Vine Maple and Pacific Bleeding
Heart in Campbell Valley Park
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   Today I have two photos from Campbell Valley Regional Park in Langley, British Columbia. One of the things I have been working on with my photography is to improve the photos I make of scenes inside the forest. There can often be so many competing elements all heading in different directions that a pleasing, non cluttered composition can be difficult. So I decided to work on that, and am getting results that I think are an improvement and more compelling than previous efforts. This photo (left) of a Vine Maple (Acer circinatum) with a bed of Pacific Bleeding Heart (Dicentra formosa) growing below it is one example.

Walking path in Campbell
Valley Park
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   I’ve recently been editing and keywording all the photos I’ve made in Campbell Valley Park over the last few years. Many were already processed, but there was still a lot of work to be done. I’ll place them all in their own gallery on my website soon – right now they are scattered over a few different categories. Campbell Valley Park is only about a 15 minute drive for me, so I will likely be spending even more time there as a lot of the park I have yet to explore.

Mount Baker from Pitt Meadows
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   Growing up in the area around Vancouver, British Columbia, especially out in the Fraser Valley, Mount Baker is a constant presence on the Eastern horizon. Many roads seem to point straight towards Baker or sometimes Mount Shuksan. While I am most familiar with the view of Baker from Langley, it can be seen all the way from Stanley Park in Vancouver, the Southernmost point of the area in Tsawwassen, and from North of the Fraser River – here in Pitt Meadows. I made this photograph from the edge of one of the many Cranberry fields on the road to Pitt Lake. As Baker is such a constant for anyone living out here, it was quite a surprise for me as a kid to realize that it was not a Canadian mountain – it actually is in Washington State. I was young enough that I am not sure I believed that right away.

Gold Creek in Golden Ears
Provincial Park
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   A few weeks ago I headed to Golden Ears Provincial Park to hike to Lower Falls on Gold Creek. The trail was very muddy, and hard to walk on for much of the way but it was one of the first really nice days this Spring. To be out walking without the heavens pouring down was nice. I was never able to find the trail from Lower Fall to the above trail that I had intended to hike though. This gave me more time to make photographs between the Gold Creek bridge and Lower Falls. I made this photograph next to the Gold Creek bridge at the end of the Golden Ears Park road. Gold Creek is pretty wide in parts at this location, and while I did concentrate on some details of rocks and ripples, this wider view shows the overall look of this part of the creek.

Downtown Vancouver Panorama photographed during Blue Hour
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   I have photographed downtown Vancouver from Stanley Park a few times in the past – with fair but not spectacular results. When my first DSLR was new I would try to photograph the skyline well after sunset. At that time of day there isn’t much contrast between the dark buildings and the sky, so these photographs did not turn out very well. I learned that if you photograph during “Blue Hour” there will be much better contrast between the dark buildings and the sky – with much better results! Blue Hour is the period of time between total darkness in the sky and sunrise or sunset. Just like the “Golden Hour” this may not actually last an hour. In Vancouver at this time of year I think the blue hour lasted about 20 minutes facing southeast though there was still good blue light facing west for about another 10 minutes after that.

   This Panorama, taken during the blue hour after sunset, shows a dark sky but you can still see the profile of all the buildings. Much better than a photo taken when the sky is really dark!

   FYI – if you ever photograph downtown from Stanley Park near the Nine O’Clock Gun is the location I made this photograph. I was still there at 9 o’clock… with a few others who had gathered to hear its blast. Well, this isn’t a cap gun, the shockwave was dramatic even though I was standing 50 feet away. There were some tourists and teenagers who were standing right next to the wire cage that houses the gun, and one passerby tried to get them to plug their ears or step away from the thing as it was almost 9. This sage advice was ignored and when the gun went off there was a lot of screaming and even some tears due to the noise. If you are out there photographing near 9 o’clock and the red flashing lights go off – plug your ears!

Flowering Magnolia Tree in
Queen Elizabeth Park
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   On Friday I headed into Vancouver to photograph the Cherry Blossoms blooming this Spring. One of my first stops was Queen Elizabeth Park. I was there just over a month ago when there was still some snow on the ground and the only plants that were showing themselves were a few Snowdrops. Now, however, the gardens are coming to life with many bulbs in bloom and some trees such as Magnolia and Cherry in full bloom. This is a Magnolia Tree just to the north of the Blodel Conservatory. I made this photo from underneath because I liked the contrast of the flowers and the blue sky, and the path was very busy with tourists flooding the park from the parking lot.

   Queen Elizabeth Park is a busy place, but I didn’t expect there to be four tour buses in the parking lot. There were a lot of tourists in the park, which made wide angle shots of some of the Cherry and Magnolia trees impossible. When there are 5-10 tourists climbing the Cherry tree it is hard to get a shot without people in it. I can only imagine what this park is like in the Summer! Next time I go back I will try a time lapse of all the people – that might be interesting.

From Queen Elizabeth Park I headed to Stanley Park to photograph downtown Vancouver during “Blue Hour”. I will be posting some of those images really soon. Stay tuned!

