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It's only been two weeks and I'm already off the pace which I had hoped to maintain. I have been working on some new stuff (along with all the other exciting things that tend to keep me busy) and though I am having a bit of trouble taking the photos I want to take, the idea still excites me and I'm trying to find a way to make it a photographic reality. I hope to have something from that series up in a few weeks.In the mean time, I thought I would share some of my trip to Newfoundland last June. My Grandparents are from there and are still living in a little town called Pasadena . When Toshina was at work one day (and I was probably playing video games at home between class or something like that) she called me and told me about a West Jet seat sale. To make a long story short, we decided to go and see my grandparents (whom I haven't seen since I was 5 or 6 years old) along with my father and his wife.There are quite a few photos and I wanted to start with some panoramic shots, because printing them is just a little impractical when they're 8x30 or something to that effect. It will probably be necessary for you to click on the pictures to get a good look at them.
This is in a little town called Lark Harbour, and like most little towns in Newfoundland, fishing is a big thing here. The four of us took a drive out as far west as the roads would take us, which was about 15 minutes of slow driving from here (to Bottle Cove). You can actually make out the docks in a smaller cove just south of the marker on Google. This was my first day in Newfoundland and I quickly got a feel for what the weather was like here. On June 1st it was about 15c and really, really windy.
This one is from a place called Cape Onion. Toshina and I wanted to take a drive up the west coast of Newfoundland and take a look around. While looking for a nice little B&B to crash at, we came across the Tickle Inn (at Cape Onion). 
This view was a short 10 minute walk from the Inn, seen here, which is sitting along with one other house on the beach of Cape Onion. The people who run the place are fantastic. The Adams family has lived in this place for quite a few generations and on the top of the point where this photo was taken, there is a cemetery where the Adams' family forebears are buried. The weather continued to be pretty poor and as you can see in the photo, there is still snow on the ground. Toshina and I did a bit of exploring on the tops of the "mountains" (in Ontario they would be called such, though they are only 274 ft. high) before returning to the inn for a homemade meal of pecan encrusted cod and local veg. After dinner we gathered in the parlour with Dave Adams to listen to stories of his family and life in Newfoundland. Dave is actually a teacher in St. John's which is a good 16h drive from his family's place, but returns in the summers to keep the place up and meet new people. This might sound a bit like a pitch, but after our night at the Tickle Inn, we would highly recommend it to anyone passing through the area. Hopefully, we'll get back there one day.
On our 4th day in Newfoundland, we were headed south to Pasadena on our way back from our visit up at Cape Onion. While we were passing through Gros Morne National Park (which is huge) my Dad wanted to show us the Tablelands, which is pretty much a highland range of rock which is usually well below the Earth's surface. As you can see it's pretty barren. They make for great hiking and we could have easily spent a whole day there, but by the time we arrived, there were only a couple hours of daylight left, so it was a quick tour and on the road again. This little detour reminded me of my trip to Arches National Park in Utah, except I think that this landscape was a little more devoid of life. There were patches of grass and the odd Pitcher Plant (the plant that you see on the Newfoundland and Labrador tourism commercials), but other than that, just rock. The strange part about that is that not a kilometer away from where I was standing, there was a lush verdant forest surrounding lake after lake.On our final day in Newfoundland, Toshina and I took a break from the parents and grandparents to go off and explore. We had gone through Corner Brook and visited with a relative of mine (her name is Elsie and I can't remember how we're related). It was nice to visit with someone new and hear about their stories of life on 'the rock'. She also let me photograph her old photo albums from the late 50's. I am working on making the digital version of that photo album. Looking at old personal pictures can be pretty interesting, usually because there are a lot of day to day stories that go along with them. After our visit with Elsie, we went out to Blow Me Down Provincial Park to do some hiking on the mountain side. We weren't all that well prepared to hike and for the most part got wet feet from mountain runoff and mosquito bites. At least there was a nice view (some photos of that another time). The nice thing about hiking up a mountain is that hiking down is a lot easier than going up.
After finding our way back to the car, we made our way into Corner Brook for some dinner and stopped along the way for this photo. The paper mill in Corner Brook is the business there. There are other things going on, but this is a huge employment hub for the people there. The field of felled trees is immense and they are carried away by the truck load from the lot into the plant. I wanted to get out and photograph what was going on here and Toshina thought it would be a good idea to get this photo. I'm glad she did, because I think it looks better than the one I took. It just captures the size of this place so well.
The other photo I really wanted to take in Corner Brook was on the opposite side of the mill. It was one of those moments when I saw something that I needed to photograph. On our first day here, we had stopped at this spot to get some fries with Newfie dressing (I don't really know what went into it, but it was really good) from a chip truck. While we were eating away, the local gulls were doing the same thing (not eating our fries fortunately). I went down to photograph the birds and came up with this shot.
