In Greek mythology, Psamathe (or Psamanthe in some translations of Ovid) was the goddess of sand beaches. I hope she wouldn’t mind lending her name to title this abstract image. The original shot (mirrored here) was taken at Hawk Beach on Cape Sable Island near the “drowned forest”. In several…
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I’m not sure what people might think when they see me peering into the shallow ditches than line the walking trail I use most days. Only one has ever stopped to ask. During the winter – and especially during mornings when it has frozen overnight – I’ve discovered beautiful strange…
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I’ve long been interested in abstract and non-representational forms. It may seem strange to use a camera – a tool that is designed to capture and depict “reality” as accurately as it can – in order to create images that are departures from reality. But photographers have been dabbling in…
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… and wharves. Different light, rain or a touch of dew, a new boat, or a new curl to a chain or rope. It seems there’s always something to catch my eye. There’s no lack of locations to explore here in Nova Scotia. The coastline is dotted with wharves that…
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There was no concerted effort on my part to capture the autumn colours in Nova Scotia this year. These images were found on my daily walks or during an outing for a purpose other than photography. Lately, I’ve tried to be more disciplined about having a camera on hand whenever…
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Rocks in my head is what many people think about my obsession with the forms, textures and details one finds in rocks — whether in a rocky landscape, or in a close up. From the smooth rocks scoured by glaciers, to the fractures and forms created by enormous pressures, to…
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I first saw Alfred Stieglitz’s “Equivalents” in the early 1970’s and they have stuck with me ever since. Taken between 1925 and 1934, Stieglitz’s B&W images of clouds were among the first photographs intended to free the subject from literal interpretation. Many thousands of photographers have experimented with cloud pictures…
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The ups and downs of temperature that I wrote about in the last post continue. One day I’ll be slogging through inches of snow, and a few days later it may have all melted away. Then it will become bitterly cold again. When it snaps cold quickly, there are always…
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I no longer live in a city, and I don’t really miss it. When I did live in one, I was more drawn (from a photographic perspective) to architectural and textural details than to anything else. If I could have chosen a different career path from what I did, I…
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It has been a spectacular autumn for colour. In bright light, the reds, oranges and yellows have been rich and brilliant. Last week, during a trip to Shelburne, it was evident that the peak had passed, but there were still signs of fall. I took this image right beside the…
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Autumn is certainly my favourite season. Cool, crisp air and autumn leaves. In most of Canada, the colour change can be dramatic. Right outside my window is a tree that that turns such a rich, brilliant red-orange that it looks unreal. And the light reflected from it casts an orangey glow…
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It’s rare for me to indulge in free rein post processing. Both of these images began life with experiments in photography, however. So, experimental post-processing seemed to be in the spirit of what I had started in the first place. Both images have the same subject origin as well, though…
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I took several photos of Quebec City’s la redoute Dauphine (or, The Dauphine Redoubt, in English), including some wide angle shots that show the building as a whole. Built on a hillside overlooking the St. Charles River, it is an interesting building to be sure. But it was the lower wall that…
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Arcs, curves, curls, crescents – whether man-made or found in nature, there’s something about them that is very appealing, and more natural. We’re surrounded by them from birth. Even the most angular of human bodies is still a mass of curves, and for some tastes, the curvier the better. We…
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Tugboat Tough #1
Sometimes images are stronger in sets. These three images are from the same tugboat, either decommissioned or awaiting repair, in Belfast, Maine. My wife and I were in Belfast to join the Wanderbird for a week-long cruise of the Maine Islands in 2010. I say cruise, but the Wanderbird was not…
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In the late 1920’s master photographer Edward Weston began taking a series of still life images that included shells, fruit, and vegetables. He took his first picture of a pepper in 1927, and a number of other pepper pictures in the following years. In 1930, he placed a pepper at…
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Sometimes the bloom is not the only interesting part of a flower or plant. We wait for the bloom, of course, and appreciate its colour,its scent, its delicacy, and the ephemeral nature of its beauty. And then it is gone, leaving us with the green supporting cast of leaves and…
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On a small, rocky beach at one Nova Scotia’s many small fishing communities, my wife and I came across this scene – hundreds of scallop shells together. They looked like cast-off dinner plates. And, perhaps, that’s what had been happening here – years of locals bringing home some scallops, shucking them right…
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Halls Harbour sits on the Bay of Fundy on Nova Scotia’s north shore. The span of the tides here is often as much as 40 feet. Further into the bay, at Burntcoat Head in the Minas Basin, the tides can be more than 55 feet. So the wharves on the North Shore…
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Form , texture, pattern, colour – all these things can be seen in the rocks, here on the south shore of Nova Scotia. One of the more remarkable sites for these discoveries has to be Gaff Point, a unique, unspoiled promontory at the southwest end of Hirtles Beach in Lunenburg…
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