Bluenose II on the slip

Bluenose II was undergoing her 10-year American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) inspection on the slip in Lunenburg in December and was still on the slip during the holidays. It was a somewhat rare opportunity to see the schooner out of the water, let alone out of the water in the snow.

Photography in the Snow

 As a Trustee, I went to lunch in HMCS Sackville within the Dockyard on Friday during the first snowstorm of the year, and then decided to walk home after lunch via the bridge before going back to work from home. This provided some interesting photographic opportunities, all of which I decided to convert to high contrast black and white.

Sackville herself looked pretty in the snow.

HMCS Charlottetown alongside MV Asterix for refuelling.

Charlottetown and another frigate alongside in Dockyard during the snow.

The bridge itself similarly caught my eye.

The view from mid-span looking back towards Halifax.

Looking back towards Halifax from the Dartmouth bridge tower.

The views on the Dartmouth side of the bridge were also nice.

Windmill Road.

Shore Drive and the Harbour Pilot base on the Dartmouth shore.

Houses on Windmill Road.

Landscape view of Windmill Road.

It was a long slog across the bridge in the snow, but ultimately worth it for the photos.

Terminal Road

Last Saturday, I met a few friends down at the lower parking lot at Point Pleasant Park for a little photographic expedition. I wanted to take in the newly reconstructed walkway out to the end of the container pier, but for reasons unknown, it was gated off - possibly because of the impending weather event. Instead, we decided to walk the length of Terminal Road and see what caught our photographic fancy. Quite a lot, as it turned out.

We started by shooting over, through, and around the fence to capture the walls of containers in the Port.

As it turns out, there are quite a few of them.

The different colours of the containers added to their visual appeal, and it had also started snowing, which we worked into our photography.

At some point we noted that a train was arriving through the rail cut, just as the snow was intensifying.

As we got closer to the grain elevator, the old conveyor lines heading out to the piers caught our eyes.

Eventually, the gain elevator itself became our subject.

Between the rail cars in the foreground, the snow, and all the ducting running everywhere on the outside of the building, the engineer in me found it very hard to resist - and so I didn't. Many photographs ensued.

At some point the snow was getting rather wet and heavy, we were getting cold, and our camera gear was getting a bit on the wet side. We headed back to our cars, but not before I caught one last image of these traffic control signs placed ever-so-carefully in front of a red shed.

Everything on Terminal Road is very industrial, but I love that sort of thing, so our outing worked out quite well. We will likely go back sometime. Any maybe, just maybe, the pier walkway might be open that day.

A walk in the whirling snow

With a blizzard falling on Nova Scotia this afternoon, I had the opportunity to break out the camera for my walk home. I have only managed to time this right perhaps once or twice a winter over the last few years. For some reason, I seem to invariably convert these images to black and white - perhaps so I can safely increase the contrast without making the colours seem odd. 

Some of my images from this afternoon:

Halifax Central Library.

Nova Centre under construction, as seen through an arch.

The Grafton tunnel under Nova Centre. A slow shutter speed nicely blurred the passage of snow flakes.

Argyle Street in the snow, near the Carleton.

Commuters evacuating the downtown via Lower Water Street.

Alderney marshalling yard.

One of the gates to Leighton Dillman Park (aka Dartmouth Common).

Trees on Dartmouth Common.

Plus, one of my favourites from last year:

A bus leaving the Metro Transit bridge terminal in Dartmouth.

Now, all I have to do is shovel it all out of the driveway tomorrow morning. I'm not entirely sure it is worth it!

Morning Harbour Traffic

When I arrived at the ferry this morning, there were two ships at anchor hiding in the snow squall that enveloped the harbour. One was HMCS ATHABASKAN, after arriving earlier in the morning, with a geared bulker in the foreground (whose name I did not record):

Geared bulker with HMCS ATHABASKAN hiding in the background.

The snow squall eased a bit shortly after I took this photo, enough that I could see out into the harbour approaches as CCGS Sir William Alexander approached George's Island. 

CCGS Sir William Alexander with the George's Island lighthouse.

When conditions are right, you can see the ship's wake stretching out to either side for quite a distance.

Cold surf at Lawrencetown

We felt like getting out of the house this afternoon, so we headed out to Lawrencetown Beach to see what was up. It was a tad chilly, though bearable, and the entrance to the parking lot was a bit icy. I say "icy", but what I mean is that it had up to 8" of ice in places, and no ice in others, and the car sort of slid its way in through the ruts in the ice. 

Despite the blue sky when we arrived (or perhaps because it soon gave way to grey skies and snow), I was definitely in a black & white mood.

Still snow on the beach.

Snow. And dead grass. Or maybe it's just resting.

At least there was some good wave action, and some crazy people were even out surfing. 

I caught this wave just as it was breaking.

Same with this one.

Pretty sure you can see a theme here.

Aforementioned crazy surfer. She didn't last too long, and by my count made 6-7 runs for the beach. It appeared cold, and difficult to make it out any distance.

Foam on beach rocks.

In the shot above, I was playing with the continuous auto-focus tracking and 11 frames per second that the camera is capable of, and was pleasantly surprised that it was able to track the incoming waves (most of the time, anyway) and render the front of each wave in focus at f/4. You can make out the individual bubbles. 

Soon after this shot, my fingers decided they were cold enough, and mutinied. I then bravely decided it was time to go back and rescue the wife from the rugrats, who were by this time running loose in the car.