My New Office (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

My new office is finally complete; this is one of the best designs I have done yet - the sudden realization that I could make the desk 11" deep (no need to accommodate deep monitors, like a decade ago) brought everything together; the keyboard and mouse are on a freestanding "table" of just the right height!

What is invisible in the image are the eighteen 4' long, 18" deep shelves full of prints!

A Journey to Yarmouth Light (Yarmouth, Nova Scotia)

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On a walk along the government wharf in Yarmouth, I came across this great pile of tires covered with barnacles at the bottom, and practically pristine at the top. A tight composition with a long lens simplified the scene and create a really pleasing composition.

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The day was bland with little in the way of drama or colour to the sky. Rather than lament the lack of co-operative weather, I decided to focus on working with long exposures. In the end, two 2 minute exposures were perfect for the water and subtle sky blur.

A Visit to Yarmouth (Yarmouth, Nova Scotia)

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When I arrived in Yarmouth, I came across this leaf within a green-house; being early November, the shock of green and yellow caught my eye, and approached with a macro lens, I was able to throw the clutter surroundings out of focus, and bring the attention to where it should be!

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On the beach west of Yarmouth, I spent some time experimenting with wave panning - using a longer shutter speed, and moving the camera with a wave, to create an interesting mix of camera and subject motion. The results were not very consistent, but when the process worked, it was magical, so it is certainly something I will continue to explore.

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The last images of the day were made on the Yarmouth fisherman's wharf, though from the above image it's hard to know where I was. Though I made images of the boats, wharf and associated detritus, it was the side of this shed, and the formal quality of the scene that really caught my eye.

A Train, a Tree and a Fence (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia)

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A side effect of teaching, and leading so many class-related field trips is I spend a lot of time with a camera in hand, in the same spaces time and time again. The down side to this is visual fatigue - finding it hard to see clearly due to having photographed the same place so often. The advantage is know when the train will be coming!

A Macro Photography Workshop (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

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When teaching a macro workshop, a large part of the process is providing hands-on experience, both to model process and technique, and from time to time, to capture something that really engages me. in this case, the very soft hint of purple on this flower bud drew me in!

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My favourite image of the workshop was also the simpliest - a small watch gear on a mirror. I used the Canon 65mm Micro lens for the image, set to a 3x magnification.

A Waterfront Field Trip (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

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The first field trip for the fall Photo 101 course saw me take the students for a jaunt along the Halifax waterfront. A space I know well, I always keep my eyes open for a new subject, perspective or composition. In this case, the harbour was really calm, and the sky, reflected in the water, looked very unusual - the perfect counterpoint to the warm morning light on the edge of the tire.

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Though I gravitate to ultra-wide lenses, there is a true pleasure in the simple reduction that long lenses can lend to an image - in this case, the chaos and riot of a docked tall ship is replaced with a graphic composition of the bowsprit.

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The last images of the field trip used my long lens (a Sigma 120-400mm) to make abstract images of the high-rise buildings that face the waterfront. An easy image to make in a larger city, Halifax is gradually becoming more "glass faced" as new and renovated buildings begin to mark the sky-line.

A Field Trip to the Dingle (Haalifax, Nova Scotia)

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A double-edged sword of teaching photography is that one ends up going to the same places for field trips time and time again. The down side of this is that, in repetition comes over familiarity - that which is interesting and engaging the first couple of times is simply overlooked at later periods. On the flip side, when faced with "nothing to photograph", I tend to fall back to practicing composition -simply making visual design with the world around me. This image of the door of the Dingle Tower is a great example of this.

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The other easy thing to do when at a loss for things to photograph, is fall back on macro; everything is different when close up, and often the familiar and mundae becomes engaging...the brass stud in this door for example changes completely when viewed close.

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An image like this always serves two purposes; on the immediate level, it is a really pleasing image of a rusty pole, but it also gets the "textures" keyword, which means it likely will appear in a digital composite image...someday.

Yarmouth Photography Club Talk (Yarmouth, Nova Scotia)

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On the evening of Saturday, October 3, 2012, I will be presenting to the Yarmouth Photography Club. I will present an overview of my photographic journey, beginning with my work with the Nude through to my more recent explorations of colour and Gothic Architecture. In addition to the presentation (by projection) I will bring a number of original prints for the club members to view.

