THIS IS HAMILTON
When photographer Mark Zelinski moved from the Toronto area to Hamilton 20 years ago, something beautiful caught his eye. Thousands of photos later, Zelinski has produced two coffee table books chronicling the stunning imagery of the Niagara Escarpment and the Royal Botanical Gardens. He talks about the project with reporter Mark McNeil.
It’s become fashionable for newcomers to Hamilton to rhapsodize about discovering incredible natural scenery in a city they previously knew only by the dusty curtain of industry from the Skyway.
But few have focused so extensively on area beauty spots than photographer Mark Zelinski, who moved to Hamilton from the Toronto area 20 years ago.
Zelinski has harnessed his passion for pictures into two new coffee table books that celebrate local natural wonder, one about the Niagara Escarpment and the other about the Royal Botanical Gardens.
Both will be launched on Wednesday at the RBG.
“When I moved to Hamilton, I didn’t really know very much about it. I had the same impression of the city — that most people in Toronto had — that it was an industrial wasteland,” he said.
“I was so happily surprised to find that it was such a beautiful place geographically. It has more green space than any community of its size in Canada that I know of. It is a treasure and a wonderful place to live.”
Zelinski lived most of his life in the Toronto and Oakville area before moving to Hamilton Mountain in the 1990s. Two years ago he moved to Waterdown.
For his Niagara Escarpment book, he spent five years shooting more than a quarter of a million photos of the escarpment from Niagara to Tobermory. He culled the shots down to 400 — with a strong representation from the Hamilton area — for the book “Heart of Turtle Island: The Niagara Escarpment.”
It was during this period of time that Mark Runciman, the CEO of the RBG, suggested that Zelinski also do a photography book about the Royal Botanical Gardens.
More than 100,000 photos later, Zelinski pared it down to more than 300 shots for his “Canada’s Royal Garden.”
Runciman says he is happy with the result. “I am extremely proud of this book, not only because of all the beautiful images and moments ... but because it is a reflection of the efforts and support of thousands of people connected with RBG.”
Many photos for the books were shot with a drone. “But I’ve kind of put that to rest now. The regulations about using it professionally are getting pretty strict,” he said.
When it came to his land-based photographs, he said, the biggest challenges were finding the best weather and light to make the photos stand out.
“With some of the locations, I had to visit the site 10 times before I finally got the shot,” he said.
In the case of photographing a section of Grindstone Creek near to his home, “I just kept going back to the same spot and the picture just wasn’t exciting. Finally I went at night and did a minute-long time exposure to finally come up with the shot I was looking for.”
In other cases — when it came to photographing flora and fauna — his window of opportunity was extremely limited.
“Some subjects are very fleeting, like migrating birds that might only be around for a couple of days,” he said.
“To get a Jefferson salamander photo I had to go out with a flashlight on my head in the middle of the night, for three rainy, freezing nights, to actually find a Jefferson. You only have a two-hour window when they are out of the pond and that is it.”
Another challenge was dealing with crowds of people at various locations such as Webster’s Falls. It was hard to capture the essence of nature when it was being trampled by tourists.
“A lot of these places have become very popular and they are threatened by overexposure,” he said.