Grainswest - Fall 2021

Fall 2021 grainswest.com 15 BY ELLEN COTTEE • PHOTOS COURTESY OF GEORGE CLAYTON Former ag researcher George Clayton captures the beauty of Alberta farm country Where the sky meets the field GrainsWest: How did you get into photography? George Clayton: I was always interested in photography and, of course, it’s time-consuming, so I couldn’t really do a lot. With film cameras, well, I wasn’t very good either. I had to wait two or three weeks to get my results back, so it didn’t really take off. The advent of digital cameras really changed the game for me, I could look at results right away and my learning curve was much more rapid. When I retired, I was thinking, “I need something to do, I can’t just sit around and do nothing.” I was afraid of that. So, I decided that I would take photography more seriously and obvi- ously I have a love for farmers and agriculture. GW: Your education and experience clearly influenced you. Why is agriculture your main focus? GC: I got my book smarts at the University of Saskatchewan but the bigger education was the farmer smarts I got from all my good friends I made in the industry. They taught me more about farming than any formal education, so I really got the best of both worlds. I was fortunate in my first job to be in Fort Vermilion, a very small town, which got me out in the commu- nity where I first learned to appreciate farmers and now a lot of them are my friends. N early 38 years after he entered the industry, George Clayton remains fully enamoured with agriculture. From his first position in which he studied soil conservation and no-till to later research on integrated crop management with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Clayton simply loved his work. Even after retirement, leaving the world of crops and soil behind wasn’t an option. He traded one kind of field work for another, and now spends his days, and nights, chasing down the best Alberta farm scenes with a camera. What started as a hobby Clayton practiced in his spare time has turned into a second career as he captures the beauty of Prairie farms. I was a little dismayed with the dialogue going on from urban people and the lack of respect farmers got for their efforts and sustainability when I joined the industry, so I try to focus on that with my photography and give a good image of rural Canada and farmers. GW: What is your guiding philosophy when it comes to photography? GC: I shoot anything that’s unique. I look for landscapes that can tell a story. I’m still progressing in that area. It’s a difficult thing to do for a lot of photographers. How do you tell a story in a still image? In trying to do so, how do you identify subjects that are of interest in the frame of the picture? Sometimes you can just see a big, vast landscape and your eye doesn’t know what to look at. I always try to find something I can look at and say yes, that’s the subject. GW: What do you see as a good subject for a photo? GC: It’s often abstract layers, a piece of equipment that fills the frame or, for night photography, the Milky Way, incredible stars or a full moon. I shoot the full moon a lot. I focus on night photography and agriculture because there are really not very