Note - This was recorded on March 17th 2020.

Welcome to my first journal entry with photos from Fogo Island, NL. This is has sat in the cue for a little while - we've got a lot of photos to go through.

I've got a lot more journal entries to go in the future, if you're reading this from in the future there's lots to read and look at already, but I’ll at least try and do a couple of month and kinda go from there.

These journal entries are a new way to consume my photography in a longer form, paired with a podcast that you can listen to while you scroll through each gallery of photographs. Each photo will be numbered, so as you listen we can follow along together and I can share stories and perspectives about each photo and you take take more away from it.

Images today are consumed in such large quantities, each for fractions of a second - the goal of this is to really slow things down, and dive in to each photo a little further.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this new format of sharing photography. Shoot me an email or DM, tag me on an IG story, whatever - I can’t wait to hear from you.

Getting right into it, this trip was initially supposed to be a film photo trip.

I had picked up a camera a little while ago, about a year and a half ago - the RB67 with a 60mm lens on it - and I had never shot it. I picked it up for a photo project that I never actually completed, and it was just before this trip that I took it out to put a test roll through it. I shot that roll in a day and just did a little walk around, then I took the roll of HP5 to get developed and it came back pretty good. So, I was under the assumption that the camera was good to go and it would work out okay. Fast-forward to the trip at Fogo Island, and it didn't work out.

This is what my rolls of film came back from the lab. I had shot 9 or 10 rolls, one of them came back fully blank and out of the nine that had photos on them, there were only about one to four photos on every roll and some of those photos in that roll were not great. They're blurry, and on angles because the shutter stuck and on all the blank ones, the shutter stuck so much that it didn't capture anything.

Below are of all the outtakes from the trip - I just wanted to get these all out of the way quickly so we can actually get into the good stuff.

3 - Fuji Pro 400H

4 - Fuji Pro 400H

5 - Fuji Pro 400H

6 - Lomo 400

7 - Lomo 400

8 - Astia 100F

9 - Astia 100F

10 - Portra 400VC

We start a trip here, this is probably one of my favourite airplane window photos that I've taken. I just want to share what my airplane food was, just to document the trip a little bit and I thought I would toss it in here - nothing special.

Below are some of the first Polaroids of the trip. They're also the first Polaroids with another new camera that I'd purchased - a MINT slr670-x. It's basically a customized Polaroid SX-70 that allows manual shutter control, and you can take over the exposure system inside of the camera.

I knew Polaroids don't work that well in the cold - while I was out there it was hovering around minus 10 to plus 5 degrees celsius - so I was hoping that I would be able to take the photo and keep it warm under my arm or in my pocket while it developed.

This is kind of the first scene that I saw when I arrived to Gander, NL. When I arrived to the hotel there were these massive snow banks fencing in the entire parking lot of the hotel, maybe 10-20ft high.

To get to Fogo Island, you have to take a ferry. It's not along ferry ride, I think it was about an hour or so. It's a neat experience, it's not something that I or many others usually get to do. Being from the prairies, you don't have to take a ferry anywhere.

18 is just from the lobby, 17 is just from the top viewing deck showing how it framed the path we were taking with the vehicles facing out towards the back of the boat. In 19 it kinda reminded me of a Polaroid film that Impossible Project used to make that had circle frames instead of the classic square boarder, which was super cool for portraits. With this particular photo there were these porthole windows on both sides of the ferry and I wanted to frame up the dock inside of this porthole as an imitation or mock representation of those Polaroid circle frames.

Some of the gear that I brought along with me was the Mamiya RB67 with the grip and prism. Those three things combined are heavy - not something that most people travel with, especially in a backpack. It's a massive, heavy camera. I wanted to bring that along with me because I prefer the 6x7 format compared to 6x6, and that's the only camera I have that 6x7 at the moment. I have a Yashica 6x6 TLR but to be totally honest, I kind of find 6x6 to be a little boring. Instagram started on square photos, and it’s reminds me a little bit of that - which feels a little too digital.

