I don’t think there’s a better way to see the backcountry than a canoe. Unless it’s windy, then it’s bloody frightening and I’d rather be on solid ground. But on this day, the weather was great and the exploring was fun. We went all over the place in the canoe, spending a bit of time on the spectacular white sandy beach of backcountry campsite number 32 at Kejimkujik National Park. It doesn’t get any better than this spot.

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Camera: Mamiya 6 medium-format rangefinder
Lens: Mamiya 75mm
Filter: #15 deep yellow
Film: Fuji Neopan 400
Developer: Rodinal 1+50
Development: Small tank for 11 minutes at 20 degrees Celsius. Agitation was for the first thirty seconds, then five inversions per minute.
Date: May, 2010
Location: 44.312917,-65.278430
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.

I don’t normally go anywhere near Lunenburg in the summer time as it’s completely overrun with tourists and difficult to enjoy. My favourite time of the year to visit is the fall and early winter. The light is still beautiful and you pretty much get the place to yourself. You get to actually interact with the people who live there.

This year though my brother and sister-in-law came for a visit in June, so it wasn’t too bad. This awesome bike leaning up against the cracked white side of a house was begging for me to take its photo. I think that when I print this I’ll tone it somehow, maybe in sepia or tea.

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Camera: Mamiya 6 medium-format rangefinder
Lens: Mamiya 75mm
Filter: #15 yellow
Film: Fuji Neopan 400
Developer: Rodinal 1+50
Development: Small tank for 11 minutes at 20 degrees Celsius. Agitation was for the first thirty seconds, then five inversions per minute.
Date: June, 2010
Location: 44.376073,-64.308399
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.

On a steamy walk home I decided to stop in to the Old Burying Ground on Barrington Street to take an instant snap of some old stones in the shadows.

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Camera: Fuji Instax 210
Lens: 95mm
Filter: n/a
Film: Fuji Instax
Developer: n/a
Development: n/a
Date: July, 2010
Location: 44.643659,-63.572852
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.

Sitting in the middle of Halifax Harbour is George’s Island, mostly used for military and defence reasons in the not too distant past.

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Camera: Fuji Instax 210
Lens: 95mm
Filter: n/a
Film: Fuji Instax
Developer: n/a
Development: n/a
Date: July, 2010
Location: 44.645062,-63.567864
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.

In honour of the Queen coming to Halifax, here’s a photo of where she’ll be staying, Government House. At least I think she stays here. Anyway, it’d be cool if she did since I live kitty corner. I’ve lived all over the place, east, west and central Canada, across the street from and next-door to some interesting characters, but the Queen might take the top of the list.

Anyway, this is the front elevation. The entrance most people know — the driveway on Barrington Street — is actually the rear of the mansion, which faces the Old Burying Ground. It’s also the oldest vice-regal residence in North America. So, I hope to give the Queen a wave on my way to and from work on Monday.

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Camera: Mamiya 6 medium-format rangefinder
Lens: Mamiya 75mm
Filter: #8 yellow
Film: Fuji Acros 100
Developer: Rodinal 1+100
Development: Small tank for 18 minutes at 20 degrees Celsius. Agitation was for the first 15 seconds of the first three minutes, then one inversion every three minutes.
Date: April, 2010
Location: 44.643614,-63.570711
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.

Well, I do love me an old, stately train station and the grandaddy of them all is Grand Central Terminal in New York City. You hear lots about it, you see it all over the television and movie screen, but being there really is something special. It just feels good to be in a place devoted to moving people around in a classy way.

The station itself is gorgeous. It’s a bit of a tired cliché, but we really don’t build like this anymore. So grand and ornate. Massive blocks and complicated patterns. And perhaps the most striking of it all, the cleanliness. I may be gushing here, but it felt almost holy standing in the middle of the main concourse. Many thousands of people make their way through this station every day and it was spotless. The crowd was hushed, perhaps in awe of where they were. Whatever the reason, it’s a special place.

On our way back out to E 42nd Street — my brother and I did an epic walking tour of the city that day, 16km in total — I spotted a lone person tucked into the corner working on his laptop. With the sun streaming in the front window and the beautiful chandelier hanging, it was another shot I couldn’t resist. I can’t wait to get into the darkroom and print this one.

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Camera: Mamiya 6 medium-format rangefinder
Lens: Mamiya 75mm
Filter: #15 deep yellow
Film: Fuji Acros 100
Developer: Rodinal 1+100
Development: Small tank for 18 minutes at 20 degrees Celsius. Agitation was for the first 15 seconds of the first three minutes, then one inversion every three minutes.
Date: May, 2010
Location: 40.752291,-73.977534
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.

The Trinity Church in New York is a bit of an oasis in the heart of the big city. It’s located at Broadway and Wall Street and was first constructed in 1698. The current building is the third at that location. The first was destroyed in the Great New York City Fire of 1776, the second was torn down after heavy snow weakened it in 1838. This is one of the doors on the north side of the church, overlooking the small but very interesting cemetery.

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Camera: Mamiya 6 medium-format rangefinder
Lens: Mamiya 75mm
Filter: #15 deep yellow
Film: Fuji Neopan 400
Developer: Rodinal 1+50
Development: Small tank for 11 minutes at 20 degrees Celsius. Agitation was for the first thirty sec­onds, then four inversions per minute.
Date: May, 2010
Location: 40.708184,-74.012176
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.

