.<\/p>\n
Photography has been a part of the Gazette since its first issue. This week, we\u2019ll sit down with three former Gazette photographers to hear about the history they witnessed.<\/p>\n
Young shutterbugs<\/p>\n
Photos were relatively rare in the earliest issues of the Gazette, with some having none at all. Those photos captured important moments like the St. Albert Air Cadets on parade during the town\u2019s centennial celebrations and MLA A.O. Aalborg laying the cornerstone of the new Sir George Simpson School.<\/p>\n
Alan Popil became the Gazette\u2019s first full-time photographer in 1977. Popil\u00a0started shooting photos when he was five after he got a camera through a promotion where you had to mail in box-tops from candy cigarette<\/a> packages. He joined the Gazette after someone at the paper (possibly then-editor Vicky Knight) helped him get press credentials to shoot a drag race.<\/p>\n Popil worked for the Gazette from 1977\u20131981 and 1986\u20131995, during which he mentored many of its photographers.<\/p>\n David Dodge was one of them. Dodge\u00a0came on as a part-timer while studying forestry at the University of Alberta. He said photography was so fun he switched tracks to become a reporter\/photographer with the Gazette from 1979-1985.<\/p>\n April Bartlett also worked with Popil during her time at the paper (1995\u20132008 and 2010\u20132015). She started out shooting male models for the Edmonton Sun\u2019s Sunshine Boys page. Gazette editor Sue Gawlak convinced her to try news. After a few shoots with Popil, Bartlett had caught the shutterbug.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the adrenaline,\u201d she said \u2014 that thrill of capturing a great picture.<\/p>\n From film to .jpeg<\/p>\n The 1970s to early 1980s were the days of black-and-white film and manual cameras, Dodge and Popil said. You couldn\u2019t point and click and expect a decent picture; you had to get your shutter speed, aperture, ISO, lighting, focus, timing, and composition perfect, and you wouldn\u2019t know if you\u2019d taken a good shot until you developed your film hours later. Since you had just 36 frames per roll, you learned to be really picky with your shots, as you didn\u2019t want to miss any action while reloading.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a lot of fun, actually,\u201d Dodge said, as you had to try and predict when your subject would strike that perfect pose.<\/p>\n Popil and Dodge said zoom lenses were rare in the early 1980s, so photographers would often lug around five or six lenses to cover different ranges.<\/p>\n Gazette photographers spent many hours in the paper\u2019s in-house darkroom prior to the mid-2000s, developing and printing their photos using chemical baths, projectors, hair dryers, and careful timing. Popil said it took at least 10 minutes to go from negative to finished photo for black-and-white, and more than 35 minutes for colour.<\/p>\n \u201cBack in the day, if I shot 10 rolls of (film at a) rodeo, that was a lot,\u201d Popil said; with today\u2019s digital cameras, he\u2019ll often shoot thousands of pictures.<\/p>\n Bartlett said the Gazette was eventually forced into the digital age when film companies stopped servicing their development machines. Her first digital camera cost about $4,000 and sputtered along at three shots a second \u2014 motorized film cameras managed 10\/s in those days.<\/p>\n Photographers otherwise roamed St. Albert shooting fires, festivals, car crashes, council meetings, and other newsworthy events. It was a 24\/7 job, as you were always listening to the police scanner for potential leads.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019d be times you\u2019d go out at two o\u2019clock in the morning,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou never wanted to miss the news side.\u201d<\/p>\n Snazzy shots<\/p>\n Gazette photographers were witness to many historic moments.<\/p>\n Popil shook hands with Pope John Paul II prior to an<\/a> outdoor mass before 125,000 people near Namao<\/a> on Sept. 17, 1984. Dodge saw firefighters douse the flaming wreckage of two Hercules transports<\/a> after they collided in mid-air above what is now CFB Edmonton on March 29, 1985. Bartlett donned a safety suit and roamed the asbestos-filled Sturgeon General Hospital during its demolition in 1997.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had access to so many different things that a lot of people never got to be a part of,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n They also sometimes found themselves in strange situations. Dodge recalled stumbling upon the RCMP hauling a body out of the Sturgeon River; the cops were steamed at first, but asked him for a copy of his photo the next year to use in a water safety campaign. Bartlett\u00a0once joined the police as they pursued some runaway horses, leaning out the window of their car (a Mustang) to take photos as they bounced across a farmer\u2019s field.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s that incident with Popil and the chimpanzee.<\/p>\n Popil said there was a pet store in Edmonton called Noah\u2019s Ark next to where he took his cameras for servicing. The store had a chimpanzee, and, one day in 1979, on a whim, he gave the animal a camera, waited for it to fiddle with it, took a picture, and printed it in the Gazette.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo weeks later, someone smashed the plate glass at Noah\u2019s Ark and stole the chimpanzee,\u201d Popil\u00a0recalled.<\/p>\n Authorities thought they found the animal\u2019s remains two weeks later, but realized they actually had found a child who had been murdered, he continued.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened to the chimp, nobody knows.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfocused future<\/p>\n The Gazette had about five full-time photographers on staff for much of the 1970s through to the 1990s. Today, it has none \u2014 a reflection of an industry-wide trend toward fewer photographers in an age of budget cuts. However, the paper currently works with contract photographers\u00a0Bruce Edwards, John Lucas and\u00a0Walter Tychnowicz.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s still a career in (photography), but you have to be darn good,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n Bartlett and Popil say photographers still play essential roles today when it comes to documenting history.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce you press that shutter, that (moment) will never be repeated again,\u201d Popil said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gazette photographers document St. Albert through time Who can stop the march of time? The photographer can. 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