For me, the road to Tofino starts as I leave Port Alberni and ends at the Tofino/Ucluelet junction.

Last saturday I drove to Tofino to make a business call on the gallery selling my prints, LoveCrafts in the main street.

I never tire of driving the windy road which provides many opportunities to photograph. Our variable west coast weather is full of surprises and opportunities.On saturday my first surprise was at the summit of Sutton pass. The road from Pt. Alberni had been foggy. Then, all of a sudden the cloud cleared…

Returning in the afternoon, the sun was shining up the Kennedy River Valley and the silvery white alder trees were glowing. Behind them the valley was in shadow. Here are three shots showing this magical effect.

I am planning to publish a series on photographing the Tofino Road as a PDF in the next year. 

Driving along the dyke road between Courtenay and Comox on a recent morning, I noticed interesting light from a low winter sun and a fog bank swirling around the estuary. I knew there were interesting pilings supporting the CoastGuard navigation lights that could be incorporated into a composition. Although not on a specific photo shoot, I had my Panasonic GF 1 beside me in the car.

After manoeuvring  my self and camera into position I was able to come up with this composition.

I had some luck as ducks swam into the picture. I took this image to my art composition lecture and critique with Don Farrell. He pointed out the compositional importance of the integration of line between the top of the fog bank to the right of the front piling with the bottom of the light housing. The highlight at sea level in the angle of the piling bracing was also seen as an important compositional element. I continue to learn so much about composition from this excellent teacher and painter.

I must confess, I missed these refinements when shooting the image being more concerned with shading the lens from direct sunlight and positioning the pilings.  I gratefully accept the good luck of capturing these elements !  I also got lucky with the three sloping diagonals.

Once again I made my luck by having the little camera along and by having previous knowledge of the location.

After looking at last weeks version of the coffee mug , “Developing a Composition”,I decided to make more refinements to further strengthen the composition.

I am directly influenced by Don Farrell’s “Talking about Art”  lectures. I have removed the Miele logo from the bottom panel and then applied grid lines in varying tones to pick up and strengthen the lines apparent or suggested in the original.

Coffee Mug revised February 10 2010 Grid Applied

I was in N.Vancouver last weekend visiting my son and family.  They had just remodelled their house and the kitchen boasted a fancy coffee maker. As Chris Jr. made me a coffee I was struck with the compositional strengths of the coffee maker and mug. I immediately took some exposures, trying to include steam and milk streams in the image.

Here is my first image rendered in color.

Original version. One milk stream. Color

I wanted to compare the color version to a Black and White copy.  In making the conversion I darkened the red channel to make the Mug really black and provide contrast.

Original version. One milk stream. B & W.

I printed these two versions and studied them for a day or two.  I decided to strengthen the milk stream. I had a spare image that had a more intense version of the milk and used Photoshop to add the stronger stream.

Then I made a copy of the milk stream to have two showing.  For compositional reasons I wanted the two small vertical marks to complement the vertical highlights on the left of the machine.

Then I strengthened the vertical at the right hand edge of the image to support the vertical marks and hold the right hand edge of the composition.  Here is how the final versions looked.

Developed Composition Color version

Developed Composition B & W version

I welcome any comments on the compositions.  In a future article I will write about the relative merits of color and black and white images and the reasons for making choices between them.

I took this image recently and displayed it on my Pages. It a simple but interesting composition.

While I was making some prints of the image and looking at them more critically I happened to turn on upside down. I liked the upside down version as an abstract composition.

What do you think ?

Are there just too many sunrise images on display ?  Although these images can become a cliche, every now and again a special combination of coloring and composition does occur and justify being shown.  I believe this image is such and have posted it today when it is dull and pouring with rain. One morning last week, my wife noticed the sky lighting up and alerted me. A few minutes later, a quick walk down our road,  I found the tide was suitable for a nice reflecting shot.  Taken with my GF 1. If you read my article in the Pages menu column , http://vanislelandscapes.visualsociety.com/tidal-treasure-troves/ you will realise this is another situation where a knowlege of local tides and shorelines is valuable.  The image with out the reflection would be more “ordinary”.

A heavy snowfall over the New Year has improved photographing conditions when snowshoeing.  At least a foot of clean fresh snow has refreshed the appearance of the snow. Yesterday was foggy but I still managed a few new images and variations on this theme. How many haystacks did Monet paint ?

This first image has been processed in two different ways. The first with normal settings for exposure, contrast and clarity using Lightroom.

New snow and diagonals

Here is the same image processed to make it look more “wintery”.  I backed off the clarity slider in Lightroom to a minus value and then recovered the texture of the snow hanging from the slanting tree with the brush tool.  I will have to print both versions to evaluate the experiment.

Wintery scene version

The next image is of icicles hanging from a rock face. I have tried shooting these before but yesterdays version is my most encouraging effort so far. The foggy conditions reduced contrast (excessive light from the top) and with some brushwork in Lightroom I was able to adjust the values to suit my visualization.

Icicles on rock face.

Al these images were taken with my Panasonic GF 1 and my love affair with this small and light camera continues.

Christmas 2009 in North Vancouver

I spent Christmas in North Vancouver visiting with my family.  Between the family events I was able to sneak away to photograph the waterfront at the bottom of Lonsdale Avenue where the old Burrard Dockyard is being re developed.  An excellent location for a wide variety of photo opportunities.  Here are a few of the images I took.  All were taken with my Panasonic GF 1 . I will have more to write about this soon but I am experimenting with stitching vertical format images to substitute for the lack of a wide angle lens.

December 20th.  Tim Penny and I decide to take our cameras and snowshoe in new, heavy and damp conditions.  There will be no snow crystals today. +2C.  Let’s see what we can find to photograph despite the poor conditions.

The first thing we notice in the treed part of the trail is the nice even light.  Here is a new angle on a rock face with icicles. The new heavy snow is bending branches of evergreens to complement the lines in the icicles. There is some notion of “motion” in the image.

Bowed branches and icicles

Next, I work on making a composition from the arrangement and positioning of vertical tree trunks…

The little bent twig in the right hand corridor creates a point of interest.

Arranging trees from random scene.

I have been able to arrange some order into the composition. Not great but better than a random composition.  The snow has turned to light rain and great dollops of snow are falling on us.  Keeping my camera dry is a problem.

We are going to press on a little further to a favorite frozen over lake and stream.

Heavy, wet snow.

It has started to snow again. Heavy wet flakes.

Panorama of Lake scene.

I try a panorama, stitching several vertical frames.  The UV filter protecting the lens is getting wet and parts of the image are fuzzy..Time to turn around and snowshoe back to the Nordic lodge at Mt Washington and a hot drink.

We had some good exercise on a crappy day and had some good shooting practise.  All images taken with my Panasonic GF1.