This was when I learned about sensor dust and also learned how fast you can burn up a battery when shooting continuously. It turned out that I had a little hair on the sensor and that showed up pretty well in most of the photos I took between this one and the end of our three day trip to Cape Onion and back. It made for a lot of extra work to get things looking good again, but now I know, and knowing is half the battle.After that busy day we ate at Jungle Jim's. It's a pretty tacky name but the food is good. Imagine a Jack Astors with a jungle-safari type theme to it. It's also one of the few restaurants in Corner Brook, which was a fact that took me by surprise.Well, that's enough for now. I probably have a lot more to show you from Newfoundland. It really is an amazing place, not because of what was made there, but because of what is there.
Now, I'm not really a camera buff, in that I don't know the ins and outs of every camera on the market, so with that in mind, this is not a discussion on why I'm using one camera over another or what's the best camera in the world (though from what I hear the new Canon EOS 5D mkII is going to be something -take a look at the video shot by Vincent Laforet with this camera). I wanted to tell you what I'm using, partly because it's interesting to know what photos are taken with what cameras, but also to show people that even with a cheap camera you can take some good photos if you take your time.
So here's what I'm using these days:
This is my newest camera, a Nikon D200. It's my first DSLR and so most of this last year I've been figuring it out and growing into it. I picked this up at Henry's Outlet in Toronto for about $1,300 which included the body (and things that come with it), lens (Nikkor 18-70mm), polarizer, memory and a bag. All in all, I think I did OK, but of course, being almost a year later, it probably looks like I got a bad deal. Ah, digital life. This was the most I've spent on any one thing next to my computer, which was just a little more than this. Afterward I had this overwhelming feeling of guilt. Fortunately that has passed and I like my new (to me) camera. One of the cool things about it, is that it will take old lenses, so I've got a 70-300mm Sigma zoom which was made for an older Nikon AF film camera. I also picked up a 50mm prime lens that goes down to an f-stop of 1.8, which is much lower than the 3.5 I get on the lens I picked up with the camera. I like the fact that's all manual and that I picked it up for about $25. When you're on a student budget, it's a big deal. It looks a little funny when this small lens is mounted on a big body. I'll let you draw your own mental picture from that one.
The other SLR I have is an old Yashica FX-3 2000. Seems like a long name when you type it out, but I guess there's an evolutionary reason for it. This is my first SLR camera, which I picked up (also from Henry's) back in 1995 when I took an interest in photographing for my high school's year book. If I remember correctly, I paid about $280 for it used. Those days were pretty fun. Since then I've got a lot of use out of this camera. I picked up the Tamron 80-210 zoom about a year later, which came in handy for sports and other things that I couldn't get close to. When I started shooting some landscape scenes last year I popped into Henry's outlet and got a nice little Sigma wide angle 28mm for about $20. All in all, this has been a great camera for me aside from the advancing arm getting a little busted (probably from the previous owner, because it's never had that problem since getting fixed 12 years ago). Very durable and good for learning on due to it's simplicity. I would recommend anyone who wants to learn about making photos to get into a camera that has a lot of manual controls or make use of the manual capabilities that their camera has (that they might not even know about).
This one is my little take everywhere do anything point and shoot Canon PS A520. It's actually a replacement for the A60 I bought at Futureshop in 2003 for way more than it's worth now -I think I paid about $300 for the thing and to think of what $300 could buy now... The A60 just kinda died one day and so I took it back and with the product service plan I had, ended up getting an upgraded version, because Canon stopped making the A60. It's nice to have a camera that's compact and relatively inexpensive to carry around because the only thing I'd feel bad about losing the camera is the lost photos on the memory card. Toshina has taken over using the camera (mostly because I am gently prodding her to learn how to use a camera and take pictures) and I find that I occasionally think of getting a new PS camera for those moments when I say "I wish I had a camera". The one thing I dislike about the A520 is that it only takes 2 'AA' batteries. Some of you might say, "well, that's good, because it's cheaper to operate". The problem with this is that whenever the flash fires, the camera takes a good 10-20 sec. to recharge the flash for another shot. The A60 never had this problem, because it used 4 batteries and since I use rechargeable batteries, I have no problems with that.
Earlier I was talking about learning about making photos and using manual settings. This camera (and the A60) have a lot of manually controllable features, which I have seen missing on other more contemporary cameras. So if you're one of those who are looking into getting a camera with the intention of learning and not just taking pictures, then more manual settings is something that should be on your list, besides mega-pixels. The cool thing about digital is that you can play with settings and immediately see what impact they have on the image you produce.
