Details Tell the Story

So, you know, one of the things that are great about winter camping trips in particular is that Christina makes a wicked quesadilla and this one's hot so it makes my hands feel better. But again, there's the detail shots. These are the fun things to get pictures of that help not only remind you of your trip but also informs other people about what your trip was like. And so it's those small things. As we were cruising the trails today we've had kind of this overcast sky, but the sun broke out.

And as soon as the sun broke out, you know wilderness travel allows you to go places that you normally don't go. And so you're seeing all of this wonderful snow patterns and these little twigs that are coming up and the sun hits them and they create shadows. And it does things that you just don't see normally. Those are great things to take pictures of because there was these little zen like moments that you see along the trail that add a whole lot of spice to whatever it is you're out doing. We're with dog teams.

So right now the dogs are sleeping and there was a little bit of snow that came down and as a little bit of snow came down it just rests right on top of their fur. Wasn't that a great time to come up when they're resting and they got their eyes closed to get detailed shots of the dogs with new snowflakes on their faces. So all of these little elements all of these things come together, closeups of the guides closeups of somebody's frozen boots any number of these things adds information. It helps promote communication visually and it makes the wealth of the story much more interesting to look at and compelling for someone to come by rather than just seeing pretty picture, pretty picture, pretty picture. It's the nuts and bolts of your visual story.

Dog yard here. We've, dog yard that will hold about a hundred dogs. And it's all these wonderful Canadian Inuit dogs. And it's a great place to come and get fantastic photos not only at the dog yard, but of course on your trip. But I hear people all the time say I could spend all day the dog yard.

And of course you can this is just a heaven for a photographer because there's not only color there's action. There's personalities because these dogs are like people they've got as much personality as everybody else has. There's such a history to these Canadian Inuit dogs. You know, they've been around for over 5,000 years taking Inuit across the boreal above the boreal Arctic circle for my gosh, thousands of years. So there's a tremendous history to these guys.

They're strong, they're freight dogs, they're not racing dogs they don't go a hundred miles an hour but they can pull you through anything. So the significance of these animals to wintergreen dog sled lodge are significant. And so, you've got, when a dog passes away if you look behind me here you've got what they call the dog hall of fame. So when a dog passes away, their names are put up on the hall of fame here to last forever and remind us of how many dogs have passed through here. And one of the great things about the dog hall of fame as you walk around, you can see, they wrap around everywhere and I've been running workshops here, dog sled workshops here now for over 20 years.

And I know almost every one of the dogs that are on here which is kind of fun and kind of warming when you see it. So as a photographer telling a story about a place you see something like this, you go, Oh that's kind of cool. What are all these dog names? Well, one of the things that's great about something like this is my goodness. When you get that message as a photographer.

Hey, that's kind of cool. That should be right off the bat. Well, that's really cool. So that means I need to get a photo of it. So you get a case like this, you know and why not get a shot of this and be creative because they're wrapping around the corner.

I've got a wide angle lens on here. I can come in and I can get a shot that kind of shows a wraparound. So it does two things. One, it creates an interesting design. Whereas if I'm right here as kind of a flat shot I can come in and get a detail of all of the names, which is nice, but it's two dimensional.

But if I come here, you can, two things I create interest in the shot because now it's three dimensional, but it also gives your audience the concept that there's been a lot of dogs here because it's not only on one wall filling it it's wrapping around and going to another wall. That's how many dogs have come through here and that's how special these dogs are. I'm not big on signs. I don't like to shoot signs, but this is information. This is history.

You know, you've got Chewbacca, you know, Wallaby. My gosh Lumi, who was a great dog. Lupus who was a great dog. Ottawa was a fabulous dog. So it becomes part of the history of wintergreen and for a photographer documenting a place like wintergreen, it's a great thing to snap shots of.