In the early days of Covid, non-essential travel outside of one’s own community was strongly discouraged. I started bringing my camera with me on local walks in our small town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. What could I find that was interesting, perhaps beautiful, in the the familiar, even banal, scenes and subjects found on a local walk? The exercise brought me back to my early days of photography as a teenager, when every subject was fair game, and experimentation was a natural and necessary part of learning how to photograph. It was both challenging and freeing, and a good fit for my introspective and contemplative nature.
Though public health restrictions are now suggestions, I’ve continued to explore the familiar in my home town and also in the neighbouring, even smaller towns of Lunenburg and Mahone Bay. These are not pictures of natural beauty. Humanity is ever-present, but people do not appear. Some images are explorations of colour, tone, texture, form, light and shadow, or juxtaposition. Others were taken because the scene evoked a feeling or a memory for me.
I can but hope that others may connect with and appreciate some of these images. Making them – finding, composing and rendering – has been both instructional and rewarding.
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