Just home from another trip out West to Alberta. Ah, the prairies in winter. The wide open spaces are made for wide-angle lenses and a sense of wonder, but even though Lethbridge wasn’t named for the bridge it is certainly its defining feature. At a mile long and close to 400 feet high it is the largest bridge of this nature in the world and always a great subject for a camera. Lots of leading line action in this photo which imparts movement to what could have been quite a static scene.

Well, this photo is it. The last day on the St. John River in the kayak for 2010. Not that it is too cold but the ice is starting to form and that makes for poor paddling. I took the D700 out the last few times just to get a bit more detail into the photographs, more than my Lumix LX3 can give (although I would recommend that camera to anyone as a carry around all day fun camera). So the kayaks are out of the water, the skis are waxed and the bicycle in on its trainer- can the first big snows be far behind. And then winter shooting. Dress warm and get out there.

One thing I have always liked about photography is taking it to the street- street photography. Grabbing what the world throws your way and reacting to it quickly. The Leica M series was the king of this back in the day, just set the camera to f 8.0, the focus at 5 or 6 feet, check your exposure and head out. This set up turned the camera into a point and shoot and allowed you to react quickly and you didn’t even need to bring the camera up to eye-level to grab the shot. Welcome to the digital age- now with auto exposure, auto focus and ISO numbers up in the stratosphere the street has never been easier to capture. This shot of a travelling band of gypsies (more or less) playing with fire late in the night at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton, New Brunswick, brought all the elements that I love together including a lot of darkness. The Nikon D3s made easy work of this: the ISO was 3200 and I could still use a shutter speed of 1/200th of a second. Perfect for this kind of shooting.