Night Light

These are a few random shots I took while on a evenings walk through our neighborhood. I like the composition and the color of the sky. - Fern

Success!

I have been attempting to take the quintessential photo of "A Day at the Lake." This feels like it's pretty close. This is a pretty little spot is in the Highlands District, just northwest of Victoria. - Fern Long

Swan Song

			The musicians pictured here gathered together on Thursday afternoon to hold a concert on Victoria's Inner Harbour Causeway. The concert was to bid farewell to a long-time musician on the Causeway, Swan Walker. Swan is moving to Toronto and the proceeds of the concert were aimed at helping to defray his moving expenses. Swan's energetic reggae and calypso influenced music will be much missed here.

The video below captures some of the session, which ran for two hours.

Beaches 5 - Gonzales Beach

While not quite as large as the beaches mentioned earlier, Gonzales Beach is very popular. It's easy to miss as you drive along Victoria's coastline since it is only slightly visible from the road. Gonzales Bay is also known as Foul Bay, its original name. Nowadays we generally understand the word "foul" to mean bad smelling or rotten. But this bay was named Foul Bay in the 1790s by Captain Vancouver because its bottom offered no good holding ground for a ship's anchor so it was "foul" in the nautical sense. Whatever its name it's a lovely little beach that has a very comfortable, neighbourhoody feel about it.

New Faces 1 - Blake Andison

I've been enjoying myself a lot lately down on the Inner Harbour Causeway. I've spent some time listening to and watching veteran Causeway Artists but I've also been impressed by some new faces. Above is Blake Andison, singer/guitarist and leader of "Blake Andison and The Solution" although when I saw him he was busking solo. Blake's well worth listening to and a welcome addition to the Causeway Artists roster. Use the player below to listen to some of Blake's music.

After Dark

The Inner Harbour Causeway is pretty busy during the daytime at this time of year. It's quieter after the sun goes down (around 9:30 - 10) but perhaps even more magical.

Oak Bay Village

Oak Bay blossoms out in summer. This is the Penny Farthing, a pub/eatery on Oak Bay Avenue. I haven't eaten there but if the food is as delicious looking as the flowery sidewalk seating it must be very good indeed.

Landen Shaw - Guitarist

Way back in May of this year I posted a photo of this young performer and promised a video of his playing "when the weather warms up a bit". Here is the video as promised. I invite you to take five minutes to enjoy a musical medley from Landen Shaw, Victoria's youngest busker.

Bliss

It's almost mean to put this picture up on a Monday morning when most of us are beginning another work week isn't it? Aaah, but let us dream anyway. - Fern

The TD Art Gallery Paint-In

One of Victoria's favorite outdoor summer events, the Paint-In was once again a fabulous day of art and sunshine and people. Lots of people. This was the 25th year of the event and included a whopping 161 artists. The incredible variety of materials, subject matter and styles was inspiring. This young art enthusiast was exploring her own idea of what makes for interesting subject matter. - Fern

Jaime Nolan

This week Victoria is hosting its second annual Buskers Festival featuring street entertainment acts from all over the world. Today's portrait is not one of those imported acts though, it is one of our homegrown veteran performers on the Inner Harbour Causeway, singer/songwriter Jaime Nolan. The Buskers Festival is a great addition to our summer entertainment here in Victoria but I encourage everyone who visits downtown to catch some of these acts to take a turn around the Inner Harbour Causeway and get to know the buskers and artists who live here and work hard all summer to make our downtown one of the nicest in the world. They deserve our gratitude and support. Jaime's been singing on the Inner Harbour since 1994 and he's well worth listening to.

Inner Harbour Causeway Tableau Vivant

Many photographers (including myself) now use High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing as one of many methods of improving image quality. Most new models of DSLR have built-in HDR functions. Generally I prefer to do HDR in post-processing because stand-alone HDR processing software (I use Photomatix) offers more control and more options. Usually when I use HDR I prefer it to be invisible. I use it to correct problems with lighting - some parts of the photo may be too dark or light and this can often be improved with HDR processing. But I prefer the end result to look like an ordinary photo. However, when HDR effects are pushed beyond this normal range the results are sometimes more interesting than standard treatments. Photographic purists are revolted by such treatment, but while I don't want all my photos to look like this, sometimes it seems to communicate what I want. In this case what I wanted was a kind of tableau vivant of a typical Inner Harbour Causeway scene. For a genuine tableau vivant I should have posed all the figures but extreme HDR processing like this plus the added distortion of a wide angle lens seems to make everything in the photo appear posed, or perhaps poised is a better way to describe how the figures seem frozen in significant attitudes. In any case, it's a different way of looking at what to regular visitors to this blog must now be a familiar scene: Victoria's Inner Harbour Causeway on a quiet summer afternoon. That's Dwight Hill sitting down on the lower left while some passersby take a look at his wonderful wood carvings.

