Adventures in Travel Photography: Building a Cleaner Future — One Plastic Bottle at a Time

In a world looking for answers to the ongoing crisis around plastic waste, David Saulnier and Joel German of JD Composites in Meteghan, Nova Scotia, have developed a creative, viable plan for keeping tons of plastic out of the world’s oceans.

I read so much disheartening news about the impact of plastic on the environment that I was delighted by the opportunity to meet Saulnier and German — who had not only the innovation to devise a potential solution, but also the passion, skill, and drive to execute their idea flawlessly.

I recently visited Nova Scotia, and while dining in the town of Meteghan, a server suggested that I should visit the “plastic bottle house,” recently built nearby and the only one of its kind in the world. Intrigued but unsure what to expect, I drove over and was pleasantly surprised to meet co-owner and designer David Saulnier, who was there with his family and graciously offered me a personal tour.

Situated mere feet from the breathtaking tides of the Bay of Fundy and constructed using more than 600,000 recycled plastic bottles, the first thing I noticed was the home’s sleek, modern construction with elements drawn from the the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright. The structure is clad in metal and obviously sturdy, yet maintains its aesthetic appeal. Driving through Maritime Canada, one can’t help but notice the stately Victorian sea captains’ homes that have stood the test of time for generations, but the designers of this home haven’t looked to the past for inspiration, but rather to the future. Indeed, a spark of genius was lit in a remote and unsuspecting place.

Saulnier and German have created a process in which bottles are shredded, melted down, and infused with gas to form panels that are practically indestructible. The panels form the walls and roof, and are so strong that no deflection was detected during extreme wind tunnel testing with wind speeds equivalent to twice that of a category five hurricane —  impressive considering that the walls are only six inches thick.

Other benefits of the innovative method include significant energy savings, impermeability to water, enhanced noise insulation, and low maintenance. But the greatest thing about the newfound design is the removal of plastics from the environment, thereby transforming a product with a negative impact into a positive outcome. In addition, the home can be assembled much more quickly than using traditional methods. 

The home is no one-off project, however. Speaking with passion in his voice and with a vision toward the future, Saulnier talked about other potential uses given the tightness of the structure and the ability to rapidly assemble the panels in days rather than months. Included are sheds and outbuildings, quickly deployed and assembled shelters during natural disasters and other emergencies, and clean air rooms for medical use. 

Given the challenges facing our environment today, it was humbling and inspiring to see an idea developed into a solution that may have so wide an impact. By my calculations, Saulnier and German, with just their first structure using the new technique, have kept more than 13,000 pounds (5900 kg) of plastic out of the world’s oceans. It doesn’t take a mathematician to appreciate the potentially world-changing impact that David Saulnier and Joel German have made possible.

Adventures in Travel Photography: You Say You Like Animals?

On a 2015 trip to Nova Scotia, we visited a wharf where a colony of feral cats lives outside under difficult conditions, spending their days wandering through boulders, getting into scraps with sea birds, nursing their cuts and scrapes, and suffering scabby noses - the result of trying to maneuver through slippery, barnacle-encrusted rocks. Not an easy life during the day, and even much less so at night. Their faces reflect their plight of never being able to escape the salt that dries their skin. The Bay of Fundy is home to the world's highest tides, where the tidal bore pushes so much water in and out everyday that it's said to be as powerful as 8,000 train engines or 25 million horses. These cats live just a few feet from all that water and have little protection from the wind and waves and cold. They live a harsh life, even though a few local volunteers do all they can to care for them.

Finding the wharves is easy, but finding the cats requires more dedication. Driving out to the rocks and looking for the few shelter boxes made of barrels and scrap wood is a good place to start. Often, there's no sign of a cat, and it’s just a waiting game until one comes out. In 2015, we ran into the most magnificent creature with thick golden fur, albeit matted, blowing in the wind. He looked at us intently and let us photograph him at length while treats were retrieved from the RV as his reward. We saw a few other cats as well, but none were as captivating as this fellow. 

