Miniature Halifax (photo of the day)

Dresden Row Tilt Shift - Paul Maybee

This is my first attempt at tilt shift photography which is most commonly used to make photos (or videos) look like they are miniature.  It’s fun to google the term “tilt shift” and see what comes up, but it was way more exciting for me to see something I know very well, like Dresden Row in Halifax, NS as seen from the Citadel Hill.  I will be posting more very soon.  It’s too much fun!

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Texture – Patterns in nature and cities

texture - Paul Maybee

This is (mostly) a collection of photos from the early 2000’s I took intending to put them together eventually as a study on textures in nature and patterns in cities.  It looks at the contrast between the hard, straight lines in our buildings and the softer, perfect repeating patterns found in nature.

abandoned

Car and Haybails - Paul Maybee

After making my post this morning, I found this old gem.  This is a photo of a car sitting in a field along the Brule Shore in Nova Scotia.  This one comes from a series of photos I took on a really nice long drive with my mother in 2002, right before I left for Ecuador for 3 months.  I was just learning how to use my grandmother’s Pentax K1000 and just becoming very interested in photography.

Abandoned places

I have recently come across some of my old photographs and I noticed an interesting theme occurring.  I have many photos of old abandoned places.  I did some snooping around the Internet, and it seems this is something that has captured the attention of many photographers and so called urban/rural explorers.  I guess what sparked my search was the photos I posted a few days ago of the old fishing shack in Kingsburg.  I knew I wanted to put together a project consisting of old fallen down houses, churches and schools in Nova Scotia, but I didn’t realize just how many of these photographs I’d already taken.  So for your viewing pleasure, here are some of the highlights:

Rose Bay Barn - Paul Maybee

Let’s start with this one, close to Kingsburg- on the way, in fact.  Here is a barn that no longer exists.

Rose Bay Barn (back) - Paul Maybee

Actually, here is a photo from the other side of this barn.  I forgot I had this one until I posted the previous photo.

photo of the day

White Ferns - Paul Maybee

This is a photo of some tiny ferns I took on the South Shore of Nova Scotia.  I didn’t use any special lighting technique for this one; there just happened to be a ray of sunlight shining on this little patch of ferns.

photo of the day

Kingsburg - Paul Maybee

This is a photo I took today in Kingsburg, NS of a fallen down fishing shack.  Inside there are old rotten lobster traps and floorboards.  I remember this collapsed building from my childhood, and I don’t if it’s changed much since then.  There’s something I find romantic about these old buildings that have been abandoned and forgotten, and I wonder what they were like when they were built.

photo of the day

Morning moonrise - Paul Maybee

This photo was taken on January 22nd on a very cold morning walking to work.  I had just begun to follow the moon’s pattern on a website called Time and date which is a fascinating website and shows the time the moon (and sun) rises, sets, how much of the moon is illuminated, weather, and any other information you could possibly want to know about a day.

This photo is a 1 second time lapse photo, f3.5 at 400 ISO for anyone who wants to know.  I just use trial and error to get good photos, and this one turned out to be something special.

goodnight!

Happy Birthday Dave! (photo of the day)

Cat in Window - Paul Maybee

This photo is from Ecuador and is of our beloved “house” cat, Maria Pachita, or Pacha.  I’m choosing this photo today, because my brother Dave is in Mexico today (where there is no ice on the lakes) and I thought we could all use a little bit of sunshine around here too.  Hope you’re having a blast!!  Happy Birthday!

Ice in the lakes

Good Morning!

Nearly all of the comments on this blog have been about ice in the lakes, so I figured I should speak to that.  And frankly, I have become a little more concerned about that recently, even though it has been something we’ve been aware of from the start.  I’m not concerned about the rivers being frozen, but there may still be some ice around the lakes.  We’ve had some pretty warm weather lately, and my hope if just that the water will be really high.  We’ve had several warm spells over the past few months which will mean that the ice that may be there now won’t be as thick as it could be, which will help.

There are some great photographs of the area on Google Earth, when you zoom in, little photo boxes pop up where people have geotagged photos of different places.  Most of the photos in the area are from user AlainMoose96, or Alain Belliveau, whom Cody and I met at the archives one day while researching our trip.  This photo:

Mink Lake in April - Alain Belliveau

Photo used with permission from Alain Belliveau. Click on photo to view his other fantastic photos of the Tobeatic Wilderness Area.

was taken at Mink Lake in early April right after a snow storm.  As you can see, there is no ice on the majority of the lake, other than some snow and ice right around the shoreline.

It will be cold, that’s for sure.  But with my new -12°C sleeping bag I won’t have any problems at night.  The worst case scenario I can see right now is that I’ll have to bring my snowshoes for the carries.  But I’ll leave you with this old saying:

There’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.

photo of the day

Hoodies - Paul Maybee

This photo is one of my personal favorites of the Ecuador trip in 2002.  This is just after we had reached the ‘top’ of pichincha and turned around to look down at the city of Quito.  I say ‘top’ becuase if we look up, we can still see another peak above where we stood here, but this was the ‘top’ as it appeared from the ground.  The clouds had cleared for us to have a great view, but they were moving in again, and fast, so we couldn’t stay on top of the world for long before we made the descent – which was much quicker than the climb.