Perspective change
Pictou County man captures beauty in the commonplace
If anybody told Sandy Smith 10 years ago he’d be taking pictures and posting them on Facebook for people to comment on, he would have said they were crazy.
And yet here he is. Smith has become a regular contributor to Facebook groups in Nova Scotia, such as Barns of Nova Scotia, and has built a following on his own page, where he regularly posts photos that generate likes and comments praising his work.
“It really surprises me,” he says.
Smith’s love of photography came later in life. It wasn’t until around 2014 he decided to really pursue the art. What inspired him was a picture a friend had posted on Facebook.
“It was of the bridge out in West Branch. It was beautiful. I thought about how many times I had been over that bridge and I never stopped to think about how nice it was,” he said.
“I thought about it and thought about it and just decided I’d go out and buy a camera and see what I could do.”
Every technique he uses today has been self-taught.
“A lot of people ask me if I ever took a course, but I never did,” he said. “When I started, I bought a couple of books on the camera I had at the time. I just read and read. It was all trial and error.”
Smith’s favourite time to go out taking photographs is in the early morning. He often leaves his house between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m.
“That’s usually the only time of day I have to myself.”
Sometimes he has a plan of where he’ll go. Other times, he makes it up as he goes. His photos are most often of landscapes, buildings or animals.
He loves the silence of the morning.
“I work long hours through the week, when I get a couple of days off and a couple of hours to be by myself, I like to be by myself,” said Smith, who designs kitchens for a living.
He’s found it’s a good time to encounter nature as well – although at least a couple of times have been unexpected.
He recalls one time he was on Caribou Island and the tide was out, so he decided to go out on the reef to get a different angle. But as the tide started to come back in, he looked behind him to make sure the water wasn’t getting too deep. It was then he caught a glimpse of an animal.
“It’s an odd time for someone to let their dog out,” he said to himself.
“I kept going and I looked again, and it wasn’t a dog. It was a coyote,” he said.
Stuck between the ocean and the coyote, Smith’s options were few.
“I was kind of in a spot, so I just picked up my tripod and put it in front of me and he stopped and as soon as I started walking back in, he turned around and left.”
Another time he was by the bridge at Waterside. He had spotted a heron at the edge of the water and was trying to get pictures of it.
“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move on the bridge and it was a bobcat.”
Too from his car to run, Smith decided instead to take a picture.
“As soon as I raised the camera and pointed it at it, it stopped,” he said.
He was able to get a couple of pictures before the cat took off.
One of his favourite things to take pictures of has been barns. He said they bring back memories of childhood for him.
He also loves taking pictures of fishing boats. But he’s also taken artistic shots of common streets and buildings throughout Pictou County, finding the beauty in the ordinary.
“I’ve lived here all my life except I moved to Prince Edward Island for 10 years, and I guess ever since I came back from there, I started to look at things a little bit differently.”
Smith has plenty of fans online, but his biggest supporter has been his mother.
Ironically, she had actually offered him his late father’s camera when he passed years ago. At the time, Smith had no interest and suggested she give it to another brother.
Smith says his dad’s legacy does inspire him a bit. He was a jack of all trades, who showed Smith you can do anything you put your mind to.
According to one family story passed down, when his dad was 16, he wanted to learn the violin, but his parents couldn’t afford it, so he built his own and played it all his life.
Another time, he built a sawmill powered by an abandoned car motor. The most infamous of his dad’s creations, though, was an airplane he constructed in the basement of the family’s New Glasgow home.
Kids would come to get their skates sharpened at his house and often, Smith would be asked: “Do you know there’s an airplane in your basement?“
There was much speculation about how he would get it out when he was complete. In the end, his dad sold it and took out a basement wall to get it out of the house.
On top of all that, his dad was also a hobby photographer. Smith has memories of his father’s darkroom in a closet underneath their stairs.
“My dad could put his hand to anything,” Smith says. “That’s where I got my you can probably do anything if you put your mind to it.”
After his own experience with photography, he encourages people to pursue their interests.
“Don’t think about what other people are going to like,” he advises. “Work at things you find interesting and it’ll all work out.”