Upper Squamish

My friends and I were talking about maybe camping somewhere near Vancouver, one of them mentioned going towards near Upper Squamish. I really wanted to go scout the area before I went camping there, and I saw it was going to be raining a few days later, so I decided to go then. I left home in the morning looking forward to getting some rain, it wasn’t happening. As I got near Squamish I decided to stop at Shannon Falls, which for whatever reason I had never been to in the 10 years since I’ve lived in Vancouver. I know, crazy!! I never realized it was a 2 minute walk from the parking lot to the falls!

It was mostly empty, really quiet also, with all the clouds dampening the sounds, all you could hear were the falls. Most people would get a photo of the entire fall to show scale. But as I looked around, I loved the rock formation near the middle of the falls. I have to say, it did remind me of the Lion King rock. So I decided to make them my main focus, and since they were the focus I only gave a little bit of space for the water, but enough to show the movement, it was a good first photo for the day. I highly recommend a stop here, Everyone reading this has probably been here, but you never know!

After getting a breakfast in Squamish I drove near Alice Lake, and kept going on this single lane road towards who knows where. I was passing by some houses and small farms, and saw these horses hanging out eating some grass and just chilling, like horses do. I had to stop to get a photo of them, I tried being very quiet, but they noticed me very easily. I had my Zeiss 24-70mm at first, but I couldn’t get close enough to them so I went back to the car and grabbed my Tamron 70-150mm F3.5, I love this lens, but I’d love an upgrade to something closer to 100-300mm. The Tamron is from 1980, it has beautiful swirly bokeh, but it lacks in sharpness and zoom, it does have an awesome macro mode, but I’ll talk about this some other time.

I got back to my spot and luckily they were still in the same place, only when I stopped to look, I saw there were a bunch of little birds on the white horse’s back. I tried to use the trees and bushes as a frame for the horses. I wish the white horse had his head facing towards me, but at least I got him to look at me with the corner of his eye. I was expecting to get a few shots of them, but as soon as my shutter clicked, they heard it and bolted away, all birds flew away and I just ended up holding my shutter down to get them running away, but that was my first and last chance to get a photo of them, since they ended up going further away from me and looking the other way. New cameras have silent shutters, but with my original Sony A7 I don’t have that luxury. Another upgrade in the plans.

After losing any other chance of getting photos of the horses, I got back in my car and continued to drive down the road. I actually drove past this green truck, because I didn’t really think I could get a good photo of it. After exploring this other area of Upper Squamish, on my way back home I decided to stop by that truck and try to get a photo of it.

I tried many angles, many compositions, it was really tricky to get something to work, because of the flat lighting that day. After a good 10 minutes walking around the truck I noticed the big side mirror and tried finding a composition with it. I wanted to show the windshield crack and somehow show the back of the truck, I have to admit, I did move the mirror to get the shot I wanted, this was an abandoned truck using the mirror, so I didn’t mind doing that. I went with this horizontal composition, it showed more of the layers in the photo, there are so many things to look at.

The second photo was to show the state of the truck in the wild, with plants and moss growing all over it, it really shows how long that truck has been there, it is now part of nature.

And to close things off, this one was actually taken between when I saw the horses and when I took photos of the truck. After driving for 20 minutes on that single lane road, I reached a point where the road turned into a dirt road. My car isn’t made for that kind of road, but the holes weren’t too big so I decided to go for it. I got to a bridge that went over the Squamish River. The dirt road kept going straight ahead, but I decided to check out what was on the other side of the river. I drove on the other dirt road past the bridge for another 10-15 minutes, and found this spot with a couple of other cars but no people in sight. As I was driving down the second dirt road I saw signs saying I was in Grizzly Country! Good thing I had just bought some bear spray a few days before, so I didn’t have to worry much.

I stopped my car near another section of the river and started walking around to explore. The area was beautiful, the sound of the river was overwhelming any other sounds, that for some reason gave me a small sense that I was being watched because I wasn’t able to hear anything else around me, it was most likely my brain playing tricks on me, after seeing the signs saying I was in grizzly country, and also seeing a camera trap set by animal researchers.

