Autumnal East Coast.

Foggy Day Blues. All images in this blog entry: © Tyler A.W. Burke. 2024. (Images have been compressed to improve load time.)

We flew directly from Calgary to Halifax on the redeye in late October. We were attending a wedding in Windsor, Nova Scotia on the weekend and decided to make the most of the travel time by planning a few days’ road trip afterwards. Before we began the trek up to Windsor, I had a day to myself in a very foggy and gloomy Halifax. Travelling light as I have been on recent excursions, I only had my Fuji X100V on me.

We rented an apartment for the night in a downtown Halifax historical building. Our window was the venue of a starling congregation that morning, we happily discovered.

Shaking off sleeplessness, fog-enveloped streets called. The old graveyards were an obvious pull. Being from a much younger city, I really enjoyed exploring Halifax’s more time-worn sides.

A far cry from the contrasty, sunlit scenes I typically shoot, the grey-washed scenes in Halifax that morning were a novel experience.

The mid-fall colours were diluted that day, but still visible at the fringes.

I finally made my way to the waterfront in the late morning, where I quickly took the photo above and Foggy Day Blues (displayed at the very beginning of this blog entry) just after. The fog that had smothered the city all morning was dissipating fast and I didn’t want to miss getting some shots along the water. One of my favourite details in the above photo is the sail boat hedged in the fog in the right of the frame - that and the hint of yellow courtesy of some remnant leaves at the top.

The following day, we made the drive up to Windsor. The wedding took place in a beautiful historical house-turned-hotel; the above photo captures the view from our room.

One of the first stops we made in Acadia after the wedding was the settlement at Port-Royal - or the replica that now stands where the original 1605 Habitation once did. According to my granddad’s research, my ancestor Antoine Bourq was one of the first settlers here in 1605; our name only became “Burke” when later Bourqs decided to hide from the English-enforced deportation of the Acadians to Louisiana in the 1750s.

Looking out from Port-Royal.

Our trip through Acadia continued onto Belliveaus Cove where we stayed in a cabin behind a highway-adjacent restaurant. We enjoyed some delicious seafood, cider, and sleep and continued the next day along the ‘lighthouse route,’ taking in the coast, historical architecture, and of course, the lighthouses.

Speaking of architecture, some of the churches we saw were impressive, imposing, anachronistic structures in various states of disrepair.

As we wrapped around the south shore towards our next sleep in Lunenburg, we stopped a few times to take in the last light of the day against the aged, coastal setting.

The first time I visited Nova Scotia was in 2018; I took a photo of this same crumbling shed then. One of a few moments of retracing footsteps that lent this trip a contemplative feel.

The next morning - our last in Nova Scotia - we stopped at Peggy’s Cove for 5 minutes before hitting the road north to Halifax again. The statue-like pose of this security guard was plain dumb luck.

Having a couple of hours between the rental car drop-off and our scheduled arrival at the airport, I walked the conveniently sunny streets of Halifax with my camera.

The fixed 23mm lens of the X100V never fails to make me consider compositions I likely never would with my go-to 35mm or 50mm.

2024 was a great year for shooting in other cities and places for me and this trip was a fantastic way to wrap it all up. I hope you enjoyed this little east coast entry.

A quick catch-up: I’m participating in an exhibition in Cambridge University until March 21, 2025 - if you happen to be reading this from that corner of the UK, the details for Shutter Hub OPEN 2025 can be found here. The bitter cold has kept me inside and away from the streets these past few weeks (which is why this blog entry is finally finished) but I’m really itching to get back out as soon as the temperature is less harsh. Stay tuned to my Instagram for the hopeful fruits of those prospective labours.

Until next time,