Jammin'

The musicians who play on the Inner Harbour Causeway are always worth listening to - they have to prove their talent at springtime auditions before they are granted a license to perform. But sometimes passersby will get a bonus when two or more of these talented artists team up and play together. Here is our famed one man band, Dave Harris, dueting with Victoria's youngest busker, guitarist Landen Shaw.

Beaches 4 - McNeill Bay

This tiny bay and islet provide a perfect resting place for this group of kayakers out for a paddle. This place marks one end of McNeill Bay. The three ocean beaches I featured last week are all on the eastern side of the southern tip of Vancouver Island. McNeill Bay is just around the corner and faces south rather than east. This bay and rest of Victoria's beaches are on the south and west sides of the island and are generally pebble beaches rather than sand. They are not so kind to bare feet and are hence less popular with beach people. The eastern beaches also seem to be more sheltered from the prevailing winds.

Ripples

We escaped the city this weekend and headed north to Lake Cowichan. I would take breaks from doing nothing to spend time hanging off the dock attempting to capture the fluid beauty that is water. This one comes close to having the effect I was looking for with the rich colors of the wood so vivid as the water washes over it. - Fern

Stormy Weather

Victoria has been having some stormy weather of late and while I haven't been lucky enough to get a shot of all the recent lightening, I did witness some amazing 'skyscapes' as the sun was coming up. - Fern

Beaches 3 - Willows Beach

This is generally the most popular beach in the Greater Victoria area, Willows Beach. It's a long, sandy beach and closer to the city center than either Cordova Bay or Cadboro Beaches. It's got a food stand with a terrific summer menu - french fries and hot dogs and all kinds of other fast food. But you can also sit down and have a nice cup of tea if you like. This is Oak Bay, after all.

Beaches 2 - Cadboro Bay

Closer to the city's centre than yesterday's featured beach is Cadboro Bay, reputed home of the famed Cadborosaurus (Cadborosaurus willsi) or "Caddy" as she is affectionately known by the locals. This sea monster lurking in the bay doesn't deter sailors such as the young lad learning the ropes above. And Cadboro Bay's sandy beach seems like an inviting place to doze and get a start on one's tan.

In 1842 when James Douglas, the founder of the city of Victoria, first sailed along this coast, he anchored in Cadboro Bay and the bay was named after the schooner he was on, the Hudson's Bay Company ship, the Cadboro.

Beaches 1 - Cordova Bay

Well, here it is mid-July and we have definitely been having some beachy weather lately so I thought I would take a look at some of the beaches in the Greater Victoria area. The south coast of this island is sculpted by a series of bays almost as if someone had been taken great bites out of the coastline. Today's pictures feature Cordova Bay, along the coast northeast of Victoria.

Bilston Creek

Every time I go to Witty's Lagoon in Metchosin I take a photo or two of Bilston Creek because it is always such a luscious, ferny dell. The creek runs through the park and feeds into the lagoon after tumbling down the dramatic Sitting Lady waterfall.

Telephoto Fun

This city has a nice location lying at the foot of the towering peaks of....Just a minute there buddy, this is Victoria. See the red roof and spires of Craigdarroch castle on the right and the Shoal Point Condominium on the left. (Click the photo to see a larger version.) Where did that humongous mountain come from? The photo was taken from Albert Head Lagoon Regional Park using a 300 mm telephoto lens. The vast peak in the background, while it is occasionally visible from the city, is never so large as it appears in this photo. Its immensity is because of the foreshortening effect of telephoto lenses. The further away something is the more it is enlarged in proportion to closer objects. The mountain is Mount Baker in Washington State, about 130 kilometers (85 miles) distant from where I took this photo.

Fuzzy Birds

Continuing my exploration of Metchosin I went last week to Albert Head Lagoon and was alternately excited and depressed by the bird in the above photo. He was one of a group of 4 or 5 similar small birds running around in the muck at the edge of the lagoon. He looked unusual to me and I was happy to add a new species to my list. At the same time I was depressed because I couldn't seem to get a clear photo of this bird. Even when they were standing still they seemed fuzzy. It wasn't until I got home and was able to look at the photos at higher resolution that I realized what I had seen. These birds are fuzzy because they are still wearing their chick fluff. These fuzzy little birds were young Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus). Standing guard a little back from the edge of the lagoon was a larger, trimmer Killdeer, most likely the mother, still watching over her chicks (below).

A Day at the Lake.