Trips, VI, more not driftwood

A continuation of yesterday's post, wherein you get more not-driftwood photos of our trip to Vancouver Island. 

In other blogging news, I've decided that if I'm going to blog, then my readers deserve that I actually blog a bit more regularly. One of the so-called rules of blogging is that you pick a topic and stick to it. BAH! I say an emphatic BAH! 

One of the charms of my blog is that sometimes I don't even know what's going to come out, and certainly my readers don't. I wouldn't want you to get bored. For my new readers, and as a reminder for my ongoing readers, thank you for showing up, and don't be afraid to comment. The trick is to use a desktop browser, preferably Chrome. Or if you're one of my subscribers, just reply to the email I send out. A few of you do that and I love it! 

If you aren't a subscriber, and would like to get in on the action, just send me an email, or a text, and ask. Simple as that. 

1. After we abandoned the walk to Mystic Beach, we met a couple walking their cat. It was not at all impressed with the wet surroundings.

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8. Linda, marching on ahead.

9. I sometimes get fascinated by the texture of wet rock.

10. Mossy forests are wonderful for recharging the batteries.

11. Botany Bay Beach. Which is a bit of a misnomer, since it's actually a tidal flat made of rock. Being there at high tide would be a bad idea.

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15. This was a bit of a precarious perch, walking on the tilted jagged wet rocks. Another version of this tree is one of the most popular of my images on VERO. And how do I see that, you ask? Look in the upper right corner of my blog roll.

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23. Once we found our way to the beach, Sombrio was awesome. This turned out to be a dead end.

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Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Flower

Yukon

Celina and a serendipity

Same file number as the Celina photo, but different date. This is the two bud-dies, and I'm surprised I they weren't  blogged with the rest of the photos. Maybe I did and missed the keywording and you're upset about seeing a duplicate. Life is hard. Or it is new, and you're happy to get another view of them.

Film (new)

Me trying to be artsy. I liked the curve of the dry creek to the band of white tree branches in the light.

Film (old)

Trips, VI, not driftwood

I take lots of photos on trips. Some are ho hum, there I was, this is what I saw. Documentary photos are all very well, and some are more interesting than others. Some photos indulge my tastes in the photographic world, which explains driftwood and other distressed wood. I love the shapes and textures. And some, the circumstances or light or subject make it impossible not to capture the moment, even if it isn't something I'd normally be interested in.

Part of being a photographer is to show only your best work. I sort of do that. What anyone sees of my work is only a small fraction of the many photos taken. Just as a number, my Lightroom catalogue just passed 200,000 photos, and I've only edited about 20,000 for the blog, and not all of them appear. Of course I have some that are garbage because they're badly out of focus, or over or under exposed. Hunting dragonflies, for example, I might take 1000 photos, and end up with only a couple good ones. The rest get deleted.

Sometimes I try to tell a story with the photos, or that relate to the photos. Then I forget, and use one of the photos, which breaks the flow. I try not to re-use photos, other than image of the month. There's lots of photos taken on trips, and that usually accumulates good stories, some of which cannot be shared. Like the "this van smells like wet photographer!" story.

So for today's blog I'm going back to February this year, when we visited many of the beaches between Sooke and Port Renfrew, on Vancouver Island. Driftwood will not be included, since they show up in the Of the Day feature below.

1. That seagull was giving me the eye, and I liked the sheen of water on the rocks.

2. There are often photos of Linda on the way to the beach. She is so eager to scope it out.

3. I liked the windblown texture.

4. On a beach, scrambling up and over the dunes of coarse beach pebbles. She's not so fond of this kind of beach, preferring the soft sand.

5. Warming up trying to find the time lapse composition that appeared in an earlier blog.

6. Trees and sky, often a great contrast.

7. I took a photo of these people with the Fuji film camera, and this is the digital version. You can see the film version here, along with other photos and commentary about the GW690. 

8. Not sure which beach this is. 

9. This is actually a triple waterfall, with the other two falls just out of frame. Here's me playing with different camera settings. This happens a lot, tweaking settings for different effects. Usually I'll land on the one photo I like, but sometimes the ones leading up to it are good enough to keep.

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11. Sometimes the path to the beach is a scramble. Sometimes not. This is one case where the light on the steps that the camera saw is different than what my eyes saw.

12. Part of the path that's a bit of a scramble.

13. Hoping for a nice sunset, but not. That happens.

14. The view from beside the hot tub, camera pointed nearly straight up. If possible I'll set the camera up and let it run by itself. I might get several thousand photos out of it, all of which I'll have to look at. Sometimes I'll assemble them into a time lapse movie, or overlap them to get that circular star effects. Sometimes the Northern Lights show up.

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17. I like the little streams that form on a beach as water drains away to the sea.

18. Linda, liking a flat and sandy bit.

19. Trying different settings and liking what I got.

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21. Linda trying to cross a bigger stream.

There's still lots of non-driftwood photos to come, mainly the forest walk to Mystic beach that we bailed out of, and the Galloping Goose Trail. Stay tuned!

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Flower

Yukon

Celina

Film (new)

Part of the bike path near Fish Creek. 

Film (old)

And people wonder where Linda gets her eyes.

September Image of the Month

For new readers, (welcome!) I like to review my photos every month. I think it's a good practice to see what worked or didn't and why. I don't want to be doing the same old same old. My idea of best might not be yours, and that's just fine. Sometimes my photo buddies agree with my choice, sometimes not. 

There's a tab on my photoblog where I put all the Image of the Month photos, with a link to the blog for that particular month. It's one way to see some of my best work. That page also shows a link for Image of the Year, where I usually explore the topic of "best" in more detail.

There's two points here. One is that "best" is a slippery definition at best. It could be best because it was technically difficult somehow, or the lighting was spectacular, or the subject was amazing, or maybe just because it tickles my particular fancy at the moment of choosing.  Sometimes there's several photos ready to step onto the podium, and I have a tough choice. Other times there isn't much choice. Two is that not all photos are in the running, so you won't see community association, race events, or private clients on the podium, no matter how good the photos are.

I almost always do the image of the month and two runners up. Sometimes the choices are more difficult than other times. This month I'm spoiled for choices, though many really good photos from the Ontario trip are not in the running because they're private family photos. 

2nd runner up

The Brockville railway tunnel, all dressed up in LED lighting, and with reflections. What's not to love? There's more from the Ontario trip that will show up in the blog.

1st runner up

Dinosaur Provincial Park (near Brooks, not Drumheller) is an other worldly place in ordinary light, and with lovely sunset light it becomes spectacular. Some of those will be posted on blog in coming days. And yet this black and white seems to capture the textures and strangeness even better than the colour photos.

Image of the Month

The ship's foghorn woke me up shortly after sunrise. I scrambled into clothes and ran out onto the dock. I got several lovely foggy sunrise reflection photos as I waited, some of which only just missed the podium, then it mostly emerged from the mist.