More and more, I’m finding that I just like to “be”. Rushing from location to location is fun and exciting, but there’s something to be said for taking the time to experience a place.
One evening in June 2024, I experienced Stony Beach, Saskatchewan.
I was in the Regina area for work. I did some railfanning on my way there, and drove the length of the Last Mountain Railway one evening. On a different evening, I went to Stony Beach.
Like many prairie towns, the most defining feature of Stony Beach is its grain elevator. Still proudly wearing its Saskatchewan Wheat Pool logos, its cupola exhorts us to “use Pool Co-Op flour” – as if that is something you can still buy. The Pool is long gone, and some day this elevator will be gone, too. I wanted to experience it one more time.
The community of Stony Beach has a few streets, and people still live there, but there was little going on while I was there. A few cars came and went, a few people walked their dogs, but in general it was pretty quiet. The Mosaic potash mine at Belle Plaine was likely a beehive of activity, but it was far enough away that it was just a big bump on the horizon. Part of the landscape that is the modern Prairies.
I had never photographed Stony Beach from the air, so I put my drone up for a while. The sun was being very coy and hiding behind the fast-moving clouds. I was patient and let the drone loiter, quietly buzzing a hundred feet in the air, waiting for that moment when the sun would light the elevator up. It took a while, but eventually Sol graced us with her light.
This drone track shows that I didn’t go very far with the drone. The town is at bottom left, the elevator was at top right, and I mostly kept the drone between them to capture the light when it finally arrived.
It was very peaceful and calming to stand there, watching the clouds, waiting for the light.
When I decided it was time to leave, I took a few last photographs.
When I leave a grain elevator, I never know if I’ll see it again. So many elevators that I have seen have since been demolished. Shoot them while you can.
I’m grateful for the time I spent at Stony Beach. Opportunities like this are a gift.
Thanks. Change always happens yet we always hope things will always be there. They will be there – in our memories and maybe more importantly in our photographs. Take them now – things will change.