Other things in the bag are my Nikon DSLR, my Nikon F100, 24-70 f/2.8, 70-200 f/2.8(didn’t actually use this), Lomography Instax Square, MINT slr670-x, Sekonic Light Meter, and the film I would shoot on this trip.

23 is the first photo I took once I arrived to Fogo Island, NL. It ended up being pretty cloudy while I was there, and this was the first little scene I saw once I got to the island. I found it interesting because it shows the tide at it’s lowest point and at it’s highest point - which is the line on the rock. Below are some of the first film photos taken on this trip - with the Mamiya RB67. Luckily I did take digital versions of a lot of the scenes, as I still didn’t trust the camera 100% - which in hindsight was a good thing seeing what I came back with and got developed.

In 27, I like how the shed is picking up on some of the tones and colours that exist throughout the landscape, and it almost blends into the scene. A lot of the houses at Fogo Island are painted white, which blend in during the winter and pick up the colours up from the landscape.

With the photo below, I found it weird how there was a boat left frozen in the ice, most of the boats are taken out of the water during the winter. Between the cracks on the ice and the one singular red shed reflecting on the cracked ice and the boat frozen suck in the water, I thought this was a unique maritime scene.

I haven't done a photo trip in quite a while, and I haven't shot film in 3-4 years. I used to shoot it all the time but lately between work and other hobbies, I just never got out and shot - so this was one of the first big photo trips that I had taken in a while. During the time when I hadn’t photographed much, I've picked up different interests - one of those being architecture and architecture photography, specifically.

You'll see some of the photos in this gallery are inspired by that and I wanted to capture these regular everyday maritime scenes and buildings in a way that showcased some of these buildings in a new way. An architect didn't design or build these, just a regular everyday person built these for a purpose - while at the same time, they are architecturally beautiful, especially this one with it being so minimal. I love the look of these slat boards on the sides of all the sheds and homes you find around Fogo Island.

In 35, there was this grouping of two sheds - one unpainted, rougher and raw shed with a newer painted one beside it, and what caught my eye was the salt beef bucket used to cover the chimney of the red shed over the winter. It seemed very “Newfoundland” to use what you had on hand to solve a problem that would otherwise require some other special cover to prevent snow from getting inside of the chimney, but in this case using an old salt beef bucket did the job.

When I got to there, I hopped out of the car on the side of the road and there was this one golden retriever lab that jumped up on me - it was super friendly, and I never caught it’s name but it stuck around while I photographed these two sheds. At one point he popped into my frame and I quickly snapped a photo of the dog, then 3-4 seconds after I snapped this photo it bolted a way to run back home.

Fogo island, especially in the winter isn’t much of a tourist destination. In the winter most things are shut down, like the restaurants and tourist attractions. Even the Fogo Island Inn was doing renovations while I was there - I was hoping to have lunch or dinner there, which didn’t end up happening.

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I took a lot of photos of the house below. I captured it from all angles, with both film and digital. I took a few Polaroids of it and specifically in 42, you can see what I was talking about when I said Polaroid film doesn't develop that great in the cold. Even when the temperature is around 0 degrees Celsius, it doesn’t fully develop - leaving you with a strong blue cast across the frame. We’ll see a few more Polaroids and instant photos further into the gallery with similar results.

43, this is a few of the first good photos that came off my role of expired Portra 400VC. I brought a couple of roles of this along with me and I like the tones that came out of this.

Sam with 45 and 46, I like how the colours rendered with the orange tan tones of the rock and how that blends into the water, and the trees and snow covered hills around it.

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In the photos above, I found this particular home in a interesting just because of the large wood pile that you can see to the left of the frame, and in 54 I found it framed up really nicely with the curved Road towards this end of the bay.

This was where I was staying at Fogo Island, it was one of the first houses that was between the ocean and the rest of the island. When a huge storm came the following day, there was nothing to break the wind so the house was shaking throughout the whole entire day. Windows were creaking and whistling, the power was flicking on and off, it wasn’t the kind of weather that you wanted to be outside in.

