Up Close and Personal on Vancouver Island

Black bears on Thornton Creek, near Ucluelet, BC.

I posted this earlier without text because I was just so darned tired after getting the thing assembled… only to find out that I put a typo into the intro frame.  Yes, it’s “Thornton” Creek.

Our trip to British Columbia was really wonderful, with far better weather than anyone had a right to even dream of for late October. 

While there were a lot of highlights crammed into five days, there wasn’t any other time where we had to stay as alert and ready to move out as we were in the 45 minutes or so that we spent along Thornton Creek.  There were at least five bears in sight, with a possible sixth in the shadows… and there may have been others in places that we just hadn’t noticed.

Not So Much By the River Anymore

I didn’t think I’d neglected this blog quite as much as I have, but then I actually looked in on it and realized that it’s been six months since I’ve done anything here.

Time flies when a whole lot of things happen at once!

Now I’m above the river by a fair piece, as opposed to being across the street from it.  At least we can still see it!

Taken from one of the upstairs windows.  It’s worth a click to see the larger version.

So… now, does it actually work?

I haven’t been a fan of Blogspot/Blogger’s default editing/authoring tool since, well… ever.  I put up with it for a couple of years, but then found Live Writer and stumbled through adapting it to the point where I was pretty comfortable with the flow… and then something changed. 

The biggest issue is that photos don’t present properly.  More specifically, they don’t show up at all more than half the time.  The failed attempts at uploads are removed, of course, but the net effect is that it looks as though the blog has died.

Actually, it looks as though both blogs are trying to die.

That’s not the case… they’re just in a software-induced coma.

I’m hoping that the dramatic change here might have the same effect as a defibrillator and jolt things back into a working rhythm.

Test image follows now:

OK… this one works, but others don’t, and there’s no difference in the workflow.  Clearly, there’s more work to be done and stuff to be learned.

Under Reconstruction

Well, this looks a bit of a mess at the moment!

I tried to make one minor change, and everything went to hell in a handbasket... good thing nobody saw the first few attempts.  They were awful!

I'm not all that charged up about what I'm seeing now, but there are some advantages over the previous settings.

Stay tuned, if you dare.

Whoooo are you?

I’ve been hearing about the snowy owls for days (weeks?) but had not had a chance to get out to the South Jetty to check them out myself.

I thought I’d missed my opportunity and that they’d moved on, but I ran into Sue Olson at lunch and she nudged me in that direction.

I can be a bit slow at times, so at first I didn’t follow the cluster of folks at the “uninteresting” corner of the parking lot.  Instead, I headed toward the south edge of the jetty, turning around at an opportune moment to capture this:

I couldn’t help but like it, but at the same time, I knew that this particular scene meant that I was on the verge of losing any usable light for bird photography.

After asking for help in locating one, I finally spotted the big male hiding in plain sight.  I must have been staring at him for three or four minutes before I actually saw him… at first he was masked by the very light sky.

I slowly, carefully (and probably needlessly) crept up on him, picking my way around the edge of the almost frozen marsh and through crackling grasses.

He didn’t care.  He watched me the whole way and didn’t budge.  He even let me get too close to be of any use… so close to the base of “his” tree that I couldn’t get a good shot of him.  It didn’t matter to him.  I was of such passing interest that he spent most of his time looking everywhere except at me.

But now and again, he’d stare me down.

I shot a lot of frames, but this is the one that I’m happiest with so far.  It’s a huge crop, even though I wasn’t that far away.  It’s noisy as hell, too, though I did what I could in Lightroom to mitigate that.  I still like it.

It feels rather intimate.

The fact that it’s the middle of January, calm and relatively clear was not lost on me.  Even though it was more than an hour past sunset, I decided to chance a detour to the Peter Iredale shipwreck and see what the afterglow had to offer.

Not a bad evening out, all in all.

Blue Hour Again

It’s been a very busy day on the river, and I haven’t been able to take much of it in.

By definition, the “blue hour” had been over for at least 20 minutes when I made the shot.

You could fool me!

It’s the Sinar Kutai riding at anchor just west of the Mill Pond area.  I love that the water is brighter than the sky.  There was actually clear sky overhead.  The massive cloud bank topped out a few degrees above the upper edge of the frame.

105mm @ f/8, 4 seconds, ISO 200.

A (couple of) Shot(s) In The Dark

I’ve never entered a photo contest before. 

I’ve been shooting for 35 years and more, but I haven’t entered anything in an actual contest.

That changed last week.  I entered two images.  If you like them, please feel free to vote for one!

http://www.coastweekend.com/yourcw/annual_photo_contest/

Mine are #218 and #220.

#193 in the series is another favorite of mine, for personal reasons.

There are some truly wonderful images in this set, many of them from this area, some not. 

The contest has a judged portion and a “Reader’s Choice” element.  All entries are in both pools. 

There are some very strong candidates, depending on your interests.  There are also some that shouldn’t have made the first round of a daily “keep or save?” edit on a cell phone, but that’s not something that I have any say about.