PixelatedImage Blog

English Bay, 2012.

Back in Vancouver now, and living at the Sylvia Hotel on English Bay while waiting to move into a great little live/work loft in Yaletown on March 15th. After long detours home on snow-choked BC roads, Vancouver welcomed me back with open arms on March 5th – cherry blossoms beginning to bloom, sunshine (short-lived, but welcoming), and enthusiastic welcomes from staff at old haunts and coffee shops. After a few days of frantic running around, the Jeep is licensed for B.C, and so am I. I have lease papers and utilities and within a month will have – I hope – all the legit paperwork to show to the folks at the border. Until then I’m cooling my heals and arranging endless furniture delivery. My exodus last year was planned to give me a clean slate on my eventual return, so I’ve not even got so much as a bed until the Swedish Mafia (IKEA) drops it off on moving day.

Anyways, it’s been slow around these here parts but as soon as I move in, I’ll give you a tour of the new Pixelated Image Galactic HQ, and then I’m off to Vancouver Island for a week or so to explore and photograph and hang out and scheme with Corwin, my manager and best friend.

In the mean time, we are launching my next eBook, Forget Mugshot, 10 Steps to Better Portraits, on March 13th. I know I tell you I am excited about every book we release, and that’s mostly because I’m easily excitable and tend to only do things I am excited about, but this time I’m extra excited. I think it’s a really solid book. It’s 35 pages of “if I could tell you only 10 things to make your people photography stronger, what would those ten things be?” There are Portrait Profiles and Creative Exercises in there too. Remember when I said we were moving from pounding out our vision and beginning to talk about how we express that vision/intent? This is part of that logical, and needed, shift. Tune in on the 13th for the usual discounts. Or better yet, join the Craft & Vision Community and get 12 books a year, full-time discounts, and access to the blog and the monthly podcasts. This coming month Matt Brandon and I will be discussing portraits and people photography and elaborating on ideas found in the book.

Emerald Lake, Yoho National Park, 2012

Two desktop wallpapers for you this month. My indecision is your gain. Click either image above to get the full-resolution file – both of them are 2560 x 1600. Seriously, this might just be my new favourite place. Amazing accomodations, real fireplaces, great food, and really reasonable rates with breakfast included. This morning I had poached eggs on elk and bison hash. Killer.

There may, or may not, be a hot tub here at Emerald Lake Lodge. A huge 16-person hot-tub. Also, there may or may not be a fermented beverage in the flask (thank you, Dave Delnea). Flask by Filson. Photograph, and mad iPhone skills, by Cynthia Brooke Haynes. Hat by Patagonia.

Arrived last night to one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been. Now I know I’m prone to hyperbole. Hell, I might exaggerate more than anyone on the planet, but this time it’s the honest truth. Emerald Lake Lodge in Yoho National Park. If you know where Banff or Lake Louise are, just head a little west, cross into British Columbia, and you’re almost there. Most of these images are not from here. I’ll do some today and this evening. But right now I’m drinking coffee in front of a large fireplace thinking about the 9500 kilometers I’ve just driven and how close I am to home. Just crossing the border into BC made me smile and last night I had a celebratory glass of bourbon in front of the fireplace, and fell asleep to the deafening quiet of a mountain lake under 5 feet of snow.

In a couple days I head home to Vancouver. Corwin, my manager and best friend, has found me a live/work loft apartment in a building I’ve known and loved for years. My friend Kevin Clark has a studio there. Close friends have lived there, too. (Daniel, remember that lady above you? The one in the steel-on-concrete stiletto heels? She’s moved out and I’m moving in.) And with any luck and the appropriate prayers to the patron saint of border crossings, I’ll soon have what I need to get back into the nation to the south of me, with whom I am not on speaking terms just now. In the mean time I think I’ll head to Tofino and see Pacific Rim National Park.

Anyways, just a note to say hello. I’ll do my best to get a desktop wallpaper to you today or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow. I’ve not forgotten, just hoping to get you something fresh and right now I hear breakfast and my snowshoes calling me. Speaking of getting things to you, I’ve just finished the edits and layouts for my next ebook – Forget Mugshots, 10 Steps to Better Portraits. I love publishing books from my friends, but there’s something different when the book is my own. Can’t wait to release it. It should be ready for you on March 13th.

