A Trip to Nova Scotia

Vacation photography for me usually means a planned trip. Recently, however, chance opened the door to a much less-planned trip when the Republican National Convention came to town.  Because our office is situated in the “downtown perimeter zone,” we learned a month or so beforehand that it would be shut down for most of the week of the convention. This gave me several unexpected free days, thus providing an opportunity to take that trip that might not otherwise be on one’s radar.

I chose to visit part of the province of Nova Scotia because its Tobeatic Wilderness area is recognized as world heritage dark sky preserve. This held the promise of fantastic night time views of the heavens, and I wanted to do time-lapse star trail work.  The dates of the RNC aligned with both overcast weather conditions in Nova Scotia and a full moon. Bad luck. But there is a lot to see in Nova Scotia.

I went with my wife, and we spent our first three nights in a five star hotel nestled in the Nova Scotian forest. In true five-star fashion, as soon as you arrive they take care of everything. You do not have to lift a finger for anything. To get there, however, we drove from the airport at Halifax through unlit and mostly empty countryside, avoiding gaping potholes in the roads, looking for unfamiliar turnoffs down unpaved roads to show in the dark. We arrived after 11PM. Within minutes of stepping into the warm environs of Trout Point Lodge, the concierge took our car keys, our luggage, our apprehensions, our sense of being lost, and we knew immediately that we were somewhere special. None of the rooms have locks. Having left home at 4AM, we went straight to sleep.

On this trip I took a small backpack containing both my X-E2 and my X-T1, and a collection of lenses that would get me from 10mm to 200mm. I also packed a Really Right Stuff tripod, ball head, nodal slider for panoramas, an 8mm Samyang fisheye lens, a LumoPro speed light, and a couple of Pocket Wizards.

The Trout Point Lodge has hung four humming bird feeders in a row just outside the dining patio. Once I discovered this, I sat at the nearest table while eating my breakfast, observing and listening. I counted 6 birds at one time, hanging in the air like miniature sleek A-wing Fighters from Star Wars, all waiting to dock at one or another feeder.  There is a gender hierarchy and a dominance hierarchy. Frequent and thrilling aerial combat often ended with the loser being driven into the forest. There was no easy way to freeze-frame these wing-whippers without  throwing light at them.

One morning I aimed the LumoPro speedlight at them from the top of my tripod and used the Pocket Wizards to trigger it. From an outdoor breakfast table, I shot handheld at f/11 at the X-T1’s sync speed of 180th of second at ISO 640. You can imagine what this led to, with the bird’s wing speeds at up to 50 beats per second, and the incredible aerial acrobatics I was trying to capture. These guys just do not hold still. I got a mixed bag of results, and the next morning I tried a different approach.

I mounted my X-T1 to the tripod, and set a small but powerful flashlight (brought for use during starry-night work) on the top of it. Both were pointed at the nearest feeder. I set the X-T1 to ISO 6400, allowing a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second at f/8. I used the Fujifilm remote app on my phone to trigger it. This was a way cool thing, with me sitting at the breakfast table on the patio  observing the action via live view on my phone, and then triggering the shutter release via the phone when the action looked good. I got a different set of images with far more grain. I did not set on this trip out thinking I would shoot birds at all, let alone jet propulsion powered humming birds, and while none of the images were first class birds pics, but boy was I having fun.

Beyond the lodge the forest was undulating, dense, primordial. Within a hundred feet, you are lost in it. You get the sense that it never fully dries out, but remains soft and cushioning like a gym mattress. The lush ferns and pine forests grow dense and intertwined, multilayered, inviting and captivating. They are broken by rivers, streams, ponds, and lakes of almost every imaginable shape and size.

Not far from the lodge a wooden boardwalk follows one side of the river that flows past the lodge. I did some reconnoitering, and set the X-T1 up in portrait mode on the nodal slider on the tripod and did a series of overlapping shots to get a panorama of the forest and river.

We did some kayaking, during which I took the X-E2 with an 18-135 lens on a neck strap. The water was peaceful and serene. We then ate a pack lunch that the staff prepared for us—they bake the bread served at the lodge, and they hand-make ingredients for sandwiches. Our egg salad and BLT were way better than the same kind of sandwich I make at home. The next day we did some hiking on nearby trails. The one we chose started out easy, passing by several abandoned cabins, then became more and more wild, turning into a fern-filled wilderness the locals referred to as Jurassic Park. They suggested it should be a guided walk, so we turned back part way rather then risk getting lost.

Kejimkujik National Park has two parts, a seashore park and an interior park of lakes and forests. We visited both, going first to the seaside park along the Eastern shore, along the way visiting lighthouses, cliffside ocean views, and restaurants with amazing sea food chowder. At Kejimkujik seaside park itself, a cold, constant, and salty wind beats in from the open ocean over the barren land, stunting growth, shrouding the low-lying shrubs in fog. There is an open vista of very stunted trees. There are also wide open and low-lying portions where nature throws open a spectacular profusion of flowering yellows, whites, reds, pinks.

When we left the car to hike the sea shore park, I had my kit on my back, the tripod in one hand, and every intention of a fun and easy stroll taking a lot of pictures. We ended up walking 7 kilometers of trails in about three hours through a stark and breezy Kejimkujik, and while I was tired, I can honestly say I was grateful to be lugging the lighter Fujifilm gear. I put the 18-135 lens on the X-T1, used the tripod sparingly, mostly keeping it tied to the side of my bag, and did almost entirely hand-held shooting as we walked at a rapid pace. Images of the blooming flowers, for example, showed that it is possible to get decent depth of field under tough conditions with a hand-held X-T1.

People have stacked cairns along the shore in a surprising array of shapes. Of course, we had to add our own.

Tidal changes are large here, and especially on the bay side where the Bay of Fundy is known to have the largest tidal changes in the world. And the seaside cliffs of Nova Scotia are known for their lighthouses. When not in the park we visited the shore and a few lighthouses.  We hiked to the lighthouse up on the cliff at St. Mary’s. Then with the tide out, we stopped for some dinner in nearby Claire, and left the car in the lot and walked from the restaurant down to the water for a stroll on the beach.

After dinner we went back up the lighthouse at Cape St. Mary and took in the sunset and moonrise. The next day we drove down Digby Neck, and took a couple ferry trips to Brier Island at the neck’s end point. We stopped to visit Boar’s Head Lighthouse, first erected in 1863, site of a passage between Long Island and Digby Neck itself. The weather was perfect, the blue sky showing painted lines of clouds that I placed behind the lighthouse. Putting a polarizer on the lens, I shot to frame the purple flowers in the foreground and give the lighthouse the context of its perch on the edge of the cliffs.

I will say this about the friendliness of the Canadian people: it is over-the-top. Hands down among the friendliest folk I have ever met anywhere. And this was true without exception from the airport to the lodge operators. I would go back just because I could easily make some new friends.

 

 

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