A Drive South of Moncton

Because of my artistic, work, teaching and personal schedule, I don't often have "open" time, when I am not committed to a specific project, but on this particular day due to workshop cancellation I had a rental car, a full, open day, and no plans. It so happened that on this particular weekend, a town to the south of Moncton was having a weekend festival, including a photographic contest, so for lack of a better motivator, I decided to head down towards Dorchester, take in the photo exhibition, and see what I could find to photograph.

Digital infrared original

With so much of my imagery focused on working with the Nude, it is quite refreshing to spend a day just making images, with particular agenda or subject other than what catches the eye. The landscape around Moncton is very different from what I am used to, with low sweeping hills and broad, flat fields of reclaimed dylelands besides the river.

Digital infrared original, 4 frame stitch

It was on this farmland that I spent much of the afternoon, making numerous images in infrared of the fields themselves, and their contents. Because of the static nature of these subjects, I took the time to make most of my images as multi-frame stitches, increasing both the resolution of the images, and the angle of view of the camera. With a heavily clouded sky, I didn't expect the images to be all that successful, but in reality, the sky rendered quite well on the digital SLR.

Digital infrared original

The most interesting space of the afternoon was a group of old mill stones piled in a field near the road. These were covered with dark lichens, and surrounded by thick grass and other ground cover. On the infrared camera however, much of the lichen ended up very light in tone, setting a contrast to the darker sandstone of the mill stones. I made a number of images of the scene, with a close detail of the stones among the flora being my favorite - a beautiful image with no real subject, but a very functional visual logic to keep it coherent.