I kept walking along the river anyway, and saw these two tree logs that had fallen from the cliff, most likely from a storm. To my luck there was only one small area that was low enough for me to get the shot I wanted and that area was right in front of the logs. I tried a couple different things here, first I tried a horizontal panorama of that section of the river, trying to show the movement in the water, then I tried a vertical panorama to try and show the scale of the tree logs. Those didn’t work as I planned when I got home and started editing the photos. I had taken a single shot of the logs though, it was this vertical shot of them, I love how the logs fell on those rocks below, it added to the strength of the composition. I thought I’d need to use my ND filter for this shot, to get the movement in the water, but I just ended up going with an aperture of F11 to get everything in focus, and a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second worked really well here, it was enough to show movement but not too long where the water would just become a big blur.

As I said at the start, I came here to scout for a place to camp, yes it is grizzly country, but if you come prepared and know what to do in those situations you will be fine. I’ll definitely be coming back here very soon, and probably explore the areas I didn’t end up going to that day. It is a very close area to Vancouver, very easily accessible in a day trip.

PNE

 

Early morning Saturday. It was a bit windy and cloudy, but the sun was about to break through the clouds. Since I didn’t have anything planned for the morning I decided to drive around and try to find some more industrial areas, like I’ve been doing lately. I was about to pass by PNE and keep going towards SFU. I saw the theme park and that the sun was coming out soon, so I decided to stop around there. I’ve lived in Vancouver for 10 years now, and for some reason I’ve never walked around this park before.

I just started walking around and exploring the park from the outside, since it was closed. As the clouds started to break apart and the sun started to hit some of the structures, I knew it was time to start taking photos. I just brought my Zeiss 24-70mm F4 with a polarizer filter on it. I love this filter because it gives me a lot of control when dealing with reflections and the brightness of the sky. I highly suggest getting one of these before any other filter, it’s a very versatile filter, you can use it for window reflections, water, sky, foliage and just in general having some small control over the lighting in the scene.

It was really interesting exploring this area in the early morning, it was pretty much empty, just a few people running around the track next to the park. Usually this place gets pretty packed with people when open. I’d love to walk around inside the theme park, I could see so many more possibilities, but I was constrained by the fences and walls.

But I saw this little building with a Coca-Cola machine and these two trees, I tried using the trees as a frame for the little building. Looking at it now I think I could’ve gotten lower with my camera, so the tree on the left side would’ve cleared the edge of the building to give it a more clear silhouette, but at the same time I don’t think the composition with the trees would be as strong, because you wouldn’t see as much of the tree bases.

This last photo is my favorite of the day. I knew I had to try to get a photo of the Ferris wheel. With the limitation of the fences and walls, I could only find this one spot just below it. I really liked this angle because I was able to capture the strength of it. The symmetry also helped make it seem more bold.

I’ve been really liking going around these more industrial areas with older building, made of rusty metal and old wood. It looks gritty and bold. I’ll definitely continue to do this. It’s a great break from nature photography, not that I’m tired of it, but I feel like it’s always good to change things up once in a while. If you keep shooting the same things over and over again it’s hard to be creative, because you just enter an automatic mode in your brain in a sense. Doing these different subjects helps me see things with a different perspective. Usually when I get back to nature photography, I’m able to find new and different compositions that I wouldn’t have thought of before.

Park Royal Area

 
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This was not a planned photo walk, my buddy texted me to see if I wanted to join for photos at Lions Gate Bridge at the end of the day, so I of course said to meet up. As you can notice in the first photo, that was taken at sunset beach, nowhere near lions gate bridge. I started my walk there, until my friend got there. I saw this graffiti on the bus stop glass, I really liked the shapes on it, so I tried to frame the people down below in the graffiti design. When I put my eye to the view finder, this girl started walking her bike up the road, so I waited until she also lined up between the lines, I thought that was a nice lucky midground for the photo. Sunset Beach is one of my favorite areas of downtown. You can chill by the big field, there is also a small spot for skateboarding, a hockey court, and it’s usually a bit less busy than English Bay.

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These aren’t great photos, but I just love the look of this bike, it was sitting right next to the bus stop. Just a nice green on green photo.

