Sorry, no blue water in this image. It was shot in colour with my Canon G10, but I really like it in black and white. I’m a big fan of Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, and some of my favourite images are from a series of his called Seascapes. The image above was inspired by the work of Sugimoto, who gained notoriety recently when one of his photos was used on the cover of U2’s latest album No Line on the Horizon. I discovered his work in a book store a few years ago, and ever since then I’ve been wanting to produce a similar image of Lake Huron. I tried a few times in the past, but the weather and light never cooperated. So I felt lucky to get this shot on a hazy morning during my last visit to Sarnia.

At first glance, I will admit that the image may seem a bit plain, even dull. In all honesty, this was also my first reaction to some of Sugimoto’s images. However, the longer I looked at his photos the more I started to like them. The minimalist compositions with vast empty skies and boundless water have a real Zen quality to them. I could imagine myself staring into them and getting lost in the space between the water and the sky. Great for meditating or doing yoga (note to self: start meditating and doing more yoga) and I think I captured some of that feeling in the photo above. I’m hoping to make a large print of it soon, but I’m not too sure how the G10 files will hold up.

The images below were shot a couple of days later. They are more dramatic then the one above, but they still contain some of that simplicity and serenity that I was looking for. I’m kind of torn between the colour and black and white, and I like them both. What do you think? Please feel free to share your comments.

It’s Canada Day today, so I thought I’d share a photo I made a couple years ago. I tried to reproduce our beautiful Canadian flag, au naturel, on a sunny, fall day using maple leaves and rock.

Here’s a recent shot of some homemade chicken soup. It’s based on the recipe for Home-style Chicken Soup in Barbara Kafka’s excellent book Roasting: A Simple Art. This is my second attempt making chicken soup from scratch, and this time I think I made a mistake by making the stock in a slow cooker. The first time I did it I boiled the cut-up carcass on the stove as the book recommends, but this time I didn’t want to watch the stove all day and put it in a slow cooker on high for a few hours, then on low for about 12 hours. The stove-top method seemed to extract a lot more flavour from the bones, probably due to the higher temperatures.

The first time I also deglazed the pan and added the drippings to the stock, but the second time I used the drippings for gravy. So that probably made a big difference as well.

This photo was also an opportunity for me to try some new lighting techniques. It is lit entirely by studio strobes, but the goal was to make the light look as natural as possible. I think I succeeded and it looks very similar to broad window light, yet still has some directional qualities as evidenced by the soft shadows.