My thoughts on the craft, the process and the subjects
My 14-months-old daughter is fascinated with dogs – small and large, puppies and old ones. We met this 16-years-old west highland white terrier while walking at the Willows Beach yesterday. I was carrying a 300 mm f4 lens with a 1.4x extender and took a few shots of him. I realized what makes old dogs so photogenic – they don’t move around too fast!
In the end of July, I went on a zip line tour in Whistler, while Svetlana and Anna took the grandparents up the mountaintop in the gondola.
I never done zip lining before, so I had to consider which photo gear to take with me. I definitely wanted to take my GoPro HERO
Our group of six people (a couple from Vancouver, a father with twin girls from Cobble Hill, and me) assembled in the foyer of a building in the Lower Village, filled out the forms stating that we subscribed to the impending dangers and general foolishness willingly, and went to receive our harnesses and helmets from the Ziptrek hut near the Blackcomb gondola. I requested a “GoPro helmet”, which had a plate for the camera mount
I also brought a chest mount, as I thought that the video from the helmet mount would be too shaky. The chest mount proved to be completely useless, though, because the harness would block the entire field of view of the camera. I did try it on the first line ( the entire tour consists of several lines, each with a different length, speed,and views), after which I moved the camera to the helmet. The footage was not as shaky as I expected, so a helmet mount is definitely the way to go for shooting zip lining videos.
Another thing to consider is the battery life. The entire tour lasted about three hours, but I turned the camera off between the actual rides, so it was running for about one hour. In the end, the battery was nearly drained. I did carry a spare, fully-charged battery, and although I did not have to use it, I would have had to, if the tour had been a little longer. It is easy to underestimate how power-hungry a GoPro camera is, especially with an LCD BacPac
The result of my zip lining adventure is this video, which I edited down to about four minutes.
The Niagara Falls is one of the most photographed tourist attractions. This means that taking pictures of the Falls is very easy, but finding a somewhat unique perspective is quite challenging. On both the Canadian and the US side of The Niagara river downstream of the Horseshoe Falls are multiple viewpoints that would yield a descent photo provided that the Sun is not shining directly into the lens and that the photographer can find a break in an endless stream of tourists taking their own photos in front of the backdrop of the Falls. From the standpoint of commercial or creative photography, the problem is that this photo would be nearly identical to thousands of other images taken by the tourists from the very same viewpoint.
In the Sun Tzu’s spirit of turning a challenge into an advantage, the issue of uniqueness can be side-stepped by including the tourists in the frame and making them an integral, if not the main, feature of the photo. This adds a human element and can also add quite a bit of commercial value for a travel photo, particularly if the subjects are fit and of middle-to-advanced age (apparently, this is age group is the main target segment for the publishers of travel brochures).
In this image, I liked how the girl in a rainbow-colored dress and the actual rainbow could be captured in the same frame.
Ultimately, to take a unique, or at least not a cliché, photo of an iconic sight, one needs an uncommon vantage point. In the case of the Niagara Falls, one option is to take a helicopter tour, which provides an opportunity for some aerial photography. A company called Niagara Helicopters operates from a small airfield located approximately 15 minute by taxi from the Rainbow Bridge. A 15-minute ride over the falls costs about $115, including a discount offered through a hotel’s concierge.
During the tour, I took photos, including the one at the top of this post, with a 24-105 mm lens mounted on a Canon 5D Mark II. I also strapped a GoPro camera to my head and let it run continuously throughout the ride. The result is this movie:
Travelling with our 8-months old daughter from the West Coast of Canada to Ireland turned out to be much easier than we expected. I think that from the title one’s standpoint, the day turned out great, because she was held by her mother or me most of the time. From our side, we were lucky that when the cabin pressure changed during takeoff and landing, she wanted to eat, and swallowing probably helped her equalize the pressure on the eardrums. Overall, she handled the trip beautifully.
Along the way, we shot little bits of video using an iPhone 4 and a GoPro HD Hero 2, which we attached to the stroller during our flight connection in Toronto.
Here is a 3-minute clip that starts with our daughter trying on her earmuffs at home and ends with us waiting for dinner at Bewley’s cafe on Grafton Street in Dublin:
The Spring came to Victoria and we spent a great sunny afternoon at the Beacon Hill park. I really enjoy this park in the downtown Victoria since the first we came here in 2003. The horticultural significance of the gardens is in the way the hill that gives the park its name shelters the plants from the buffeting ocean breeze. This layout makes it possible to cultivate plants from drastically different climate zones, from tropical to alpine, in a single, compact park.
Anna was sleeping in here stroller, while we wondered around the petting zoo and photographed a freshly-painted totem pole that is claimed to be the tallest in the world (127.5 ft = 38.86 m). It was carved by Kwakwaka’wakw artists Mungo Martin, Henry Hunt and David Martin.
See our Victoria gallery.
Here is an example of an opportunistic photography. When we took our five-months-old daughter to the Butchart Gardens on a Saturday afternoon, we brought the camera with a single lens (24-105 mm) “just in case”. After enjoying a pottery show in Sidney, we drove past some very picturesque field in the Saanich peninsula. The Garry oaks on the background of the intensely bright clouds were impossible to pass by. We stopped at the side of the road and took a few shots. Here is the result.
It is interesting that this would be our usual operating mode while travelling. We’ve taken landscape photos from the side of the road in Malta, Greece, Czech Republic, Ireland. I particularly enjoy this type of photography – it gives me an immediate emotional connection with the view. The photos become souvenirs of the trip. Perhaps, this is why we rarely do it close to home. It really takes a conscious effort to think like a “tourist in your home town”. Incidentally, this is a slogan of a campaign to promote tourism in Victoria during the off-season.
See our Victoria gallery.
Visit gallery
Paragliding is a very photogenic sport. While the images are filled with action, they are actually quite easy to capture. If the wind conditions are right, the paragliders can hover in place, giving many opportunities to take photos without requiring extremely fast shutter speeds. They can also fly very low to the ground and maneuver precisely, so that the background landscape can be included in the frame.
Here are some general suggestions:
Please let me know if you have other related tips on photo techniques and/or locations and dates of the flights.
Visit gallery: Salmon Run
Location and dates
One of the best locations to watch and photograph spawning salmon in the Greater Victoria area is at the Golstream Provincial Park, which is located 17 km from the downtown Victoria along the Highway 1. (Visit official site for more info).
The salmon enter the stream from October to December. We visited the park on November 14 this year. It was too early to see the bald eagles that converge on the estuary to feed on the dead fish later in the season. However, it was probably the best time to photograph the fish – they were still mostly in good shape, and the creek is not filled with their corpses. One could still get a full sense of the cycle of birth and death, though.
Lighting conditions
The creek is surrounded by tall trees, so it is becoming dark very fast during this time of year. In our experience, by 3:00 pm it is too dark to take handheld shots of the moving fish, birds, etc. with the ISO setting below 1000.
Typical weather during this time of year is cloudy with light rain, which results in low-contrast light without sharp shadows.
Subjects for photography
A particularly nice feature of the Goldstream Park is a variety of vantage points for photographing the fish and the birds from different angles – low and close from the bank of te stream and from the brigdes and boardwalks over the creek.