A Halifax Field Trip (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

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Sometimes the oddest things will provoke a photograph - in this case, after a discussion about how simple compositions work, I made the above image. The back door of a panel truck, with scraped paint and rust.

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Initially the yellow of the lock caught my eye, but the bright highlight of the water drop really became the focus of this photograph.

A Portrait Workshop (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

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I seldom share my "traditional" portraiture online (meaning portraits of people clothed); I feel these are too "personal" to share in such a public form...where fine art Nude portraits are so much about the process of viewing the Nude that it is only by sharing them publicly that they really start to work.

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The images are not personal portraits; K_ was posing for a portrait session at a weekend workshop I was participating in; I was between modules, so had time to pick up a camera and take some photos.

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Because of the infrared camera's rendition of K_'s skin, I think these images almost look like mannequin photos, as opposed to photos of a real person...there is a magic realism to them which would be lacking in colour.

A Visit to the Public Gardens (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

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I was photographing this plant (possibly Swiss chard) when I happened to catch sight of how it looked when the sun passed through it! Moments later my camera was upside down, I was lying on the ground, and within a minute, the above image was made!

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After the brilliant colour of the first image, I really enjoyed working with this pale flower, carefully placing the bright yellow on the top left, and the delicate lines of purple on white at the bottom left.

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I am absolutely certain someone placed this petal in the centre of this spray of leaves - but it wasn't me. The contrast in colour between the magenta of the flower petal, and the rich green leaves is just perfect.

A Field Trip to the Dingle (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

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The ten story high Memorial Tower was built at the Dingle to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the establishment of representative government in Nova Scotia, in 1758.

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At the heart of the tower is a lovely iron stairway; with so many lines, curves and different plains, it was hard to know where to begin with the structure, but once I began looking at it through my ultra wide 17mm tilt-shift lens, everything came together.

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At the end of a field trip this morning, I spent 40 minutes photographing an iron stairway; essentially I started at the bottom and worked my way up. By the end, I had my camera leaning out over the stairwell (the joy of having a good tripod) pointing almost straight down; this, combined with pushing things a little with my 17mm tilt-shift lens, gave me a number of really pleasing images.

A Dartmouth Field Trip (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

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I can never tell what will catch my eye during a field trip; as I give many of these every year, and repeat the same locations for most, I tend to look for the subtle more than the obvious. In this case, the riot of flowers was immediately engaging, and I quickly settled on working with a long lens and large aperture to create a blend of in and out of fucs.

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The shallow depth of field approach continued through the field trip, as I found singular flowers (like the above day lily) to isolate against the riot of colour around them.

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The best images of the field trip came right at the end, as I was heading to my car, and home. A thick wall of fog began to move across the harbour, shrouding the bridge, and creating a magical monochrome scene.

The Third Session (Polly's Cove, Nova Scotia)

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The third session with the two models from the US took place on the second morning of their visit. Under a bright blue sky, we headed to the coast, and spent a couple of hours working in one of my favorite places to photograph.

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Though much of the photography we did was focused on working with the ocean, I did make some images set in the grassy shore, set against the wall of granite. In infrared, the beautiful tone of the back is a great contrast to the grasses around the model.

On the way back to the car, we stopped to work with some of the glacial erratics which are scattered on the wild Atlantic shore near Halifax.

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Erica and Venus in a River (Ingramport River, Nova Scotia)

I usually shy away from working in water with direct sunlight, finding the harsh shadows and faster (relatively) shutter speeds frustrating. In this case, the two models were only in the province for two days, so we didn't have the luxury to be selective about the weather.

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With this in mind, the above image has to be one of my best working with direct sunlight in a river.

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Made at our second location for the day, this was produced well into our time at the river, but was more about the water as a surrounding, than an environment. I was happy to follow Erica’s lead, in regards to how she was working with the space.

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Apart from the occasional standing portrait, I seldom make images around water that are not about surface or motion; for this photograph however, Erica was convinced the branch hanging over the water would provide us with an image...and she was right!

Three Models with Concrete (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

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I have always enjoyed the simple beauty of standing poses - and the wonderful light falling upon Venus through the windows only helped.

