15 of My All Time Favorite Landscape Photographs
Newfoundland landscape and scenery photography is perhaps the easiest of all of my photography hobbies. Reason being, well, we’re in Newfoundland and Labrador, one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring places in all the world. From the windy and weathered east coast, wherein the gem that is the East Coast Trail makes views and incredible vistas readily accessible to pretty much everyone, to the absolute jaw dropping panoramas that line and dot the west coast of the island portion of the province, all the way from St. Anthony to Port aux Basques. And I’d be remiss to forget Labrador, with a whole new level of remoteness that grants one solitude that is simply priceless.
Below is a small sampling of my landscape collection. Some of these are for sale please contact to order.
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- Nothing says St. John’s like little colorful houses dotting the streets.
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- I think Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers sum it up perfectly with the lyrics from their song, The Hillside in September I have seen the sunrise off the banks of Newfoundland Walked across the beaches of her brown and purple sand Sat and watched the maple turning scarlet in the sun On the hillside in September. Every autumn when we’re lucky enough to be treated to fall colour as lovely as this I can’t help but hear that song, a constant but dulcet ear-worm. Shot near Holyrood on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsular.
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- I shot this in the summer of 2017 and it quickly became my favorite photo of my whole trip out to the west coast and Northern Peninsula. The flowers that naturally lead your eye across the ocean bay up into distant hills give depth and scale to a colorful photograph. If you ever find yourself in the northern reaches of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula I urge you ot visit Roddickton, essentially as far down the main road you can travel till you hit water. It’s a delightful community with a lot of opportunity to explore and hike, blazing your own trail along the coast. This photograph features some of what you’d see if you did venture out that way.
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- The skyline of St. John’s is a unique one. No skyscrapers, old churches still dominating and sprawling city in the background.
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- We drove from St. John’s out the highway and the further away from town we were the heavier it was snowing. As we got to Avondale the visibility was almost nil but we pressed on. With just 15 minutes of daylight left in the sky, the snow stopped and everything was perfect for just one moment and that’s when I took this photo. Well it seems as though the boats identity is finally known. A recently published article in The Telegram from Josh Pennell discusses how the town of Conception Harbour enlisted the help of the Shipwreck Society to map out the various sunken vessels in the area. While doing that, the Shipwreck Society also discovered that the boat pictured above — which had previously been rumored to be called the “S.S Sposa” — is actually the “S.S Charcot”, part of a fleet of whaling boats belonging to the now defunct firm known as Hawke Harbour Whaling Co.
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- The only cloverleaf overpass in all of Newfoundland and Labrador. Pictured here in a time lapse photo with all of the traffic moving through every lane and ramp there is. One of my favorite all time photos, one I’d wanted to do for nearly 20 years.
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- This is a photograph of an old wharf in Curzon Village which lays at the entrance to Bonne Bay in Newfoundland. In the distance you can see Rocky Harbour and Norris Point. If you’re looking for a colorful photo of Newfoundland, then you’ve found it. The pinks and blue hues together combine for some awesome eye candy.
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- A new angle on a familiar face. The Outer Battery of St. John’s from high above at twilight. One of my all time favorites. The Outer Battery might be one of the most colorful areas in all of St. John’s. The one road village at the bottom of a cliff was once a former fishing community and it still shows, as old fishing stages still line the harbors edge. This picture of the Outer Battery area was one of those “almost never happened” photos and, despite the proximity to the city, one of the slightly riskier photos I’ve hiked to shoot. Being surrounded by complete darkness atop the top of the Southside Hills is not fun. Trails that go off in every direction and peril awaits with steep cliffs and drops a constant presence. Several times we discussed and assessed our risk and whether or not we should turn back. It sounds silly, the city is right there. But honestly it only takes one misstep to find yourself down an embankment. Though I had a headlamp we took care to comment on our reverse markers as we made our way off trail to where I needed to be to shoot this photo. All of this made for an easy but still dangerous exit off the hill because the trail down the hill is damp, slippery and rather steep in several sections. Definitely not something I’d have enjoyed doing alone.
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- Sometimes you’ve just got to stop and look up at the stars to realize we’re ever so insignificant in this Universe of ours. And I spent this evening doing just that. Relaxing on the wharf with the entire sky above me, not a breathe of wind in the air on a surprisingly warm September evening. Amazing. Rarely will all of the requirements for an evening shooting the stars combine in such a delightful way: The moon had set at twilight. There was barely a cloud in the sky. The wind was calm, ensuring a glass like finish to the lake. And lastly, I was far enough away from the city to actually see the sky. I shot this photo of the night sky with a hint of the milky way with a Nikon D800 and Nikon 16mm fisheye.
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- This image is made from 95 images, each 30 seconds in length at f/2.8 ISO200. Body: Nikon D3 and 24-70 lens, cropped to 8×10, shot from Cape Spear, Newfoundland This is an image that I’ve had in mind for a while but hadn’t actually remembered to go shoot. The trick with this is that you can’t just open the shutter for a long period of time, ie: 30 minutes. If you were to do that, the light pollution from the city would eventually over power the stars and you’d have nothing but a glow of city light and very few stars. So how do we do this? Well to start you’re going to need either a body capable of interval shooting or a cable release with a shutter lock. Once you’ve got one of those, you’re going to need to shoot a LOT of images, all at the same settings, over the course of 20-30minutes (or longer really, longer the better). Once you’ve got your 100 or so images, each a long exposure, you’ll be combining them in Photoshop to form one image, like the one below. In this photo you can see the stars which make up the big dipper, planes landing at St. John’s International Airport (CYYT), a boat going out to sea, the car lights from Signal Hill, Fort Amherst and the East End of St. John’s.
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- A colorful timelapse photograph of the harbor arterial from where it crosses the viaduct into down town St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
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- Looking out over Holyrood and the bottom of Conception Bay. I love the view of the rolling hills and water from this vantage point.
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- Cape Spear in the mist. What a dreamlike photograph this turned out to be, almost like a painting.
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- It’s not very often that the St. John’s Harbor will completely freeze over but with utterly bitter temperatures we had to deal with during the winter of 2013-2014 it’s no surprised it spent almost a month walking the fine line of frozen over and about to freeze over on a daily basis. It was quite impressive to see and many said it hadn’t frozen over like this in over 20 years.