Early morning. Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia

I’m sitting in a roadside motel that redefines mediocre, just outside Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario. Since I left my family’s home on February 11, I’ve put 6500 kilometers on the Jeep, though I truly thought those kilometers would by now have me well down the eastern seaboard of the USA instead of en route back to Vancouver. When all is said and done we’ll have done 10,000 kilometers. I’ve never seen so much snow, trees, and rocks. But having a blast? Absolutely. And looking forward to rolling into Vancouver and meeting the next part of this adventure head-on? Definitely. Before heading west I had a killer lobster dinner and one more night camping at Peggy’s Cove. Before that it was a night in Antigonish making new friends with a photographer who found out I was in town via the blog, tracked me down at a motel, and woke me up, to extend an invitation to join his family for dinner and some nice scotch and conversation, not to mention a place to stay. Had an amazing evening of visiting, a great meal, and made new friends. There’s a kind of hospitality in the Maritimes you just won’t see anywhere else. Thanks, Peter!

Sunset. Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia

So now we’re heading fast across this immense country, hoping to get to Vancouver sooner than later, find a place to live and start gathering the stuff to make the folks at the U.S. border happy. Some of the weather we’re encountering is tough slogging – driving snow and hard winds that have the Jeep completely iced-up by the end of each day. But enjoying the drive, especially as we cut through the land that the Group of Seven so loved to paint. Tomorrow we’ll be on the north shore of Lake Superior and I’m hoping for moody weather, if not to photograph then to simply enjoy. Live the scenery and breathe the air, then photograph if you’re so moved, but don’t drive past it without letting your heart skip a beat with wonder. 

I’ll try to keep you posted. In the meantime, here are three last photographs from my time around Peggy’s Cove, a place I’ve loved since I was a kid exploring the rocks and tidal pools.

Kelp and Ice. Near Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia

Cabot Trail, 2012. No Polarizer.

Cabot Trail, 2012. Singh Ray Warming Polarizer.

I put a note out on Twitter last night that I loved my Singh Ray warming polarizer so much I might never take it off my lens. I was asked some questions, so I thought I’d drop a line at the same time. Our time on the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia was amazing, and though it made for a long day, I had lots of time to trudge around with tripod and snowshoes and take in the beauty. The shot above was one of my sketch images, but I’m showing it here because I have identical frames that differ only in my use of the polarizer. I’ve developed them the same, which is very little, and with no dodging or burning. The differences you see are entirely the result of the polarizer.

Polarizers can make skies really blue (blue skies, not grey and cloudy ones, they stay just grey and cloudy ). Most people know that, but if you only use a polarizer for that you’re missing out and you might as well just use Photoshop or Lightroom to do the same thing. What polarizers do that Lightroom and Photoshop can’t, is get rid of reflections on surfaces like water, leaves, wet streets. It’s an aesthetic affect, and as I’ve said before, the look of the photograph is everything, so anything that changes the look, is a potential tool in the visual toolbox. In the case of the image above, the loss of reflection on the water (in this case, the reflected sky) significantly darkens the water, making it a stronger ribbon of darkness (10 points if you get that Canadian reference) and allowing the rocks under the surface of the water to show more strongly, revealing underwater texture. Like any tool, it’s not a cure-all for a bad photograph, and it won’t make every photograph better, but wielded well, it’s indispensable.

A couple more days in Nova Scotia, then we begin driving towards Vancouver, about 7500 kilometers.

An amazing day on the Cabot Trail around the northern chunk of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton island. I’ve driven the Cabot Trail before, but only in late summer and this time it was almost empty, and made all the more beautiful by a fresh fall of snow, in parts blown on the trees so completely that the whole thing looked like something from a fairy-tale. Amazing. We drove, pulled over plenty, and made lots of photographs, many of them on snowshoe, and the rest of them hip-deep in snow. Had an absolute blast, though the campgrounds we were directed to were closed, forcing us into another motel, which isn’t all bad because I forgot to bring my 20L water bottle in from the truck and it’s now a 20L block of ice, so dinner would have taken a little more work.

Coastal Nova Scotia.

A quick hello from a very snowy east coast of Nova Scotia. We’re in Antigonish tonight and tomorrow head for Cape Breton. So far I think we’re the only tourists in the entire province. Everything is closed and it’s been nearly impossible to track down a lobster dinner. It’ll be even harder as we travel north, as restaurants and hotels are few and far between, all of them closed for the season. Even pulling over to the side of the road is tough, everything’s so covered in snow. Emily, the Jeep, handles it without complaint, though I’m erring on the side of conservative because the folks that might otherwise drive by and pull me from a ditch are also few and far between. Probably sitting with the owners of the hotels on a beach in Cancun right now.

