Tide Pools

When the ocean tide has gone out I love to explore with my camera, here is a scene from Combers Beach in Pacific Rim National Park. *** I apologize for not writing many contemplative words with my pictures, I'm not really a very good writer, I struggle at times to find things to say with my pictures, I don't know how some blog writers do it on a daily basis. I will have to let my pictures stand in for my lack of words. ***

The Altered Landscape

While visiting Vancouver Island over the Christmas holidays I had the opportunity to photograph some of the damage caused by the wind, mostly a lot of trees down. It has been reported in the media that on the famous Westcoast Trail that there are as many as 2000 trees down. Everywhere that I looked there was evidence of just how destructive nature can be. I have a brother and his family who lives in Sooke and he had dozens of trees that came down on his property including one that crashed into their house, luckily causing only minor damage. As a photographer looking at this damage its hard to show in the scope of a single image just how nature has altered the landscape, its truly amazing that there was not more property damage and it will be interesting to photograph and observe the forests in the years ahead to see how nature takes it course as these downed trees become nurse logs.

Finding The Right Angle

I made this image at Combers beach near Green Point Campground during a low tide this past October of 2006. The light in fall time is one of my favourite times to photograph, as practically any time of the day is great to photograph. The real fun begins when I am trying to find my composition or "just the right angle" for a particular image I might have in mind, sometimes things fall into place rather quickly and other times I fiddle around with the composition never having the feeling of getting it right, I have never been taught formally as to what is a well composed photograph and what isn't, I like to study the work of other photographers and other artists including their paintings, this helps to a certain point, but when making photographs out in the field, things are moving along in realtime life, so it can be hard to figure out just what these artists were seeing. First off I look at all the elements around me and do some "sorting out" often good photographs are not what one includes in the image but what one leaves out. I try to simplify, with the image posted I thought to myself that I liked this rock jutting out into the sand, I worked with this element then tried to balance the smaller rock islands on the upper left and centre. I also try to use a balance of dark and light areas in my compositions, in this case the sunlight reflecting off the wet sand in which I was able to keep a little off centre to the right, even though there is the appearance I was shooting up high, the rock in the foreground is quite low, part of a much bigger barnacle encrusted rock usually under water at high tide, its a bit of an optical illusion. The image was made with my Tachihara 8 x 10 view camera and a 270mm lens.

Winter In My Backyard

I woke up this past Saturday morning and found 6 inches of fresh beautiful powder snow outside my home, it was the kind of morning where it was clear and sunny, hardly a breath of wind and only about -2C in fact almost spring like, I wanted to make some landscape pictures of the snow, but the ring temperatures were against me as for driving and searching out a location anywhere, so as I was pondering what to do I was looking out my kitchen window onto my backyard and realized that I didn't have far to go. I set up the camera on the back deck of my home and for about an hour made several exposures of the snow laden trees, it was as if I was way out in the boonies somewhere. The snow really transformed the scene into something that was quite magical, but as mentioned it did not last for long with the warm sun melting the snow. The bright sun also helped me with the lighting, snow can be difficult to photograph especially in flat lighting, but the cloudless blue sky and sun helped create a great tonal range for my black and white image. The image was made with a 5 x 7 view camera and a 270mm lens.

A Portrait of Life

I have been trying to challenge myself lately shooting portraits with my view camera, I can only imagine what Karsh had to go through, setting up his 8 x 10 camera and lights, for me I am keeping it simple, just natural light, just one thing at a time. In this case I used my 8 x 10 Tachihara with a 5 x 7 reducing back and the 270mm Schneider lens, this gives a perspective of little more than a normal normal 50mm lens on 35mm film camera, ( even in this digital age, isn't it interesting that we still refer to 35mm film cameras when trying to visualize a different format ? ).

Although its hard be spontaneous while trying to capture an expression with a 5 x 7 view camera, I like the approach where I can have eye contact and a conversation with my subject, in this case, Mac Tipton is a well known Metchosinite on Vancouver Island, I photographed him outside of his blacksmith shop at his home where he has created many fine pieces of metal work.

Morning Shadows

Here is an image I made of the Kludahk trail while on a family hike on our way to Noyse Lake, the image was made with a 4 x 5 view camera and a 120mm lens.