My friend and I met up and headed to North Van, around the Park Royal mall area. When we got there, the sun was already on its way down, behind clouds. We walked around the mall but I couldn't find anything that interesting because of the lack of light, so we walked around back to the river that led to the beach. Right on the trail entrance there was this little path towards the river, a Heron was chilling on the rocks and enjoying the view. I thought it would be interesting to use the foreground plants as a frame for this photo, I tried including the bird and the background houses, maybe to show the contrast of nature and people? Who knows! I could try to be very poetic here, but it just looked nice ^_^

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We kept walking along the seawall, it was super nice, we kinda forgot to take photos, so we kept walking until we saw this awesome Lincoln Continental at the parking lot. I was trying to get a photo of the back side of it, when the owner showed up, he asked if we wanted to take photos of the inside, he was super nice and let us take photos of his car. I got this photo from the interior, and it might be my favorite picture of the day, it was a very quick snapshot, but when I got home and started editing, I saw how much potential it had, initially I had the sunroof in the photo but I thought that distracted from the interior of the car because it was too bright and it led your eye in that direction, I wanted you to see the interior of the car, that was the whole point, so I ended up cropping that. When I lowered the highlights in the photo, I was very excited that I had all those cloud textures to work with. I tried grading the photo with a 70s look. I think I achieved exactly what I was looking for! I also like the second photo, of the front of the car, mainly because of how the sunset colors play with the car color, those warm shadows from the sun and the cool blue highlights from the sky.

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And to end the night as we walked back towards the car, we went past this really interesting building with a lot of trees and foliage all around it. Blue hour had just started and with the warm glow of the apartments and the garage, I thought that gave a nice balanced contrast.

That was it for that day, I definitely want to walk around north Vancouver more, I don’t do that often enough. On the drive back I saw quite a few possible future photo opportunities, so i’ll definitely be heading back there soon.

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Medley 1 - Britannia Beach/Porteau Cove/East Van/Deep Cove

This will be the first post on the Medley series. The series will be for images that don’t fit well with other photo day stories, or they were the only images taken that day.

The first image was taken at Britannia Beach. That weekend had been very rainy, but the sky started opening up in the late afternoon, there was still a few hours left in the day, so my girlfriend and I decided to head there and try to get a photo of this spot that I had been wanting to get for a while. It’s a pretty easy spot to get to, you can park anywhere near the beach, you will see this abandoned hangar, and if you look around you will see all these old structures in the water near it. Just find your way to the beach and you are gold.

I chose this composition because I wanted to show the snowy mountains on the BG, the clouds and the structures on the FG. I had to find a way to lead your eye from the structure all the way to the mountains, I found this angle that had the main structure right in the FG, including its reflection on the water, and a second smaller structure to be the MG layer. From there the mountain lines all lead to the snowy area with the brightest part of the sun behind the clouds. The scene was beautiful in person, but it was tricky to get what I visualized in my head, in the camera. I decided I needed a 10 stop ND filer, to reduce the specular highlights on the water and to add motion to the clouds. I had to take a 3 min exposure to accomplish that.

I honestly don’t have much to say about this one, the image kind of speaks for itself. On our way back from Britannia Beach Trail, we stopped at Porteau Cove to see the last few minutes of sunset. It was absolutely stunning! I had to grab my camera to take this last photo, the way the mountain was silhouetted in front of those clouds was amazing. This was a 1min exposure to be able to capture the movement of the clouds. I didn’t have to do much on the color grading side of it, it’s just one of those images that you cant get twice.

Let’s jump to another day. It was a rainy Saturday morning, I didn’t have much to do, girlfriend was still asleep, so I grabbed my stuff and the car and started driving around. I drove around the east van area, near Hastings street, I wanted to find some industrial looking buildings and things of that nature. Took a few photos, but nothing worth sharing. On this calm suburban street near PNE were these views towards the ocean and below and the industrial area. I chose this photo because of the way those buildings reflected the light around them, the chrome look really appealed to me, and with the clouds above it gave the scene a very gritty feel.

To close off this medley, I have this photo I took the same day as the one above, but in a different location. After driving around for a bit, I decided to go to Deep Cove, it’s always super nice and quiet there when it rains, not that sunny days aren’t relaxing there, but the rain just helps dampen everything down.

I’ve been trying to get more into minimalist photography, I saw this boat far in the distance, it was all alone in the fog. I used my TAMRON ZOOM MACRO, it’s a really weird vintage lens, 70-150mm F3.5 with a macro range. I can’t say enough good things about this lens, the bokeh is from another world. I wanted a very calm feeling when you looked at this image. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave the cable lines in the photo or not, but I decided against removing them in post. For some reason I thought leaving them there added a very weird feeling of not knowing where they were coming from or how far the boat was from land and it added to that serene lonely feel.

