Vancouver Archives - Page 5 of 22

March 21, 2016

Invisible Rain

This is a section of Science World in Vancouver BC near the subway, people walk along here all hours of day or night. I have no idea where they go so early on a weekend. Maybe to work in the shops. More likely they wondered what I was doing out so early with a camera.

When I’m home I don’t go out in the rain, but when I come here I don’t mind. Funny how my brain works. Rain is good for photography and I never regret going out in it with a camera.

More night images from the gallery

Last night I was crossing a bridge back home in Florida and I was behind a big semi rig. The trailer had the name of the company but what I remembered was the city, Vancouver WA. Just north of Portland, that rig was a long way from home. It’s interesting how many cities have the same name. Ontario Canada has a couple of their own, Paris and London. Maybe they started as tributes. If a city did that now would they get sued for copywriter infringement?

The dark Vancouver mornings of January bring rain so regularly that it becomes invisible. I think people pay it little attention. It reminds me of living next to railroad tracks as a teenager, the first night it rattled my bones but after a while the trains just faded into the background. Isn’t it amazing what we become accustom to? Seems we only notice things that we consider unusual, but when they become normal they fade and recede into almost nothing.

March 16, 2016March 16, 2016

Victoria’s Silhouette

The Victoria’s Secret store in Vancouver has these big billowy pink satin windows. Because I’m using a Sony A7R2, I cranked up the ISO to 10000 and still was able to handhold street shots like this. I was shooting in aperture priority and this image ended up having a shutter speed of 1/1000. That’s impressive when you think about the opportunities it opens up for low light street photography. I like doing street photography, but doing it at night is like another world.

More images from the street photography gallery

I am not so bold when taking pictures of people on the street, I’m really quite furtive and do my best to not attract attention. In a busy area a person with a camera does not stand out. Having the technology that allows me too be quick at night is an advantage over what was even possible a few years ago.

This was taken with a telephoto at 31mm, so I was fairly close, just at the edge of the sidewalk where people were walking in front of the window. In the last few months a few prime lenses have become available that allow wide open apertures which come in handy for scenes like this. I take a prime, but I find that when I have a zoom I use it more. I should just try leaving the big boy at home and using just the prime for a few days.

March 15, 2016

Filling the Void

Wreck Beach is in Vancouver at the bottom a set of cliffs. To get here you have to walk down about 500 stairs. I recently mentioned I had been here and was informed that this is a clothing optional beach. I had no idea because I was here in January and clothing was anything but optional. Maybe next time. Just to be clear, these people are not naked.

Other abstract images from the gallery

If you’ve followed my work you know that I experiment with blurred images from time to time. The idea is that when we are not given all of the information, our imaginations fill in the void. Very much like radio, what we don’t see we imagine. This scene is an impression of walking along the shore in the afternoon of a winter day, at least that’s my impression.

I’ve heard it said that due to the age we live in we may be loosing our ability to think critically and concentrate on any one thing for very long. I wonder if exercising our imagination might be one answer to that. It seems to me the more time we spend building constructs in our minds the more we develop perspective that is unique and durable. I’m no psychologist but I like to think about these ideas. When my mind is freed from details I fill in the void with musings like this. In any case, this image one part hint and two parts imagination. On that note you may take it away from there.

March 6, 2016March 6, 2016

Iconic Morning

I can be such a tourist at times, like when I took this shot of the Vancouver Convention Centre against the back drop of the harbour, bridge and mountains. It would not surprise me if there are a thousand of these photos taken everyday. To prove my point there was a little plaque where I stood to describe the scene. One minor difference is that I took this at an ungodly hour on a Sunday morning before any self respecting tourist was out of bed.

Check out more images from the Vancouver gallery

But its karma, or something like it. I live in an area of Florida where there are a lot of tourists, so it’s only fair that I should get to be a tourist once in a while. Actually, it’s not karma, its more like tourism payback, serious payback. That makes no sense.

Off to the right is the Lions Gate Bridge, beyond that are the mountains and at the tops you can make out the lights of Cypress Bowl, a local ski area. Between the bridge and the convention centre is Stanley Park and to the foreground of that is the sea plane port. But the one thing that catches my eye, and everyone else eye, yet gets left out of the tourist plaques is the gas station. Why on gods green earth they decided to put a gas station in the middle of Vancouver Harbour I’ll never know. But there it sits, along side all the other icons of Vancouver. Interesting.

February 26, 2016February 26, 2016

Towers Across the Pond

Here are some apartment towers across the pond at the edge of the Vancouver downtown facing Stanley Park. Both the towers and trees cast a reflection on Lost Lagoon as I walked by here not too long ago. Lost Lagoon is a funny name for a pond in the middle of a big city, it conjures up images of a tropical island in the middle of the pacific somewhere, yet here it is in a big city. Maybe they figured no one would think to look for it here.

More images from Vancouver

I once made up a rule about landscape photography, that the more elements a photo has the more interesting or impactful it becomes. By elements I mean fire, air water and earth. So…, the idea is that the more I incorporate in a photo, the more it resonates. Take this for instance, it has water, earth and air. There’s a hint of fire on the right from the setting sun. I have no idea if any of this is true, but it’s an idea and I kind of like it.

Speaking of lost, I wish they’d make another series like Lost. I was hooked on that real bad; wouldn’t it be cool if they did another one? Lost 2, or Lost Again, or better yet, Lost lagoon. I have the perfect location.

