 The story on how I came into the field of photography dates back to 1998 when I first started to extensively travel around the province photographing and documenting scenic lighthouses, covered bridges, roadside attractions, decaying houses, waterfalls, flowers, and other scenic objects and things. At that time there was little or no information to be had at all on where you could find many of these things in the province. There were no books, brochures or websites out there, basically hardly any information at all except for maybe a few scattered resources here and there.  By using just the New Brunswick Atlas Mapbook and the 1:50,000 scale topographical maps, as well as some information from the then provincial tourism website, I managed to track down and find the vast majority of lighthouses & covered bridges but it certainly wasn't easy! A lot of the information available, then and now, was inaccurate or just out-of-date. For instance on the topo maps (circa 1970's revision) it would show a lighthouse symbol for a lighthouse that no longer existed (in some cases not for 20 or 30 years) when it was replaced by a steel skeletal tower sometime in its past. On another government map it would show some of the lighthouses but totally miss other important ones like Cape Enrage! As well replica lights were not listed at all and many de-commissioned lighthouses that were sold and moved off-site had to be tracked down all over again. I found that by asking the local people was the best and most reliable source of information to be had on where to find these relocated lights. Covered Bridges were even harder to find and were not even on the maps! My very first photos, taken many years ago, was using a cheap Hanimex 35 mm camera. I later replaced that one with a great Nikon 35mm about 8 years ago. BUT I have had my greatest success using a high-quality digital camera. The first one I had was a cheap Agfa digital used for shooting photos for the web only. I currently use an exceptional Toshiba 3.3 megapixel camera with built in 6 times optical zoom lens (with 2 - 128 MB cards plus a few other cards) and have gotten some really incredible results from this mid-range camera (prints out 11X14 quite nicely)! This camera takes better photos than a 35mm camera could ever do! Plus with digital you get total control over the whole development process from start to finish. You don't have to depend on the folks at a colour lab to develop your pics meaning you also save money. You can use a program like Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to fine tune your pics: you can paint out powerlines, enhance the colour, adjust the brightness and contrast, curves, masking, etc. You can do everything that the photo lab does and much more. With the arrival of digital it does mean the slow demise of the photo lab is at hand, or at least there will be a lot fewer of them around in the future! Going digital means you don't get anymore bad photos as you can print only the ones you like and delete the ones that don't turn out! No more wasted money on film and film development. But then again to take a great photo its not so much the camera you have but the "eye" behind the camera that takes the photo! You can spend $6-10 thousand dollars or more and you can still get some real lousy pics. Likewise you could use a cheap 35 mm or digital camera and get some really phenomenal shots!    Copyright© 2001-2006. All Rights Reserved. |
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