With a wind chill nearing minus 40C it wasn’t a day that called on me to be outside, camera in hand, but then again the sun was shining and when it hit these tulips that had just passed their best-before date, out came the camera for some playing around. The manual focus 55mm micro lens by Nikon is perfect for these kind of shots- it focuses close and very accurately. Hook it up to a digital camera and the trip from shooting to emailing it out is down to under five minutes- slightly faster than the two weeks I had to wait for Kodachrome to make it back by pony express.

Well, it is only three months till road biking returns to New Brunswick so to mark this momentous occasion I place this crank shot of my S-Works Paris Roubaix Specialized bike on the blog. Not quite a photo posting, more of a middle of the winter wish I could bike kind of blog thing. I guess it is worth noting that the lighting is from a nice overcast sky and the camera is the Nikon D3s with an 85 mm. lens on the front of it. Great for detail. And the diffuse lighting is just great portrait lighting. The background helps make the crank stand out and adds a touch of flash to the photo. Now back to thinking about cameras and stories. And bikes.

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.

Winter has snuck up on us again. Not that we don’t usually get a November snowfall, but they normally are as fleeting as a Victoria winter. Let’s see if this stuff can stick around and get us out on the trails soon. That said, you couldn’t ask for better light and a better day for kayaking in New Brunswick. The kayaks aren’t away yet and they add a dash of colour to this first scene of winter. Crisp and clear and shot with a 55 micro Nikon lens on a D700 just to blend the old and new. I like leaving the camera beside the office computer- if anything catches my eye out on the St. John River, I just grab and go. Takes away from the office drudge and keeps my eyes open as well.

Theodore Williston is ready for winter: his shed is full of cut and split wood, the lobster traps are ready for the spring opening. I went up to Theodore’s this weekend to talk to him a bit about how fishing is different now than when he started out some seventy years ago. That was when fisherman navigated with a compass and watch and the only electronics aboard might be a radio to pick up a local station. And the boats were smaller than today. The one below is one of the ones that survived the Escuminac Disaster in 1959 that took 22 boats down and claimed the lives of 35 fishermen. Without modern systems of weather forecasting and communications the fishermen had no idea that an out-of-season hurricane was bearing down on them.

Sometimes when things slow down my cameras tend to hide in the camera case- hibernation for sure. But lately, before they go to sleep entirely, I’ve decided to pull out the old D700, add a 55 Nikor micro lens to it- the old manual focus lens, and just have it at hand for whenever the mood hits. So this means whenever some great light drives into the house or something usual takes on an unusual look- a rose wilting for example. All to say, this helps keep me sharp and the cameras in shape and it is fun.

It’s getting near winter here in New Brunswick and I was just browsing through some photos I had taken of Theodore Williston last winter at his home on Miramichi Bay. Brrrrrr it was cold. Theordore  and his sons were the first people I photographed for the book Miramichi: River of Character and it was there attitude out on the wide-open frozen expanse of the Bay that got me going on the book. Great guys all and with a no nonsense approach to work- just get out and get the job done: no complaining. I’m hoping to visit them soon and do some sound recording so that, along with my brother Bruce, we can do a web-presentation of their lives as fishermen. Nice to have cameras and batteries now that seem to take the 20 degree below weather in stride- now, if only I could.

Gordon Cox was one of the first people to greet our small band fresh from our zodiac landing at Brake’s Cove off of the Ocean Nova. Brake’s Cove was an outport along Newfoundland’s western shore, and there are still a few summer homes there, but most of the residents have moved to nearby Cox’s Cove.