Elemental Photography

Photographed a house on Wednesday that was beautifully appointed but a photographers nightmare, shiny stainless steel back-splash, dark cherry wood floors and cabinets, very low light inside and bright outside, I was quite chuffed with the end result considering it was a quick shoot. The lights over the sink are fans pretty zooty :-).

Downtown Halifax on Sunday - signs are everywhere warning people to keep their distance, our unit of measure may be a little different in the maritimes.

Sunday I took a quick trip to watch the sun come up over Peggies Cove - it has been a long time since I visited and I happened to be the only photographer there which is both fantastic and a little sad, still it is nice to get an energy booster doing something you enjoy, we still need to spoil ourselves every now and again.

Photographed a very neat house on Thursday of an older couple who have been together for years, the house was immaculate but the lady kept on going on about the utter devastation in her husbands workshop downstairs. She mentioned it several times obviously a real bug bear for her, with trepidation I eventually headed downstairs to be met by this pig pen :-) - obviously we have very different definitions of chaos.

I see a lot of things when I go out on photo-shoots often I come back and think "wow that was great" other days I come back and feel incredibly sad for where people find themselves, mostly it makes me thankful for the positive influences in my life and the understanding that it is a thin line that separates them.

I have had to go to Halifax downtown a couple of times this month, as my client would prefer empty streets it is always Sunday. I have visited the city for 10 years now and I am amazed at the change over this period, some people dislike what it has become but I love the old and the new, there are so many different nuanced views it really is a lovely little town. As a photographer the only thing I don't like is the construction chaos that surrounds the growth, it is everywhere making it very difficult to get a pristine view without construction equipment and scaffolding, but hey if a construction company employs me no doubt I would be admiring the construction equipment and trying to make it look good in its context :-)

Simple stair shot from yesterday - clean, uncluttered, basic - elemental - effective?

Sometimes we have one of those days, I will still enjoy the ride (not my photograph but I love the sentiment).

Downtown on Sunday again - I have a shoot for a client in the States but it requires that the leaves are out on the trees and the street has been beautified (the municipality plants flowers in the pots, in other parts of town there are hanging baskets) so this is just a scouting mission. In Covid times this street which has plenty of pubs and restaurants is a shadow of its former self as Nova Scotia is still in a form of lockdown (granted this is 7am in the morning). The other issue has been unseasonable frost - it was -2 the morning I took this so planting may just be late.

I took a couple of images of a deconsecrated church building on Tuesday. I have photographed a few church conversations before and while I like the idea that buildings evolve and can be utilized for new purposes church buildings have a particular morphology that always makes me think "Church", with all the connotations associated with churches . Built in 1886 there is a lot of community history in this one. I thought that the ceiling had been beautifully crafted so I climbed a rickety wooden ladder to get a little closer.

I haven't been to downtown Halifax for a long time.....I haven't been anyway for a long time and on Sunday found myself downtown scouting for a shoot I need to do and I thought the juxtaposition of old and new looked kinda neat in what was pretty mean light.

I hope everyone is doing OK in these trying times. I am having a lot of time to go over those courses that I never thought I would ever get to, however, I had to get out the other day and the best time to ensure physical distancing is early in the morning as Halagonians are late starters. I took a couple of photographs of the new Shannex Head Office which I had seen at night on my way for Sushi way back when we were able to go for sushi. The building has potential but really needs to be lit from the inside to give it a bit of life, and maybe a person or two - something to do in the future. Stay safe :-)

Certain commercial activities may slow down in winter but they don't stop. I have been doing quite a bit of commercial real estate photography over winter and it is always a challenge to make a property pretty with snow and ice lying around, one of the solutions is to exclude as much as you can and still show the property.

Commercial shoot on the Halifax water front - sometimes they just cannot wait for good weather - or.....winter is a season as well :-) , either way it was a great time to be near the water.

Getting out early in the morning is therapy for the soul - even if you are working - shot a little footage while doing a shoot on Saturday.

I am not in Halifax as much as I used to be but I had a early morning commercial shoot this morning and happened to leave via Sackville one of the streets which fronts the "new" Halifax Conference Center. The contrast between the old NSCAD building and the Conference Center changes as you come down the hill, in reality the conference center is huge in comparison to the NSCAD building, but size all depends on your perspective.

I have been quite busy photographing real estate in pretty horrendous conditions -24 to minus 6 - today was beautiful and I got my workout wading through knee deep snow to get the drone shot (the battery life is a bit fickle in the cold so I wanted to shorten the trip and try and close that exercise ring on my watch :-)

Old shot of Peggys cove village - we have had 25cm of snow today and it is still snowing heavily turning the brown landscape into a winter wonderland.

By tomorrow it is going to look like this at Peggys which in my mind is a lot better than the visually unappealing brown currently dominating the landscape.

Not all sunsets are created equal, farm on PEI

Well my new PC "the beast" has been rechristened for obvious reasons to "Monster Munch" my last shoot is on the 21st which is pretty exciting as it is a beautiful family and my last formal shoot until the 27th. In the interim I have started doing all those things that should have been done during the year and which didn't happen. First on the list is sorting and backing up files, which takes ages, everything is backed up on multiple servers but there is a lot of duplicat...ion which needs to be reduced. What I do know from starting this process is that 34256 images were delivered to clients during 2019, which means I have some fantastic clients. I am sure that I will post some photographs as I clean up but in the interim I wish everyone happiness and strength over a period that has a profound affect on people - both positive and negative.