Shooting The Landscapes Of Moose Factory
Back when I was in high school (a long time ago, haha!) I was into music and did well in music classes and school performances. I also really liked art classes and made wall murals and other Pink Floyd-like images. I wasn’t the best, but it was a fun way to express some of my tastes. After graduating, I became interested in photography and was able to take a local three-day workshop. We learned how to use a camera, F-stop, aperture techniques, and form. The cameras weren’t digital like we have today. I’m talking the kind that you have to load the film and manually advance the film every time you take a photo. I bought a Pentax that I still have and taken care of through the years. I often think about taking pics on that camera but not sure if I can still get film for it!
Today, I use a Canon PowerShot digital camera, and a program to check each photo for focus, sharpness, and saturation. Once I’ve taken a batch of photos, I’m excited to get home so I can download them to my laptop, choose the best ones, and enhance them slightly with photo tools. I don’t like changing photos drastically, but rather, enhancing what nature has revealed. I also take black’n’white shots occasionally, to see how that looks.
I like living in Moose Factory. There is real beauty here, with frozen rivers, trees, clouds and sky. The landscape, sun and moon offer many opportunities to capture different scenes. I really like the way the sun breaks on the horizon at sunrise, and in the evening, how the sun sets. I like looking at the way light changes naturally, and how clouds appear in many shades of colours.
My approach to photography is loose and unplanned. Sometimes I’ll go for days or weeks without seeing something that I think would look interesting.
When I find a sky or sun that looks dramatic, I will grab my camera and take multiple shots of the scene. Since light and movement change slightly every second as the earth is in motion, I try different camera speeds and different F-stop settings, to let in more or less light.
When I see the finished photos, I am inspired that there is beauty all around us. We just need to take a moment to stop, see and feel it.