Pitt-Addington Marsh

My buddy and I got out of the city an hour or so before blue hour began, drove about 45min to Pitt-Addington Marsh, got there just in time for blue hour in the early morning. We stopped the car on the side of the road next to the marsh, everything was frosty and misty, it looked eerie but relaxing at the same time.

We started walking on this path of grass, I wasn’t really sure what to shoot, the fog was so thick, could barely see 20 feet in front of us. I started noticing some of the trees were being isolated by all that fog, so I chose an old Pentax 135mm lens I have to shoot these trees, I set the aperture almost wide open, because I wanted to amplify the sense of density of fog, not that it needed it because it was already pretty hard to see the trees, but I wanted the photo to feel almost claustrophobic using that wide open aperture.

After that photo of the tree we kept walking for a bit longer to see what we could find. I had no idea what the area was like or what was around, I like taking photos that way without much preparation because I prefer that sense of spontaneity, it doesn't lock my mind to an idea, it’s just let’s it flow with whatever happens in the moment, but that’s beside the point.

As we walked, we started to hear these loud bangs, we weren’t sure what they were at first, but by the 2nd or 3rd bang, we knew those were shots, with the thick blue fog, hearing shots, we were kinda scared to get shot haha. We figured out they were hunting for birds and were most likely aiming high, but not wanting to risk losing our heads we left the marsh and went back to the car.

This photo was taken right next to the entrance gate to that marsh area, I saw that weird looking leafless tree on the other side of the road and these branches coming from the top on my side of the road and thought that made a nice composition.

We got in the car and continued driving down the road, we reached a dock with a few boats by the shore and all these wooden sticks on the ground, I thought that was pretty interesting. The day was starting to get brighter by this point, I still wanted that cool blue look to the photo, so I quickly went down by these broken docks and tried to find a composition where none of the sticks overlapped each other. I really like this photo, but it was a bit rushed, one thing i’d try to change on it, is the fg. I’m not a big fan of that tall grass poking through the bottom of the frame. Maybe next time!

By then the sun had risen and some of the fog had went away, so we thought we were done and good to go back home. On the road back quite a bit of fog came back and the sun started bursting through the thick layers of fog, there was this single big tree by the road, I had to stop and try to capture it. I used my trusty Yashica 50mm F1.8 lens, this lens is my number 1 favorite, I just love how the bokeh is produced and how it wall melts together.

These next two images were taken in an interval of less than 10min apart. They are of each side of this small bridge, I wanted to capture the stillness of it all, it looked almost frozen in time.

Alice Lake

 

I woke up early that morning with plans to take sunrise photos at Tantalus Lookout on the Sea to Sky Highway. On my drive there, I went past Squamish and saw this sign saying Alice Lake, since I had been to Tantalus Lookout a few times, I decided to change my plans and check out this Alice Lake.

When I got there, there was a film crew just packing up, probably from a TV show or movie. Nobody else was there at that time, I started walking along the lake shore, it was absolutely beautiful with the fog slowly moving on top of the lake and trees over the mountains. Just before the trail head I saw this small log sitting by the shore, I thought that would be a great foreground subject for this photo. Sadly I didn’t have much luck with the clouds, and the sky was a bit bare, but it’s almost impossible for blue hour to not be stunning. I found this angle that would show the stillness of the water with the leaves and log in the foreground, and the mist going over the lake just added to the effect.

After the first photo a couple of people started showing up at the lake, so I started walking along the trail that went further around the lake. I thought I’d be able to get some nice photos of trees in the fog and maybe possibly a photo with a river, but to my surprise all I could see were all the different types of mushrooms all along the trail and up the mountain. This one below was the first one I saw, I wanted to make this photo look very dreamy, so I decided to use my vintage Canon FD 85mm F1.8.

From here on, I started to go up the mountain and like I said before, but all I could see were all these awesome mushrooms!!

