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.