White Sands
A trip to New Mexico in October to photograph dunes at White Sands National Park
White Sands National Park (originally designated a National Monument in 1933) is located in southern New Mexico, in the Tularosa Basin between the the San Andres Mountains to the west and the Sacramento Mountains to the east
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Bay of Fundy
Fishing Weirs
A trip to photograph herring weirs off the islands of Grand Manan, Campobello and Deer Island, New Brunswick
For over a year before the start of this photography trip, I’d been reading about, and become fascinated with, herring weirs. Despite the fact that weir fishing is dying out in many parts of the world, there is a living weir fishing culture in the Bay of Fundy in Canada.
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February in Sasakatchewan
Cold minimalism on the Canadian Prairies
This was my seventh trip to photograph on the Prairies in winter since my first winter trip in 2015. The Prairies (Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) are notoriously cold in winter, so these trips are often pretty challenging, but I keep coming back because the wide-open spaces of the Prairies in winter can be a minimalist paradise.
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Quebec
A new location for a winter photography adventure.
I usually take a winter photography trip around the holidays because the college where I’m a librarian is closed and I always have that time off. I have to book months ahead and I don’t always get lucky with snow cover when the time for the trip finally arrives, so I thought I’d try a new location in December, 2022.
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Winter Prairies 2022
This was my first trip after the pandemic and I returned to my favourite place - the Prairies in Winter
When I wrote the blog post about my trip to Antarctica in March 2020, the pandemic had just begun (I arrived back from that trip just two weeks before lockdown). At that time I didn’t know when I’d travel again, but I finally got the chance two years later, in February 2022.
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Antarctica, Part III
A trip to the Antarctic Peninsula in February 2020
Part III
We arrived in Neko Harbour on the morning of our sixth day to bright blue skies, still water and absolutely gorgeous reflections. As soon as we were anchored, we unloaded the zodiacs and prepared for an excursion.
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Antarctica, Part II
A trip to the Antarctic Peninsula in February 2020
The next day we crossed the Antarctic Circle around 10am. There was a celebration: the crew dressed up and wore funny hats and there were mimosas for everyone. It felt noticeably colder, but maybe that was just my imagination. Not many ships get down past the Antarctic Circle - the Ocean Nova has only been twice this year, the Magellan (the other Antarctica XXI ship) has been twice, as well.
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Antarctica, Part I
A trip to the Antarctic Peninsula in February 2020
For years I’ve been fascinated by Polar exploration and I’ve read dozens of books about explorers such as Rae, Franklin, Nansen, Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton. For all those years I never thought I’d have the chance to visit any of the places they’d explored, but I have been very lucky in the last year: in July 2019 I travelled to Greenland and, in February 2020, I visited Antarctica. Antarctica, especially, had been a dream of mine. Every year that I looked at trips they just got more expensive, but since all the clichés apply - you only live once, you can’t take it with you, trip of a lifetime, etc. – I decided it was now or never (to use another cliché!): Antarctica, February 2020 was going to happen!!
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Winter Prairies
A trip through Manitoba and North Dakota to photograph ice fishing huts and winter scenes.
Before I even left on this trip to Manitoba, I had some doubts. Lakes and rivers hadn’t completely frozen (see screen grab from IG of someone going through Lake Winnipeg just a week before I got there) and there was little snow in Manitoba.
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Ice
Photographing icebergs in Greenland
In July, 2019 I went to Greenland. I was incredibly excited about this trip, not least because I’ve been semi-obsessed with reading about Polar exploration – Rae, Franklin, Nansen, Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton – since I was a kid, but also because I never thought I’d ever get to go to the Arctic.
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Minimalism in Hokkaido
Minimalist photography in winter in Hokkaido, Japan.
I travelled to the beautiful island of Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, in February 2019 for a 2-week trip. I was going to be travelling with my friend Ulana Switucha. We had travelled together in Japan in 2017 and I knew I’d have an amazing experience with her because she speaks some Japanese and knows Japan well. We rented an SUV and travelled from Sapporo in the west to Lake Kussharo and Lake Akan in the east, going north to Haboro and stopping in Biei along the way. We hoped to photograph mostly minimalist scenes and we weren’t disappointed. Hokkaido is one of the snowiest places in the world and that snow blanket made for some wonderful minimalist images.
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Ice Fishing Huts
An invitation from an old friend to visit Manitoba turns into a great trip to photograph ice fishing huts on Lake Winnipeg.
When an old friend invited me out to his cabin on Lake Winnipeg the week between Christmas and New Year, when the College where I work as a librarian is closed, I jumped at the chance. Even though it looked like a great opportunity to just relax, I couldn’t stop myself from scouting potential photo ops online. That’s when I came across pictures of wonderfully colourful and singular fishing huts that sit out on the lake in winter. Immediately I began to think of a creating a series of images of those fishing huts. I know it’s been done before, but it still sounded to me like a great project.
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Photographing Mayan ruins in the Yucatán Peninsula
A third trip to the Yucatán Peninsula to photograph Mayan ruins
In November/December 2018 I took my third trip to the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. I’d first gone there back in 2014. I had decided to go after hearing stories a friend had told me about the ruins of 19th-century haciendas and old, half-abandoned churches damaged in the Caste War (1847–1901). After giving me tips on books to read in order to find these sites, he put me in touch with a local photographer named Baltasar (Balta) Castro Cocom. Balta and I became friends online. Even though I was planning to spend the bulk of my time visiting the haciendas and churches, Balta offered to take me to see some remote Mayan ruins. We went out for a weekend to the Puuc area south of Mérida and I was stunned by what he showed me. Though I did photograph some haciendas and even produced a small photo series on Caste War churches, it was the ancient Mayan ruins that fascinated me.
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Hunting for Icebergs in Newfoundland
A trip to Newfoundland in June 2018,
hunting for icebergs.
In June 2018, I headed to Newfoundland, searching for icebergs. I had been to The Rock, as it is affectionately known, in 2015, visiting the Bonavista Peninsula and Gros Morne and I had seen a few icebergs, but this time I wanted to do a trip primarily focused on finding and photographing as many icebergs as I could. Icebergs, which have mostly calved from glaciers in Greenland, travel past Newfoundland every year in May, June and into July through what's called Iceberg Alley. It had been a slow start to the iceberg season, with many fewer icebergs coming down from the north than usual, but I hoped that by flying into Deer Lake and just targeting two main northern areas (Twillingate and St. Anthony) and staying in each place for a few days, I would get lucky in finding icebergs and being able to photograph them in nice conditions.
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Photographing Grain Elevators and Winter Scenes on the Prairies
A fourth winter trip to the Prairies (Alberta and Saskatchewan)
As I set off for my fourth winter trip to the Prairies, in December 2017, things didn’t look good in terms of snow levels. If you look at that Snow Depth map from the day before I left, the brown area in eastern Alberta and western Saskatchewan with no snow was exactly where I was going. I had done a similar trip in December 2016 when there was also very little snow in Saskatchewan, and a bit more in eastern Alberta. Well, there is nothing I can do about it, I thought. I’ll just have to make the best of what is there. I dream about heavy snow and wonderful minimalist images, but sometimes you get just a few centimetres and, still, I think there are interesting images to be made.
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