So here is the thing, yes I had my camera, yes I had about 3 or 4 lenses in my backpack, I had all kinds of filters and things like that, but the trail was so beautiful and quiet, and I could not stop finding new and different mushrooms, so instead of taking my gear out every 50 steps to take a photo of a mushroom, I decided that it was good enough to get those photos with my phone. Don’t be afraid of using your phone once in a while! It’s a great tool for situations like these, it will be much faster and it will allow you to enjoy the trail a lot more, without any frustration of setting up equipment. Below you can see just a few of the different kinds of mushrooms I found here, this is definitely a place I look forward to going back to.

When I got to the top of the trail, I did find this really cool tree with all this moss drooping from it. It was still mostly in shade when I got there, but I wanted to get a photo anyway, It was really tricky to find a good composition for it, specially because of that broken off trunk on the left side, everything just felt too busy. Luckily a little bit of light started to hit the top of the tree, that helped with the separation of the tree and the background. I think this photo could be improved, but for the amount of light I had available, I think it’s a pretty good result.

Meseum of Vancouver Area

I started my walk along the Burrard bridge, heading towards the Kitsilano area. If you are in downtown Vancouver, that’s about a 10-15min walk starting from Burrard and Pacific St. After you cross the bridge you can either continue straight towards Kits beach or you can make a right just after the bridge, and you will find yourself around the Museum of Vancouver.

Started taking photos when I began walking below the bridge in the direction of the Museum, as I was walking I saw this spot full of garbage everywhere, and I thought it looked gritty and a contrast from the usual Vancouver scenery. I walked closer to check the spot and didn’t realize there was a man taking a nap 3 feet away from me. I backed off so he could have his rest, but I still wanted to capture that scene, from further away as to not disturb the man. I saw this nice composition with the arches of the bridge support and the contrast of the shadows and the bright sun hitting the ground.

I then headed towards the museum area, there are always little corners of it that I’ve never seen. This is a great spot to rest, hang out with friends, some people meditate around here, others are just enjoying the sun. The main aspect of the museum I like, are the angles of the building. It has all these great diagonal lines, with this amazing pattern over the top, all these blocky shapes coming out of each other also add a lot of depth. My other favorite part is that there are a lot of nature around it, the trees help break up those strong lines from the building.

What I love about this neighborhood are the awesome cars you can find, you will find anything from a brand new sports car to older cars like this Ford Custom Cab truck.

As a bonus image, this was taken last year from the Celebration of Light event that happens every summer here in Vancouver, you are able to watch the show anywhere from North Vancouver to English bay and Sunset beach, all the way to Kitsilano and Jericho Beach.

Iona Beach

Iona Beach Regional Park. This must have been my third time there, it’s a very isolated and calm place near the Vancouver Airport.

I decided to head there just before sunset because I knew clouds were forming up, and rain was going to come later in the day. I knew I had a chance to get some nice layers of clouds with the possibility of that beautiful orange sunset. When I got there, there were huge godrays coming from the sun setting behind the clouds, it was beautiful and powerful, but at that point the light was too strong for my taste. I then started to walk along the marsh trying to find some compositions, I tried a few different things with some plants in the foreground and the godrays in the background, but I found it to bee too busy for what I was looking for.

After I continued to walk along the marsh, towards the airport, I spotted a Heron. I didn’t have any long lens, all I had on me was a Pentax Takumar 135mm F2.5. I tried to be as quiet as I could to try to capture it.

After I took this first photo I tried to move in closer, but I ended up stepping on a stick and the Heron flew away to safety.

Those things happen, it’s good not to get discouraged, I kept walking towards him a bit further away this time, not realizing that I had reached the wet part of the marsh, and I was definitely not wearing the proper gear for that. I ended up going further from the water, really close to the airport fence, and I saw this really nice huge log of wood, to me it looked like the log was watching the sunset just like I was, I set up camp again, grabbed my Zeiss 24-70mm F4, and tried to composite the photo in a way that would show how serene the evening was but at the same time showing the absolutely stunning orange colors bouncing off the sun through the stormy clouds over Vancouver Island.

I’ll leave you with the last photo of the day, I had already packed up and walked back to my car, started driving back because the light was dying. As I drove past the airport I saw this really cool spherical tower, so I stopped grabbed my camera and tripod for a quick last shot, thanks the beautiful colors of blue hour and the emptiness of the airport, I thought that would be great for a more minimalist photo. I really like this image because of its simplicity.