House on Mount Nuttby

Whilst driving to Tatamagouche on Saturday, I passed by the former location of the abandoned house on Mount Nuttby. I was aware that the house had been torn down, but it was still a bit weird to stop at the gate and look out, thinking that there should have been a decaying house in the now-empty field. 

The now empty site of the former house on Mount Nuttby.

In years past, the house was a magnet for photographers, and I was no exception, starting in at least 2005 (I suspect I have some film images as well, but can't find them at the moment).

The back of the house was propped up to prevent it from collapsing.

This dormer bore some of the most obvious signs of collapse on the front of the house.

During one visit, we were lucky enough to have some fog gracing the background.

The house in April 2005.

The house continued to deteriorate, and depending on how long one went between visits, it became obvious that the house wouldn't remain standing forever. Contrast the photos above and below, in particular around the dormer.

The house in April 2006.

On one occasion, in June 2005, a number of us visited the house at night, and played with light painting. 

This image best shows the posts propping up the back wing of the building.

Our nighttime visit coincided with a full moon. This particular visit was somewhat creepy, as a herd of cows stood just out of our lights behind us in the field, and watched our activities. We could feel the eyes boring into the back of our heads.

We placed a flashlight inside the house to light up some of the ground floor windows.

We shone a light on the front of the house so this wasn't a simple silhouette from the full moon behind.

At the time these photos were taken, I was using a 6 megapixel Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D - the first digital SLR released by Minolta (& ancestor to modern Sony A-mount DSLRs), and based upon one of its last film SLRs - the Maxxum 7. While the 7D was a decent first effort, and the camera body was quite wonderful to use, the sensor itself was behind the standard of competing Canon and Nikon digital SLRs which at the time were being fitted with 8 megapixel sensors capable of better dynamic range and higher ISOs. As a result, these images are not terribly sharp, and the night images in particular contain many hot pixels due to the long exposures. There is also lens flare present (probably the result of older lenses with less advanced coatings), and they suffer from another issue unique to the early Minolta DSLRs - these cameras were the first to have sensor-stabilization within the camera body, and the mechanism put off heat that tended to appear as a purple haze in the top left corner of any long exposure image. These are no exception, and I had to crop it out. Digital cameras have matured considerably in the years since these images were taken, and I often look at older photos I have taken and wish I could put modern camera gear into the hands of my younger self.

In summary, you often can't go back again - either because they tore the house down, or because modern camera gear has improved to the point that you don't want to.