After our return to Atlanta, I did some research and phoned the harbor master, who told me that an elderly man fed the cats daily — even in the midst of the frigid Nova Scotia winter. I wasn’t able to get much detail, although Michelle connected on Facebook with the local volunteer group after doing a little more digging. We returned to Nova Scotia in 2016 and made a special trip to the wharf, looking for our feline friend. Unfortunately, he could not be located, but remarkably, we saw another, younger cat who looked much like him. A few photos were allowed with treats once more the reward. More conversation with the locals led to a name - Goldie. 

A couple of years passed, and we found ourselves back in our favorite place once again. This time, something special happened when we visited the wharf. We ran into an older man who spends his time there, contemplating life, and making a place the wharf cats call home. It was nothing more than an old fishing stage with the inside filled with anything he found interesting attached to the walls and floor and ceiling. Posters of celebrities like James Dean, pictures of his time spent in NY,  a baseball cap collection from around the world that was given to him, cat beds, cubbies, blankets, and the like. It was his pilgrimage and a place for his friends. He was the kindly gentleman we’d heard about who made such a dedicated effort to ease the plight of the wharf cats.

We talked to him for a long time, and we told him about our passion for animals. We told him about the special cat we fell in love with in 2015, a cat named Goldie. When we mentioned the name, the man was stunned for a moment. "How did you know about Goldie?," he asked, his face turning, his eyes focusing, his ears listening. After telling him our story, he walked us out of the shelter to a small grave marker surrounded with the remains of an old wooden lobster trap. Inside of this small protective enclosure were plastic flowers - and Goldie. We were sorry for not having reconnected with our old friend before he passed, but in a way, we did. Knowing that Goldie had someone caring for him in the end meant something after all. 

There were other cats on the wharf that day, one older, one shy, one friendly, one with a nastily skinned nose, one who kept to himself. Of course, there were photos and treats on that calm and sunny afternoon. We stayed in the area for a few days and returned several more times, and with each visit the cats became slightly less apprehensive, but never completely trusting…well, except the friendly one. Our experience with the wharf cats has been one of the best that we have ever had meeting animals in Nova Scotia on the Bay of Fundy.

How We Travel with All This Gear

People ask us how we manage to travel and shoot with all the gear that we have in such a compact RV. On a road trip, we have it nailed down to a manageable list of items including two rolling carry-on bags, several smaller shoulder bags, and usually a tripod in a case. While driving in the RV, we usually open the the carry-on bags and put them on the bed. We keep the cameras at the ready should we want to pull over and shoot something interesting along the way. A smaller shoulder bag goes on the floor in between the driver and passenger seats with a fast and stealthy Leica Q, which is great for grab shots, video, and anything unexpected, and even works while shooting through the windshield where it’s not possible to pull over. The carry-on bags are set up with two different systems, a medium-format Leica S and its lenses, and a full-frame Leica SL and its lenses. It’s good to keep a telephoto on one camera and a wider lens on the other. That way, a fast pull-over is easily managed as sometimes an animal or other subject may be moving quickly through a scene. The RV provides a great platform for shooting due to its height. While driving, our eyes are at about the level of the mirrors of a tractor-trailer, or several feet higher than than the largest SUV. In traffic, it’s easy to see what’s down the road. 

And even though the RV is a smaller class B, there's still a good amount of room for shooting through a window or the sliding side door. Sitting in the driver’s seat, an elbow can be placed on the sill, and the side frame is great for propping while steadying a longer lens. The sliding side door also has its advantages for propping and steadying or shading a lens from the sun. At either location, it’s great to shoot from inside a dry van when it’s raining. We often have to move quickly when pulling over - grab a camera, open a door, take a few shots, and move on. In Idaho one beautiful summer day, we were driving along a back road and probably stopped 25 times over the distance of about 100 miles.  