Wells Peak & Silver Lake
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   Sometimes there can be a lot of benefit in going through your photo archives. With the passage of time comes the benefit of new technology, processing techniques, and changes in your photographic vision that can increase the appeal of older, overlooked images. I have been finding a lot of images in my archive lately that I have been adding to my website. Some due to simply missing them the first time and some because I know how to process them in a much stronger way now. When I learn new processing techniques in Photoshop I am often reminded of older images that could benefit from my new knowledge. This can become a lot of work!

   This is Wells Peak in Silver Lake Provincial Park near Hope, British Columbia, Canada. I have posted a similar image before but I also like this horizontal perspective, even if less of the reflection is revealed.

Great Blue Heron
(Ardea herodias)
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   Late last year I published a post on this blog called “Creating Drama with Shutter Speed“. While at the Capilano River in North Vancouver, British Columbia I had made a few photographs of a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias). By utilizing different shutter speeds I found that (in this case) a shutter speed of 0.6 seconds brought a lot of drama to the scene by blurring the river in the background.

   This photo is another photo I made that day of the same Heron, again with a slower than normal shutter speed ( 1/6th of a second in this case). While I think my favourite of the day is the slow shutter speed Heron photo from that other post, this one comes in a close second for me.

Mount Cheam
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   Way back in 2007 I purchased my first DSLR – a Canon 30D. I only had the 50mm Canon lens with it (f/1.4) and was forcing myself to use that lens to its full potential before I bought something else. This meant a lot of “zooming with my feet” and compositions that were slightly constrained. Though this was largely due to budget concerns, I do think this helped me choose my next lenses wisely. I always waited at least 6 months between lenses to make sure I knew what I “needed” next. I have not regretted any of my lens choices so far.

   I made this photograph in 2007 with the 30D and it remains one of my better photos of Mount Cheam. This location is on Seabird Island just outside of Aggasiz, British Columbia, Canada. I have returned to this location many times, but still cannot seem to find a time where that slough is full of water. A big muddy expanse just isn’t as photogenic!

Crocus vernus
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   Lets ignore the fact I had a bit of snow a week ago, yesterday it was +16°C/61°F and felt like Spring. These Crocus flowers (Crocus vernus I believe) in the backyard are helping to convince me that Spring might actually be here. At least it feels closer although today is raining and a bit chilly.

Vine Maples (Acer circinatum) &
Silverhope Creek
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   Silverhope Creek (near Hope, British Columbia) is one of my favourite spots to photograph fast water and foliage in the Fraser Valley. I have not spent enough time exploring upper parts of the Chillwack River though, and that area also looks pretty promising too. This creek runs along the road to Silver Lake Provincial Park. The creek itself offers many photography opportunities though the area around the lake itself is also quite nice. I really like this scene with the fresh leaves of Vine Maples (Acer circinatum) and the Western Red Cedars (Thuja plicata) growing just above the fast flowing water. I plan to head out to Silverhope Creek again this Spring. I have a few ideas on better compositions than I managed last year. I also hope to be there when the wind isn’t blowing the leaves around so much! I tried many exposures before this one had the leaves at least somewhat well behaved. Next time I will try a few exposures where I leave the shutter open for a long period of time to show the trees moving as well.

Old Blog Template
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   Late last year I redesigned my overall website and started using Photoshelter for my gallery, replacing the older gallery I had programmed myself. However, there were a few problems:

a) visitors clicking on my blog link were transferred to my photoblog but it looked very different than my overall site
b) visitors landing directly on the photoblog didn’t really have an obvious way to discover my overall website

So I setup a test blog to try and fix this and asked my Twitter and Google+ followers what they thought. Thank you for your responses btw! I always use a testing blog because I never want to have a catastrophic code botch on a live site! Not that this would ever happen of course…

 So what I am hoping here is that:

1. The photoblog now fits in a lot nicer with the website and image archive. It shouldn’t feel like you are going to a whole different site anymore.
2. The text has been enlarged slightly on the posts now so hopefully that is a bit easier to read.

Let me know what you think!

Snowy Owl
(Bubo scandiacus)
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   Back in mid February I went to the Boundary Bay Wildlife Management Area to photograph the Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus). The Snowy Owls are not normally in this location during Winter. This is an “irruption” year, where the Snowy Owls venture further south than they normally would. There are various opinions as to why this occurs, though most often I see it being related to food supply in the Arctic. As this happens only about once every 5-6 years I made sure I went down to take a look. I figured even if I could not photograph the Snowy Owls as they were too far out in the marsh I would be able to at least see them from afar. I was not disappointed.

Yaaaaaawwwwn!
A Group of Snowy Owls
(Bubo scandiacus)
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   The first photo here shows an Owl that was like many of the others sitting on the driftwood – it had to occasionally keep a wary eye on a passing hawk or Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus). The Harriers especially seemed to like to dive bomb some of the Snowy Owls – though I don’t know if they ever make contact. One flew over the head of this owl and it kept an eye on it as it passed. The second photo shows one of the first signs of the Snowy Owls “waking up” from their earlier positions of just sitting on the logs with their eyes closed. There was lots of yawning, though I didn’t see it go through the group in any sort of contagious manner like it does in humans.

Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus)
Warming up for flight
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   The last two images here show the Snowy Owls stretching and fluffing up their feathers in preparation for flight. I had seen a few other groups of Snowy Owls further down the trail do this, before they ultimately took off towards the marsh. I presume this was to go look for food, as they were not being harassed by photographers at the time. The group I was following did not take off during the day, so I will have to wait until the next irruption to get some flight photos. Of all the photos I made of this group of Snowy Owls, I do not think I ever had one where they were preening and fluffing up their feathers where all three were facing the same direction. This is part of the fun and challenge though. Two out of three ain’t bad!

Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus)
stretching
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   I wrote in my last Snowy Owl post that I was easily able to photograph these Snowy Owls from the trail at Boundary Bay. The individual Owls pictured here were all within about 40-50 feet of the trail. I was going to make this post a bit more about the ethics of wildlife and landscape photography as I see it – but I think that is a topic that I need to mull over just a bit more and probably deserves its own post anyway. As I’ve said before though, I do not see trampling the marsh habitat or approaching the Snowy Owls and spooking them to be something anyone should be doing just to “get the shot”. On this day there were maybe a dozen plus “Big Lenses” wandering around in the marsh no doubt causing much damage – especially as a cumulative effect.

Mount Matier
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   I have never posted a B&W photo before as this is the first one I’ve ever created. I decided to do a little something different with my processing of this image of Mount Matier. Mt. Matier is just inside the border of Joffre Lakes Provincial Park East of Pemberton, British Columbia. I was on an epic 13 hour daytrip drive from Langley to Pemberton, through to Lilooet (complete with a wrong turn that also took me to Birkenhead Lake), then down through the Fraser Canyon to Hope, then back to Langley. There was no stopping to wait for good light, so this image suffered greatly in harsh sunlight – at least for the colour version. I quite like how it turned out with this B&W treatment though. I have been looking at a lot of the great work by Olivier Du Tré and this inspired me to try processing this way. I used his guide to some of the techniques he uses to create his photographs to process this image. This is the first BW I have ever put online – constructive feedback is welcome!

   Here is a photo I made a few weeks ago while looking for Snowy Owls at Boundary Bay in Delta, British Columbia. The Owls were the exciting part of my trip there, but I also viewed a lot of other bird species that will have me going back soon to photograph them specifically. There are other owls, various hawks, Northern Harriers, Great Blue Herons etc. I didn’t expect to see a Northern Flicker here, but this one jumped up onto this stump just as I walked past on the trail. I was lucky enough that he sat there for a few minutes while I managed to make a decent photo before he spied something on the ground and jumped down again. I suspect he was popping up for a better vantage point because he heard me coming and wanted to make sure I wasn’t looking for a snack.

   I used to ID bird species in my backyard when I was growing up – and at that time there was the Yellow Shafted Flicker, and the Red Shafted Flicker. Science has since determined these to be the same species, just different colour morphs, so they both fall under the category of Northern Flicker now. Confirming this gave me an excuse to read a paper in the Canadian Journal of Zoology related to this, something I don’t do as often as I used to. I kind of miss them. Much more fun reading them casually than having to write a paper on it all after!

   This is an older image from 2010 that I recently reprocessed. I have always liked this photo of Arctic Lupines (Lupinus arcticus) flowering along Kulshan Ridge with Mount Shuksan in the background. The older version had Lupines that were just not that clear. There was a good breeze coming through there that evening and getting a still shot of the flowers was not easy. In fact, I had thought I had failed that mission, and published one on my blog and website that didn’t have the clearest Lupines. This is a different exposure, though a slightly different composition. It occasionally pays to keep some of my old files around!

   This evening was my first outing with my first Graduated Neutral Density filter. I had never used one, but read a lot about them and a bit on how to use it. My photos from this evening were a big eye opener as to what was possible, and this beautiful location was certainly a big help. I also learned what they can do to trees that are on the horizon line but hopefully that is not too distracting in this photo.

   The Artist Point area on Kulshan Ridge gets a ton of foot traffic as the parking lot is nearby. As a consequence, a lot of the vegetation gets trampled and destroyed. With the amount of snow that falls here each winter, there is a very very short growing season for these plants, so growing back after a repeated tourist trampling is not easy. Unfortunately I could not get my old tripod into a good position to photograph these so I had to convert myself into a pretzel to get low enough to look through the viewfinder. My old camera had no live view which would have helped immensely. One foot on a rock, a hand on another rock, and one hand on the camera… I only hit the mosses and other plants once with one of my hands. So I was successful in not damaging nature to get my nature photograph, but I did manage to pull a muscle in my leg which didn’t feel right for a week. I think the results make that completely worth it!