My first meal consisted a simple spaghetti with sauce, Roast Chicken chips (a Newfoundland specialty), and Iceberg beer - which is brewed in Quidi Vidi, NL with the water from icebergs that float down the coast of Newfoundland.

These were some of the only photos I took from inside that stormy day. It was the one of many big storms that hit the island in the weeks before, during, and after I was there - bringing 120-130km/h wind gusts, 10-20cm of snow (on top of all the snow that was already there), and mild but chilly temperatures due to the wind.

Eventually, I did pop outside in the evening after most of the storm had passed and even then I was standing sideways because the wind was blowing me over.

In photo 62, was the first photo I'd taken after going out into the storm and it sets up stormy Fogo Island well, with the landscape being so barren on the left side, and the buildings and architecture that you see on Fogo Island to the right side, but then the beast of an ocean that's in the background, attacking the shores of Fogo island. It captured the full story of that moment into one photo, which I’m happy about.

It was getting quite dark at this point, and it was still quite windy as I walked around Joe Batt’s Arm.

With a lot of these I did have to crank up the ISO quite high, they do get a little grainy, but I still wanted to capture some of the scenes.

I didn't take my film cameras out with me, just because it was so stormy and I didn't want to have to deal with changing rolls of film in 80-90km/h winds or getting snow kind of stuck in the camera. Digital makes things simpler in low light anyway.

In 73, I liked how you can only see the one street light which lights up area below it, but also this Y of the street. there's just having the two different pathways that you can go down, but only one of them has a street light and one's a little darker. 74 isn’t a photo I would normally compose, but I’ve been trying to take photos that are a little outside of my comfort zone to develop a newer style with my photography.

75 was one of my favourite photos, with the light at the end of the road and the angry ocean in the background. In 76, I just wanted to capture the one perspective I stood at for 15-20min as I had my hood up I had all my layers on - but amazed by nature and the wild waves. These are probably 10-20ft waves, which is the biggest I've ever seen.

The fact that I’m stuck on this little island with no where to go because the ferries aren’t operating due to the storm, and that there's this huge massive angry ocean in front of you with nothing beyond that - it's just the wide open Atlantic Ocean - is a weird feeling.

Below are some of the night time photos of the town and houses around Joe Batt’s Arm.

Lending some inspiration from some of my favourite photographers lately (Anojon on IG, Willem Verbeek, Joe Greer, etc) I wanted to capture some of the homes at night which people were in to seek shelter from the storm that was happening around them. 77 being my favourite - having the classic design of the home and the light shining through the window.

Below is the same Y in the road as seen before, but at a later time and different composition. This one has all of the features of the other photo, but it also brings in the home of the foreground into the scene. Most of the houses had their lights turned off and they were in bed.

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86 was particularly interesting just because of that Y in the road with the two different pathways that you take, and in the middle of the Y was a garage that still had their red and green lights on - post-Christmas and holiday season.

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The next set of photos are a brand new day, this is the day that I took the most photos because the weather was a little better. It's the kind of weather I had hoped for the day prior, but I tried to make the most of it. The sun was in and out, and it did stick around for the majority of this day, which was amazing to finally have some some better light. 87-89, are some of the first photos of Fogo Island Inn. It's a beautiful building, and it's the main draw/tourist destination to Fogo Island.

It's a very boutique and expensive place to stay, but it’s all-inclusive while you're there. They have many different activities for you to take advantage of while you're there, with a black board chalked full from edge to edge of everything they have planned going on throughout the day.

The rooms are beautiful, everything is all handmade - the furniture, all of the quilts and bedding, and the whole building itself is made using as much material as possible from Fogo Island, and built by people on Fogo Island. The building was designed by Newfound land born architect Todd Saunders, who hired carpenters from the island who have a long history of building homes, furniture, and boats. Being on such a small isolated island, these people grew up in times when if you didn't have materials to make a chair, you would repurpose something else like a barrel or something that you had on hand. If you needed a boat, you had to build one.

As a test to see if these carpenters were up for the task of the Inn itself, they built artist studios (that you’ll see further down into the gallery) around the island as a preparation for this larger structure.