February 16, 2016February 16, 2016

North Vancouver

North Vancouver is across the harbor from Vancouver. It’s actually a separate city with its own city hall. There are a lot of ways to get over there but the easiest is to take a ten minute ferry across the bay. I did that once and then walked up the streets from the water. They don’t look that steep from here but by the time I got to the top I was huffin and puffin like a Choo Choo train. When I turned around I had the opposite vista of Vancouver on the South side of the bay. Either way you look at it it’s a nice view.

I used my telephoto lens fully extended for this so the field of view is rather narrow. I could have done a panorama and it would have extended to the left with more tall buildings dwarfed by the mountain peaks and ski resorts. Skiing? No problem, hop in a bus, it’s right there in town. That’s just downright awesome.

I showed this image to some people in Florida to see if they could tell where it was. Everyone thought it was in Europe somewhere. I think most people don’t know what Vancouver really looks like except what they might remember from watching the Olympics. I’m the same way and when I first saw this in person I was hooked. Still am.

Here are a few more images from Vancouver.

February 11, 2016

Rainy Predawn Hours

This is from the rainy predawn hours of a winter day at Science World in Vancouver. It’s one of the more iconic buildings in the downtown core and at this hour seemed to me like something out of Blade Runner. Actually is wasn’t that early, only about 7:30 but the sun only shines for about four minutes in winter. That’s not true, but it feels like it.

I think that Canadians are a productive lot. With so much time to spend indoors they channel their energies into solving all kinds of problems. I think in general that’s true of countries with long dark winters. On the other hand, in places where it’s always warm, people seem less inclined to spend all that time indoors. Of course this is just a generalization and more than likely I’m wrong. There are a lot of productive people in India and it has a warm climate. Anyway…

Actually, this building is known as Telus Science World. Telus is one of the big phone companies in Canada. If you live in Canada or visit there, you will at once recognize Telus advertisements. They use all kinds of little furry cute exotic animals on posters and billboards. As an animal lover I like the ads and when I’m on a subway I spend a lot of time looking at them. I guess that means they work.

February 8, 2016February 8, 2016

Taxicab on Thurlow

Here I’m facing south looking at a taxicab on Thurlow Street in Vancouver. This is where there are a lot of the towers of the financial district. It’s a section of town near the Marriott where I stay, you can see it to the right. For some reason this exact spot is a popular film location, it seems every time I come here a crew has setup shop with equipment trailers and catering vans; especially so on the weekends. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this spot in a car ad back in Florida; kind of cool, reminds me of LA in that regard.

All of the taxis in Vancouver are small hybrids like this red Prius. That’s an economical way to go however it might look a little strange if you’re coming from New York City. Also, the colors of the cabs are a mixture of different primary colors, so it takes a little more concentration as opposed to just scanning for a yellow car.

Are taxicabs a thing of the past? With Uber I wonder if cabs are going the way of the dinosaur. Vancouver seems to still have a lot and I’ve never tried using Uber here. Most large cities have regulations with respect to who can drop-off and pick-up at an airport so taxis will probably never go away for good. For me it’s more convenient to just wave down a cab, less guesswork involved, especially if I’m in a busy area. But outside of the central core of a city, Uber is the only way to go.

February 4, 2016

Post Holiday Colors

The Pacific Centre in Vancouver seems to be into the post holiday colors with a vengeance. There’s an enclosed bridge that goes over the street and it was all lit up in red. Add to that the reflections from the wet street and city lights and its too much for me to pass on. It looked like holiday lights but that was weeks before. I stood in the middle of traffic waiting for someone to cross the setting. Eventually someone did but by that time my camera and I were completely soaked. The things I do for a shot.

This was at the end of a mega-walk day, over 25000 steps according to my watch. But I was stoked nonetheless. By the time I got back to the hotel my camera started complaining and doing a funny things, I’m sure because it was so wet. I laid it down on the desk and went for dinner and by the time I got back it was fine. I suspect perhaps some moisture on the hot shoe. All in all I was pretty impressed that the SonyA7RII put up with the abuse I put it through this day.

I took a lot of photos from this spot, some I intentionally blurred. However this one was not blurred, I added the zoom effect in post production. I did that using both Photoshop and MacPhun Focus 2 Pro. For me the image is all about color and energy. The idea I had I’m my mind when I took this was a cacophony of colors all blurred together. The motion represents the energy of the city. This is just one of the many faces of Vancouver city life.

February 2, 2016

West End Evening

This is a west end evening in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago. The lights in the sky are fading and the lights of the city are beginning to glow. This is a popular spot because hundreds of people walk along the shore here in the evening, perhaps ending up on Denman Street for Sushi. I’m standing on a pile of rocks, and about 30 seconds after I shot this I managed to slip and fall. Camera was fine, ego not so much.

Sometimes I get questions regarding how I processed an image to today I thought I’d relate some of the steps.

I used a wide angle zoom lens for this at about 14mm, that gives the sky and water that zoomy effect, basically it causes everything to converge on the middle. I love the effect for landscapes, especially when the main subject is at the center of convergence as the city is here.

I combined three images into AuroraHDR Pro to get an overall dramatic effect to the image. I then applied a texture in the sky and did some final tone mapping in Lightroom, warming it up a tad.

The thing is I never do the same thing twice, every image is unique and the effect is non-repeatable even by me. That’s because there are a hundred other little things that I did that I could never hope to remember, it’s like painting with a brush, on one level it’s completely freeform and one of a kind.

So there you have it. Click, slip, fall and process. That’s my process from start to finish.