If we pull into a smaller town and walk around, we assess the situation and load a camera into a shoulder bag with an extra lens or two. That way, we can go look for architecture, landscapes, cars, people, animals, or whatever we see that we like. We’re often parked so that we can return to the RV and grab a tripod or a different lens. It’s great fun, and we like to get into the nitty gritty of America. There’s so much to see. 

But it’s not all random. We spend a significant amount of time scouting before and during the road trip, whether through one of our 600 travel guide books, or online with travel sites, maps, and satellite images. We look for the obscure, as what’s behind main street is often more interesting than what’s on it. One day, you may see us at a remote stop in Iowa photographing an old diner, the kind if place where the light is falling just right, and where a visual vantage point is lined up creating the perfect capture. We look for places where everyone else isn’t going.

Once we park the RV for the evening, the bags are zipped up and slipped under the bed, ready for the next day. We seek fair weather and often change routes based on the forecast, wherever that may take us. Our batteries are charged, our memory cards are ready, and our lenses are poised for that next great moment. Please take a look at our Instagram page @coasttocoastphotoatl for some scenes of our adventures.

Why I Don't Need a 600mm Lens

One of my favorite lenses is my Hasselblad 300mm 4.5, which I use on my medium-format Leica S body. With the Leica S system, Leica makes adaptors so that other manufacturers' lenses can be used on its cameras in addition to its own line of superb optics. This opens an interesting door and widens the possibilities by adding some beautiful glass into the mix. 

Regarding the electronics, the Leica S sensor is about 50 percent larger than a full-frame (Canon/Nikon/Sony) camera, and the Hasselblad H system has a sensor that is about 37 percent bigger than the Leica S. What does this mean? A lens has to have a big enough image circle to cover the sensor so that a nice sharp picture can be produced. In many cases, in order to meet a price point or physical size objective, some manufacturers make compromises. Perhaps lesser quality glass is utilized so that the center of the image is sharp, but the edges are not as much so. This is why I only use the best lenses that are available. I’m concerned about image quality above all else. So here are some examples: a typical pro-level Canon lens costs about $1,000 to $2,000, where a Leica or Hasselblad lens costs about $5,000 to $10,000 - and the price difference is reflected in the image quality. Higher quality lenses are also larger and more complex, resulting in sharper images from corner-to-corner. So let’s go back to sensor size again for a moment. Because the Hasselblad H camera has a larger sensor, it makes its lenses big enough to cover that size. Attaching a Hasselblad lens to a Leica S camera offers an even larger image circle to work with, resulting in fantastic shots.

Another consideration with medium format is dynamic range. With a super high-quality lens like the Hasselblad 300mm on my Leica S, I don’t need a Canon camera with a giant white lens attached. In fact, I get better results with a bigger sensor and a shorter and more exotic lens, and I do this by cropping. Because the sensor has so much more resolution than a full-frame camera, there’s a lot more data to work with. I’ve spent a lifetime shooting with all types of cameras and lenses in all kinds of conditions. Having the equipment that I do gives me more options for obtaining a certain look that I’m after. Here’s another example of a wider image circle on a smaller sensor. I also have a Leica SL with a full frame sensor, and this camera also has an adaptor that allows the use of Leica S lenses on the SL. Between the two systems, I have an almost unlimited range of lenses. 

When you are thinking about hiring a photographer, please consider what goes into producing images. It’s more than just seeing a few pictures on your phone or your laptop. Shooting with a medium format system requires practicing good technique, and that makes for great results in all formats.

The Great Debate: Why Use a Camera When Your Phone Takes a Pretty Good Picture?

Okay, I admit it. There have been significant advances in phone photography, and people are using them to create some great content. But it's still a fact that professional camera systems leave phone cameras in the dust. Cell phones are fine for social media or casual snapshots, but try to blow up a photo from a phone file and things quickly degenerate. It has to do with the size of the sensor and the quality of the lens. Cell phones rely on software tricks to achieve a desired result from a tiny sensor. By comparison, the sensor in the Leica S camera is 50 times larger than the sensor in an iPhone.