If you click on 88, you can use the arrows to click back and forth when the sun came out that day through a little opening in the clouds. Shortly after I took this photo, it receded immediately behind another cloud.

In 91, the Polaroid photo didn't work out too well due to the cold.

93 of Fogo Island Inn, this is my favourite photos I've taken of the Inn. You can see kind of like those metal stilts propping up the Inn. These are a feature the architect incorporated into the Inn as a representation of the stilts that the sheds and fishing stages are built upon. These small buildings have so much history, and these are the buildings native to Newfoundland. Todd Saunders(architect) grew up in Newfoundland, so he understands all buildings that are on the coast and the architecture of the sheds and stages. Part of what makes the Inn so special is that it still feels like any other building on Fogo Island. It feels like it’s meant to be there.

94-96, if you click on 94, you can scroll through them - which shows how the waves move and change and with the sun popping out and shining only on one spot in the distance.

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I stood here for 30-45 minutes, just watching the waves hitting the ice covered rock, spraying water up into the air that hit you in the face and froze to everything around it. I was coated in a thin layer of ice by the time I left, and so was my camera - so I had to scrape that off the lens, but it was a really captivating experience of being on Fogo Island.

98 almost felt like a new day. It's the same day but by this time the sun came out for the rest of the day, I had just finished capturing the Inn, I packed up my AirBnb, and I was just getting as many photos as I could of the island before heading back to make the ferry on time, continuing on with the rest of my trip.

Road to Tilting, NL. which is a 5min drive down the road from Joe Batt’s Arm, through a treed interior portion of Fogo Island.

104 is a photo of the Squish Studio, my favourite of all the studios built on the island. It's such a unique, small, angular building that like all of the studios - is off the grid. They're not built into the island, they're just resting there on the rock. In years down the road, you could remove it and there would be no damage done to the surface of the island, or the landscape around the studio. It’s this that make them a beautiful thing, and especially this one, with it being on this edge of the rock as it meets the ocean.

If you are an artist that has a residency to occupy one of the studios, in the Squish Studio there's a large window on the other side that looks out into the ocean which is kind of cool.

This is another one of those photos that captured the whole trip all in one. It captures the studio propped up on the edge of the rock, and the ocean waves crashing against the island before fading out into this darker water of the Atlantic Ocean.

This is what I looked like during that trip - not caring too much about my appearance, I was wearing many layers from long underwear, long sleeve shirts, puffy jackets, and winter coat on top. It wasn't that cold, but the wind that day at the edge of the ocean was still gusting to 70-80mk/h.

I just wanted to document what I looked like on this trip, nothing special.

110, I wanted to capture Fogo Island Inn and put it into perspective of the landscape surrounding it. It's surrounded by the community of Joe Batt’s Arm, but yet isolated and on it’s own untouched hill.

This is a photo I didn't get to take how I wanted to, as I was running at a time before I had to begin my trip back to the ferry terminal. This is the Tower Studio, which is about a 10-15min walk out on a narrow boardwalk. I had photographed this studio during the summer when it was raining (I got soaked), and I was hoping to capture it again in some better weather.

120. One of my favourite film photos from the trip, because of the layers on the ferry - the top viewing deck and then a layer of stairs leading down to the next deck and then you can see of the porthole looking out over the ocean which we saw earlier, then there's also another set of stairs to another deck, and then it fades out into the ocean.

122, these are photos after I got off the ferry and I’m now on my way to Twillingate, NL for the rest the photo trip. Twillingate has a different feeling again, as you’re on the main island now, there are more trees, more people, you no longer feel stranded.

126-128, Were taken in Merrit’s Harbour, NL on the way to Twillingate, NL.

The rest of the photos below are taken from the rest of the trip after I left Fogo Island. Some of my favourite photos from the trip are in this series, but I talk about those on the podcast. Are you listening? ;)

The photos below are from my time in the Corner Brook, NL area. I touch on a few of these in the podcast at the top of this journal entry. It’s narrates you as you’re looking through these photos, if you’re not listening - go back and give it a shot!