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I gradually worked towards this image, with first Erica, then Erica and Venus in the window. Only at the very end did I experiment with Kyla in the mix; the result was surprisingly fast to come together, with Venus (in the centre) holding it all together.

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Working two models into a location is often a challenge, but for this composition, it was relatively easy - I took the line of Erica’s back as the cue, and asked Venus to mirror it with her body.

Ingrid Models in her Element (Ingramport River, Nova Scotia)

This session was my first time working with Ingrid in over two years (and also marks our 14th year of working together); between some health issues on her side, and my schedule, it has taken this long for the stars to realign.

I suspect Ingrid and I have worked in this river more than a dozen times since we first worked together in 1998; the old saying that you never cross the same river twice is absolutely true, as though the space may be the same each time we work there, the river is always different.

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Fortunately, the two intervening years have had little influence on her skills as a model, and over the ninety minutes we worked together, numerous strong images were made, with this one being my favorite. The blend between the motion of the water to the right, and the transparency of the water to the left is just perfect in this image.

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Towards the end of the session with Ingrid, I decided to change my approach, shifting to my 85mm f/1.2 lens (with a 64x ND filter on it), and working with Ingrid posing in the reflection of the sky (clouds back-lit) by the setting sun. The shallow depth of field, along with the luminescence of the reflected sky worked beautifully, while the 0.5 second exposure provided just enough motion in the water to make it interesting.

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Without a doubt my favourite approach to working with the Nude in water is to set the motion of the water in contrast to the body; in this case however, like the shallow depth of field image above, I decided to work with the light and contrast of the situation, as opposed to blur the water.

A night Session (Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia)

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A fingernail moon rising over the Aspotogan Peninsula.

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As the sunset faded in the western sky, the lighthouse began to separate out from the blue sky behind.

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During the second night photography field trip, we were graced with a cloudless sky; After the last student left, I made the longest night exposure I’ve created to date - an hour (which adds up to two hours after the long exposure noise reduction). Unfortunately, the long exposure lead to a lot of noise; while the low resolution image here hides it, it would take a lot of work to remove to visible noise and create a seamless, smooth image. Fortunately, 20 minute exposures don’t seem to suffer from this issue, so I will likely draw the line there.

Stephanie Poses in a River (Ingramport River, Nova Scotia)

It has been well over a year since my last session with Stephanie, and given that she originally got in touch out of an interest in modeling in water, and given that we’d never done such a thing, I suggested we might give it a go, given how warm the weather has been lately.

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 The night we set out to work on was lovely and warm, and the water was perfect - for most of the session, Stephanie was warmer in the water, rather than out of it! There were a number of good images that came out of the 90 minutes we worked together, but this one really caught my eye, due to the interplay between the body and the water, and the reflection of the evening sky.

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I have always loved how water grass looks when long exposures are used, but much of my work with it to date has been in black and white or infrared. With this image, I worked hard to keep the reflection of the sky off the grasses around Stephanie, so the green would play a major role in the final composition.

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The final images of this session were spent working with the infrared camera out in the faster moving part of the river; by this point, Stephanie was getting a little chilled, so most of the images had her body out of the water, and we worked around trailing arms and legs blending her body into the river around her.

A_'s First Outdoor Session (Martinique Beach, Nova Scotia)

A_ had modeled for me once before in the spring, but this was our first chance to work together outdoors; the day was less than ideal - bright, harsh sun, but we started early enough (9:30am) to have some angular light to work with.

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Given the light, I headed to the coast, knowing that most of the time I work with models prone on beaches, or in water, and that is the one kind of pose that direct overhead light works best for. We were fortunate to arrive at low time, which exposed a spine of rock in the centre of the beach - in infrared all the seaweed on the rocks was rendered almost as light at A_'s skin, which was really pleasing below such a pleasing sky.

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After some images made with A_ posing on the rocks and seaweed, we shifted to working in the water itself. Even in early July, the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia is not "warm", but A_ was more than keen to work with the water and took the plunge.

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This image, literally the last of the session, was made two hours later, during the worst light of the day…proving it is less the light, and more what is done with it that makes a good photograph.