This is my submission for 2010 World Pinhole Photography Day. It’s the Old Town Clock here in Halifax, a recognizable landmark around here if ever there was one. It was built on order of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and went into service in October of 1803.

As you might imagine, I got a few strange looks carrying my tiny little wooden box camera around. It looks absolutely ridiculous attached to my giant tripod, but when every exposure is a long exposure, you have deal with the looks. It’s worth it though, lensless photography is fun every now and then. It lends a strange slightly unfocussed dreamlike quality to an image. I find it frees me a little from the clinical process photography tends to be. It puts a smile on my face when measuring shutter speeds in steamboats or by time ticking away on a watch.

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Camera: Zero Image 2000 6x6 pinhole
Lens: None
Filter: None
Film: Fuji Acros 100
Developer: Rodinal 1+100
Development: Small tank for 18 minutes at 20 degrees Celsius. Agitation was for 15 seconds each for the first three minutes, then one inversion every three minutes.
Date: April, 2010
Location: 44.647355,-63.577367
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.
Notes: Exposure was for about 1 second at f138.

When I lived out west near gold-rush country I used to find a ghost town in just about any direction. I’d be out in the middle of nowhere and find the creepiest things. Heck, I’ve even spent the night all by myself in a ghost town. Creepy. So now that I live on the east coast where there’s a slightly longer history, I was hoping to find some interesting abandoned towns here. I haven’t been too successful with that mission, but since I’m new around here, perhaps I’m not looking hard enough.

I did manage to find Roxbury though. Wasn’t hard as it’s right there on page 76 of the Hiking Trails of Nova Scotia book. It’s a bit of a hike to get in and back if you’re not an ATV — about 17km round-trip — and the trail can be a bit muddy in the spring and fall, but that’s what a good pair of boots are for. Normally I’d just do this sort of thing by myself — there isn’t anyone lined up at my door to hike 17km in the mud, surprisingly — but I recruited a co-worker to make the journey. So, off we went down the old road.

We made our way all the way to Roxbury, and to the end of the “road” at Pleasant Lake, quite a beautiful spot. I can see why people lived here. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot left of the old town. The most notable features are the stone fence/walls that line the road for a good stretch. They’re a little creepy because you know they’re man-made, but they’re sufficiently old and grown over to appear like they’re there naturally. There are also open wells in the woods, so if you decide to go off-trail, make sure to keep your eyes glued to the ground. We came across one in what appeared to be an old yard, and though it wasn’t super deep, you wouldn’t want to fall in.

If you stick to the road you won’t see a whole lot, but if you do a little bushwhacking you can find what look to be old stone foundations and root cellars. Same kind of weirdness as the man-made-but-grown-over feeling of the stone walls. But the best thing about making the hike to Roxbury is the cemetery. To find the cemetery you need to take a side trail off the main road and hike about 200m over some fallen trees and around some bends. Nothing provides a connection to generations gone like a cemetery. The stone walls and foundations are neat, but there’s no sign of people. See a headstone sticking out of the ground in the middle of the forest and it’s an immediate holy crap people really did live here a hundred years ago feeling.

The cemetery is small and unkept but insanely interesting. There are only a few stones, the oldest dating back to the mid-19th century. It’s a mixture of fascination and sadness for me to find a place like this. It just feels so utterly forgotten. The point of putting up headstones is to be remembered and these folks are so off the beaten track and seemingly uncared for it doesn’t quite feel right. Then again I should stop being so sentimental.

It doesn’t help the sentiment-reducing part of my brain to see a headstone like this one. One that just says “BABY”. A small, unadorned stone with a simple, almost cold inscription. When we came upon the cemetery a few of the stones had been moved and placed upright on trees, or in this case, another headstone. It was late afternoon and the sun had come around and was getting low. I love this kind of light. As I kneeled next to this stone, all sorts of stories and thoughts racing around in my head, the letters on the stone magically darkened. Alright I know, direct light plus surface depth equals shadow, but from the angle I was at I couldn’t read the inscription. Then, for just a moment, there it was.

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Camera: Mamiya 6 medium-format rangefinder
Lens: Mamiya 75mm
Filter: #8 yellow
Film: Fuji Acros 100
Developer: Rodinal 1+100
Development: Small tank for 18 minutes at 20 degrees Celsius. Agitation was for the last 15 seconds for the first three minutes, then once every three minutes.
Date: April, 2010
Location: 44.80470,-65.16820
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.

Seriously, wet tree bark and wet stone against a background of clean, white, undisturbed snow is pretty unbeatable when it comes to black and white. Since the cemetery was closed, I had to poke my lens through a space in the fence and crouch down a little to get a decent angle. With a thick blanket of snow, the cemetery gets even more quiet and peaceful. You can tell how gentle the snow was falling, it settled oh so perfectly on the lettering of the headstone on the left.

For those that don’t know, that’s Dalhousie University’s Sexton Campus to the back-left and the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia to the back-right.

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Camera: Mamiya 6 medium-format rangefinder
Lens: Mamiya 75mm
Filter: #8 yellow
Film: Fuji Acros 100
Developer: Kodak XTOL 1+3
Development: Small tank for 14 minutes at 20 degrees Celsius. Agitation was for the first minute, then five inversions per minute.
Date: February, 2010
Location: 44.643296,-63.572174
Copyright: 2010 Chris Jones. All rights reserved.