For the second year in a row I went to the Kelby World Wide Photo Walk, in Victoria, BC. This time there were about half a dozen photographers from my local photo club that joined the walk through Beacon Hill Park and surrounding areas in the city. It made for an interesting trip with a wide variety of subjects to photograph.
Usually when I fly it is on a large commercial jet with tiny windows and no room to use a DSLR. Recently I took a return trip between Victoria harbour and Vancouver harbour on a Harbour Air float plane and I had an easy time taking photos. One of the other benefits of this was also the relatively low altitude compared with large jets.
For my latest post, I thought I’d present my latest diversion. Normally, I post some sort of landscape photos and a short story about where I took them. Today is not normal. I have decided to start a project that I plan to build on from this one post and eventually create a separate image gallery for it. I am calling it Project Shoestring because that’s how they hang…
I went for a brief walk around the Cooper’s Cove area in the Sooke Basin and had a chance to take a few photos of the Stickleback West Coast Eatery, which, by the way, is a great place to grab a meal after a day of kayaking. This is a favourite area of mine, because it is close to the Galloping Goose regional trail, where I take a lot of photos, and provides great access to a sheltered cove. I have seen many excellent photos taken from kayaks, but as of yet, I have limited myself to using an iPhone in a waterproof case when I am on the water. The idea of taking my DSLR in a little kayak makes me rather nervous, to say the least, but it is really something I want to do. Perhaps, in the future, I will venture out on a calm day and ease into it. For now, I leave you with an HDR image of the Stickleback.
The blog has been silent for a little longer than I would like, but that’s because there have been many changes going on lately. Many, but not all, have little to do with this blog. I have decided; however, to try and raise the bar on the blog, so, over then next while there will be some visible changes around here. The first of those is the URL (or website address) has been shortened, by removing “wordpress” from it (although the old URL will continue to redirect to the new one). The site is now officially wilddrakephotography.com
It’s been a busy summer, so far, and while I’ve been having a great time, I’ve had less time than usual for photography (and subsequent post-processing). The good news is that I spent a couple nights at Fort Rodd Hill and Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Sites, where they have “oTENTiks”. These are great, as there are only five of them at the site (only two occupied on the nights I was there), and the occupants get to stay and explore the sites after they are closed and everyone else is locked out!
It has been a crazy couple of weeks for me, but I finally managed to get some time to take a few photographs. This time I went with a small group to see the Busker Festival, around the inner harbour area of Victoria, BC. It was almost the perfect day for it, as the weather was partially overcast, so it was not too hot and we didn’t get wet. While the festival was going on, so was everything else that happens in Victoria, including traffic on the sea, land and air!
This spring and early summer has been hotter and drier than normal over most, if not all, of British Columbia. In fact in many areas there have been watering restrictions and burning bans for several weeks now. Unfortunately, with such dry conditions, the fire risk is at extreme and there are a number of active wildfires. Although it is supposed to be a clear, sunny day again today, what it actually looks like is an overcast day as seen through those blue-blocker sunglasses that turn everything orange, due to the smoke drifting in from all the fires. They are far enough that they don’t pose a danger to me, but they do cause concern.
It’s been a little longer than usual between posts, but I’m back with a quick one here on Canada Day. Today was Canada’s 148th birthday and falling on a Wednesday, it nicely broke up the work week. Instead of making big plans I took the day to relax and watch some of the celebrations across the country on TV (which is something that has only been turned on a handful of times since the beginning of the year).
After that, I took the dogs down to the ocean for a swim and to cool off in the 25C heat.
Once again the weather was beautiful and it made for a perfect day to head to downtown Victoria for a walk through the street marked set up for Car Free Day. Several blocks of Douglas Street were closed off to traffic and various booths, stages and other things were set up along it. It attracted about 20,000 people and was well planned.
Wild Drake Photography 