2 cool things to try with a digital camera:
- Look at a remote control with your camera and push some buttons.
- Take a photo of your stove with the lights off and cycle through various lighting settings (ie. day light, fluorescent, cloudy, etc.)
I'm thinking that in writing this here, I will try to keep up with a new post and some photos on a weekly basis and try to have a regular day for that (who knows with my schedule), just in case you're interested in following along. You can also get an email about a new post put up here by fooling around with the follow link up in the top right of the page.
OK, so it's not new, it's new to me. I've been thinking of blogging for some time now, but setting up an online forum for gushing my feelings out to the internet was not something that appealed to me. However, I was talking with a friend of mine who said I should think of starting a website to show off some photos. Since I'm not all that HTML literate, I am here at blogger.com, making my first attempt at getting photos out there for people to see. I also expect that this will become an interesting mode of generating ideas, because to keep all you readers interested, I'll have to post a little more frequently than once a quarter, which means I need to make new material for you to see.
To sum it up, welcome to the new blog/photo show that is Brian+Photographs.I suppose this would also be a good time to mention that the photos posted here are my own, which have (for the most part) had a lot of work put into them, so I would expect you to respect copyright laws. If there is something I have made that you would like a copy of, contact me and we can work something out. I'm not asking for a million dollars (unless you're willing to give that much) but I am asking for the ability to control where my work goes.
This is in a little town called Lark Harbour, and like most little towns in Newfoundland, fishing is a big thing here. The four of us took a drive out as far west as the roads would take us, which was about 15 minutes of slow driving from here (to Bottle Cove). You can actually make out the docks in a smaller cove just south of the marker on Google. This was my first day in Newfoundland and I quickly got a feel for what the weather was like here. On June 1st it was about 15c and really, really windy.
This one is from a place called Cape Onion. Toshina and I wanted to take a drive up the west coast of Newfoundland and take a look around. While looking for a nice little B&B to crash at, we came across the Tickle Inn (at Cape Onion). 
This view was a short 10 minute walk from the Inn, seen here, which is sitting along with one other house on the beach of Cape Onion. The people who run the place are fantastic. The Adams family has lived in this place for quite a few generations and on the top of the point where this photo was taken, there is a cemetery where the Adams' family forebears are buried. The weather continued to be pretty poor and as you can see in the photo, there is still snow on the ground. Toshina and I did a bit of exploring on the tops of the "mountains" (in Ontario they would be called such, though they are only 274 ft. high) before returning to the inn for a homemade meal of pecan encrusted cod and local veg. After dinner we gathered in the parlour with Dave Adams to listen to stories of his family and life in Newfoundland. Dave is actually a teacher in St. John's which is a good 16h drive from his family's place, but returns in the summers to keep the place up and meet new people. This might sound a bit like a pitch, but after our night at the Tickle Inn, we would highly recommend it to anyone passing through the area. Hopefully, we'll get back there one day.
On our 4th day in Newfoundland, we were headed south to Pasadena on our way back from our visit up at Cape Onion. While we were passing through Gros Morne National Park (which is huge) my Dad wanted to show us the Tablelands, which is pretty much a highland range of rock which is usually well below the Earth's surface. As you can see it's pretty barren. They make for great hiking and we could have easily spent a whole day there, but by the time we arrived, there were only a couple hours of daylight left, so it was a quick tour and on the road again. This little detour reminded me of my trip to Arches National Park in Utah, except I think that this landscape was a little more devoid of life. There were patches of grass and the odd Pitcher Plant (the plant that you see on the Newfoundland and Labrador tourism commercials), but other than that, just rock. The strange part about that is that not a kilometer away from where I was standing, there was a lush verdant forest surrounding lake after lake.
After finding our way back to the car, we made our way into Corner Brook for some dinner and stopped along the way for this photo. The paper mill in Corner Brook is the business there. There are other things going on, but this is a huge employment hub for the people there. The field of felled trees is immense and they are carried away by the truck load from the lot into the plant. I wanted to get out and photograph what was going on here and Toshina thought it would be a good idea to get this photo. I'm glad she did, because I think it looks better than the one I took. It just captures the size of this place so well.
The other photo I really wanted to take in Corner Brook was on the opposite side of the mill. It was one of those moments when I saw something that I needed to photograph. On our first day here, we had stopped at this spot to get some fries with Newfie dressing (I don't really know what went into it, but it was really good) from a chip truck. While we were eating away, the local gulls were doing the same thing (not eating our fries fortunately). I went down to photograph the birds and came up with this shot.