And then there’s the limitation of the phone's small, single focal length lens versus the professional camera's various lenses dedicated to specific tasks. For instance, the situation might call for shooting at a slightly wide 45mm for a true-to-life perspective and to enhance the look of the model while taking in some of the background, or shooting portraits with a super-fast 100mm with vivid image sharpness and a gentle blur gradient, thereby preserving skin tones and isolating the subject from the background. In these situations, a phone's camera simply isn't going to deliver the results you want.

By all means, enjoy your phone's camera for its convenience and accessibility. But if you're looking for professional results, whether for your family photos or to promote yourself or your business, you'll be much better served by the advanced capabilities of a professional camera system.

The Leica Look: Why I Exclusively Shoot Leica Cameras

Since that first Kodak, I've had decades of experience with many of the top camera manufacturers. I shot Minolta for 10 years, Nikon for 20 years, Canon for 15 years, and Leica for 20 years. I also shot underwater with a Nikonis for 10 years. After all this exposure to some pretty terrific systems, I've transitioned exclusively to Leica within the past two years. I currently have three Leica bodies -- a medium-format S, a full-frame SL, and a full-frame Q. Between the S and the SL, I have 12 lenses. (The Q has its own built in, non-interchangeable 28mm lens.) With focal lengths of 300mm, 180mm, 100mm, 70mm, 55-110mm, 45mm, 35mm, and 24mm for the S, and 90-280mm, 24-90mm, 55mm, and 16-35mm for the SL, this collection of Leicas prepares me to handle any subject in any shooting conditions.

Why all Leica? This system produces what photographers commonly refer to as “the Leica look,” which is absolutely unmistakable. Leica produces high-contrast images that are extraordinarily sharp from corner to corner and that have a smooth, natural look and superior color capture. Leica cameras and lenses are hand-made in Germany, and are the finest and most highly regarded available in the world.

One of the benefits of Leica glass is that the results coming out of the camera are naturally strong and require minimal post processing. In fact, I sometimes find that making changes to an original Leica image does more harm than good. Leica cameras have been producing beautiful images for more than100 years; indeed, it was Leica which invented the 35mm camera.

You’ll know a picture shot with a Leica when you see it. It’s the one that gets attention.

My Photographic Journey

I was 10 when I got my first camera (a Kodak Instamatic), and I've had one in my hand ever since. My friends used to make fun of me because I was never without a camera; now they all want copies! Photography has been and continues to be my life-long passion. Combining creativity, vision, skill, and technology to create art never gets old to me, and I'm still as excited about photography as that 10-year-old boy was all those years ago.

The pursuit of photographic excellence has been my goal for decades, and I'm proud of my success -- although I still learn something new about the art form every day! I started winning blue ribbons at the fair when I was a teenager, and I also shot for my middle and high school annuals. I was fortunate enough to attend a high school that had a professional darkroom, where I spent countless hours learning to develop film, and to have a classmate whose father was a photographer for the New York Times, from whom I was able to absorb important foundational technique. I pored over magazines and books and visited camera stores (including every camera store in New York, Chicago, and L.A.). I shot for my college annual and have continued to explore and shoot at every opportunity.

Nationally, I earned a third place finish in Nikon’s Picture America Contest, and another third place finish in Popular Photography’s Annual Compact Camera Photo Contest. Twentieth Century Fox bought my original photo Code Talker, which can currently be seen on the set of its hit show The Resident, airing Monday nights on Fox. I regularly post to Instagram where a larger body of content is on display. Over the past several years, I’ve visited 46 states and continue to capture images of the people and places I encounter from coast to coast.

I doubt my parents had any idea how profoundly that long-ago birthday present would shape my life, but that little Kodak is hands-down the most meaningful gift I ever received.