From Black to White

It has been awhile since I have been in touch. I am now on a new project and since I had so many wonderful comments on my last blog I have decided to resume writing.

For the last three years I have wanted to go photograph the winter in a very remote region of Quebec in Canada. The Gaspe Peninsula. I have visited this area in the summer months and fell in love with it's special qualities. The water, the space, the people, the tranquility and the realness of all my experiences here. I have good friends live here for part of the year and whom we have visited. It has always been special. I always leave feeling whole and grounded.

I have often asked about the winter and am always told that everything is closed and there is no one here.. Since I don't usually pay attention when people tell me things like that, I sensed that in fact this was probably the Gaspesian's secret. So, I decided that this winter I would come see it for myself. I am presently sitting in my friend's house in Shigawake on the Baie des Chaleurs and there is a snowstorm raging and I cannot wait to get out early tomorrow morning to see what it will be like. It is mesmerizing here.

For the last 3 days I have been slowly making my way up from Montreal. we stopped and spent an hour or so in Kamouraska where the river was frozen solid. Then we drove up to Metis where the Reford gardens are. This is the place where my garden at Night project began. I spent a night at a B&B and then the next day went to the garden where I photographed it in snow in the DAYTIME..

a complete trasformation from black to white..

There was something special about entering the garden on snowshoes, making fresh tracks in the snow and viewing the same garden I know so well covered in snow, filled with strange creatures created out of burlap. Seeing the slivers of water peeking from the streams and finding the last berries hanging on to branches for dear life. Like nighttime it was quiet and spritual, but very different visually and in many ways alot harder to photograph. We then came back at nightfall and took a few shots but didn't last too long.. It was -22 degrees.