The Narrative Engine

The HBO television series Westworld features a giant machine that seems to be in the process of excavating and terraforming vast swaths of the titular theme park to serve the needs of a mysterious new narrative. The machine is the centrepiece of the creepiest moment in the show to date, and I'm sure it will turn up again as this season proceeds.

Back in 1986, I shot this photo of a similar machine. It's not nearly as large as the one in the show, but it does have the same techno-horror flavour, at least in my eyes. 

All I Need is A Work of Art That Resembles a Tall Ship and a Star to Steer it By

...but alas, on the day this shot was taken on a summer day in 1986, it was cloudy. This is a photo of Expo 86, the World's Fair in Vancouver, British Columbia. There's no World's Fair this year; next year visit Astana, Kazakhstan, for Expo 2017. Oddly enough, Edmonton had considered a bid for that World's Fair. 

Contrails

This image looks better than it originally did, with the contrails masked by power lines and a gawking crowd willing about below. Still, I haven't gotten the colours quite right; the original vibrancy of the day is missing. This might also work better if I painted out the hangar at left, or if I'd captured more of the control tower at right. Ooo, if I were really ambitious I could clone the tower and flip it to built a complete one...maybe next time.

Hey, Yuri!

When we visited Expo '86, I was fascinated by the Soviet pavilion. Like the US pavilion, it focussed on the nation's achievements in space travel, and of course Yuri Gagarin played a huge role in that pursuit as the first human being to reach outer space. This massive statue greeted visitors to the pavilion, and inside there was a full-scale Soyuz capsule. I was agog.

No one imagined that just a couple of years later the Soviet Union would collapse, ending history. Or so the theory goes...

Big Green Bug

On our way to Expo '86, Mom felt compelled to show off this large caterpillar. Ick.

Earl and the Parachutist

Sometimes as I work my way through the Woods photo library I discover utterly befuddling images. This photo was shot during our trip to Expo '86 in Vancouver; that's me in the car in the foreground, staring in what must be shock or awe at the parachutist descending to earth a few metres away.

I have no memory of this incident. In the high resolution version of this photo, You can barely make out that the man appears to be wearing only a bathing suit and tank top, as though he anticipated a water landing. At first I thought this was a parasailing flight, but he's flying toward the camera and there's no boat dragging him from that direction, so he must have jumped out of a plane. Six of his friends appear to be waiting for him to land - or perhaps they're like me, innocent bystanders caught in the middle of some unlikely stunt.

You'd think that this would have left a stronger impression on me than it did.

Nose in a Book

On our way to or from Expo '86, the Woods family camped at a truly lovely spot somewhere in British Columbia, or at least that's what these photos tell me; I have no memory of the stop at all, nor of the book I'm reading here, The Destroyer #4, which the Internet tells me is subtitled Mafia Fix. I had to laugh when I saw the photo, though, because the moment it captures is typical: no matter what natural wonders surround me, I've almost always found books more compelling.

Long Expo-sure

I was 17 when we visited Expo '86, and I remembered just enough of the camera tricks I learned in grade eight Industrial Arts to try holding the shutter open for a second or so. I had no tripod so the effect is blurrier than it should be, but the lasers, at least, are pretty.