Love it here. So beautiful. Tonight as we drove into Antigonish the snow was coming down hard, sticking to the trees, and making this place, at least for me, tonight, the most beautiful place on earth. Next stop Cape Breton.

Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia

Since you last heard from me I’ve had a chance to take all the new information in, and figure out my new plan since I can’t – until I can prove I’ve got an “unrelinquished address” – travel through the USA as I had planned. The issue is not that I don’t have a mailing address, or even proof that I have an address; the issue is that I can’t prove, to the satisfaction of the fine folks at the border, that I plan to return to Canada, and since I can, and do, work from anywhere in the world, and have an American girlfriend, they suspect I want to move south of the 49th, which is only partly hysterical to me.  So after some digestion, there’s a new plan.

I’m spending the next week or two in Nova Scotia, photographing and exploring and generally embracing this new adventure. And then I point Emily west and we drive to Vancouver with all haste. If it was spring or summer we’d go more slowly, but I have to tell you I’m not keen on camping for a month across a cold snow-bound, park-closed, Canada. I was planning to move back to Vancouver towards the end of the year, now I’ll do it sooner. And once I’ve got lease-papers and moved in, I’ll head back to the United States of America and do the travel and photography I had planned through the west for most of this year.

Until then I’ve got a spectacular province to explore and if this morning’s breakfast of lobster eggs benedict was any indication, I’ve got some seafood to enjoy too. Thanks to everyone for the “OMG’s” and “WTFs” and other support and offers of help; it makes me even more sure that you’re all the best internet community on the planet.

Gotta run, time to head back to Peggy’s Cove for one last evening of shooting before we head north towards Cape Breton tomorrow morning. Talk soon!

Quebec City, 2012.

After an amazing night in Quebec City, wandering around in the fog and snow, we drove to New Brunswick and then to Maine. And when I say we drove to Maine, I do not mean we drove into Maine. We tried. But after 5 hours of questioning, an extensive vehicle search, and a second interrogation, I was told I was being denied entry to the United States of America, because “we have no proof you’ll return to Canada and we worry you’ll try to live here,” which nearly had me on the floor with laughter because, ahem, how do I put this? I like living in Canada. I have no desire to live in the United States. I want to travel the U.S., I want to photograph it, but I have no desire to leave my home. Which, as it turns out, is good, because they aren’t letting me. God knows they wouldn’t want a Canadian stealing the job of a Mexican. I just wanted to visit, man, not invade.

I was finger-printed, photographed, and made to sign transcripts of the interrogation on top of the line that said, “Signature of Alien,” which made me want desperately to sign, “E.T.”, “Mork”, or “Spock.” I couldn’t decide, so I signed my name on the form, and got back into the Jeep, grateful they’d only used the latex gloves while they searched the trunk of the Jeep, and not the trunk of, uh, ahem, me.

And so plans change and life presents new challenges. Last year it was shattered feet, this year it’s a breakdown in the diplomatic process. The reason for my denied entry, not technically a deportation because you have to be in the country before they kick you out and this law-abiding Canadian wasn’t even clever enough to make it that far, was that I have no fixed, verifiable address – a situation I’ve worked happily to free myself from. So instead of Maine, we’re heading to Nova Scotia. And then it looks like we’re hauling our asses coast-to-coast back to Vancouver, to find me a home, generate some paperwork, and get back on track to spend as much of 2012 as I can in the American West. Can’t say I am stoked about driving across this amazing country in the cold and the snow. But we’ll hit some amazing scenery, drive fast through the flat, frozen, parts, and spend time in Banff and then to Vancouver Island where the weather is stormy and amazing. And I’m not going to lie: I can’t wait to see Vancouver again. The home, wherever it is, will be just an office and a place to get my mail, and when I’ve got what Uncle Sam (right now he’s that creepy uncle that tickles too much, but I’ll get over that…) requires, I’ll be right back where I long to be.

So, for all of you expecting me to show up for beer or coffee, I’m going to need a rain-check. Thank you so, so much for you hospitality. I’ll be in touch over coming days. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that adventures never go to plan, and the more easily you roll with changes, the more opportunities you find in the shifts and turns of circumstance. It’s taking me a massive shift to see 2012 differently than I’ve planned it, but Lord am I glad I’m not having to do it from a hospital bed this time. I’ll keep you posted. For now I need a decent night’s sleep at this roadside motel, and tomorrow I’ll head to Nova Scotia. Assuming they let me in.