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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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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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 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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