Traditional house with flowers in Victoria, British Columbia.
The houses and buildings of Victoria and Vancouver are really stylish and deserve some attention. The nice Victoria weather allows for the rapid growth of the vegetation and the house owners generally try to have flowers in front of their property. Oak Bay and Uplands are two sectors where a visitor is sure to find very interesting houses.
A modern house in Victoria, British Columbia.
During wintertime, the grass is green in Victoria. During summertime, it is yellow unless watered daily. The microclimate is due to the proximity of the Olympic Mountains. The air that slopes down the east side of the mountains warms up and dries, favoring a more stable weather than in the rest of Canada.
Old buildings of Vancouver.
Condominiums in the highrise towers of Vancouver.
The picture above shows the view that an Airbnb rental can afford. In fact, it was the view from our room on a recent trip to Vancouver.
The pictures below were taken in Vancouver and Victoria, in British Columbia. They were all taken with a Canon 5DSR full frame camera.
In the Vancouver harbour, several condo towers have been built in the last few years. Many condos in those towers can now be rented by travellers through Airbnb, thus entering in direct competition with the hotels located nearby. I was trying to use the water reflections in the harbor to show one of the towers when this seagull appeared in the viewfinder, adding a touch of life to the scenery.
Another way of showing the Vancouver Harbour architecture (2016)
Floatplanes of all types constantly maneuver in the Vancouver harbour. The two photos below show a Saltspring Air Turbo Otter as it is being helped to park. You can also see a row of Harbour Air Beavers (DHC-2) parked after a day of uninterrupted flights.
Saltspring Air Turbo Otter C-FLAP in Vancouver Harbour 2016
Harbour Air DHC-2 Beaver floatplanes in Vancouver, British-Columbia (2016)
In the Willows Beach’s Park, in Victoria, I was able to photograph this Cooper’s Hawk using a Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS II USM telephoto lens. The full frame sensor 50 megapixels allowed for some serious cropping to bring the bird closer. The hawk clearly annoyed all the crows that considered themselves as the owners of the territory.
Cooper’s Hawk in a Victoria’s public park (2016)
In the evening, the fishing boats come back to the Victoria Fisherman’s Wharf. Since I was standing on a moving platform, the use of a tripod would have been useless because of vibrations impossible to eliminate. The solution was to use a lens requiring little light, like the Canon EF 50mm 1.4 USM. By increasing the aperture and the ISO, the picture could be taken with a high enough shutter speed to avoid a blurred photo.
Harbour Air Twin Otter floatplane C-GQKN and Turbo Otter floatplane C-FODH in the sunset in the Port of Vancouver during summer 2016
The picture above has been taken with a Canon 5DSR full-frame camera in the Port of Vancouver, in British Columbia, during summer 2016. Following a very busy day of take-offs and landings, everything is now peaceful. The Harbour Air Twin Otter floatplane C-GQKN and Turbo Otter floatplane C-FODH are now parked for the night.
Pictures taken at dusk or dawn benefit from a unique light. Nonetheless, taking pictures of aircrafts against the light, with the last sunrays still visible, requires a special attention with regards to blown out highlights.
When contrasts are too important, it is possible to correct the situation by taking several pictures with different exposures and merging them using an image editing software like Photomatix (HDR photography). This is done in a few minutes only. Nonetheless, with floatplane aircrafts that are still slightly moving even when tied for the night, there is an increased risk of a blurred picture. The best way to proceed is to use a ND grad filter and to place it exactly where the light is the strongest. Naturally, there will still be some blown out highlights.
This being said, you still have a good margin of manoeuver, since there is no problem in showing a limited amount of over-exposed highlights in the brighter part of the sunrays, as there is not much details to lose there anyway. While purists would argue otherwise and spend hours in front of their computer trying to correct everything, you are making the best of another day of photographic exploration.
If the picture was taken using RAW files (or RAW with JPEG), it is possible to improve the scene even more by correcting some aspects like the contrasts, the brightness, the colours, the saturation and ambient light, etc. This also requires very limited time in front of the computer once you understand the basic principles of an image editing software.
Harbour Air Twin Otter floatplane C-GQKN on final for Vancouver Harbour, in British-Columbia, during Summer 2016. Photo taken with a Canon 5DSR full frame camera.
It looked like it would be an average day for a photography session at the Vancouver Harbour. The sky was quite ordinary, which means totally cloudless. But around noon, a new and more humid air mass made its way in British Columbia and rapidly the blue sky was replaced by clouds and precipitations. At the same time, the high intensity light that was prevailing around noon suddenly took more acceptable levels for photography.
Pilots of different bush floatplanes like the Twin Otter (DHC-6), Turbo Otter (DHC-3T) and Beaver (DHC-2) had to deal with the sudden weather deterioration in order to complete the daily planned flights. But one man’s loss is another man’s gain. For aviation photography, low clouds and light intensity meant that the pictures would be more interesting.
The photo above was taken with a Canon 5DSR full-frame DSLR camera equipped with a Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS II USM telephoto lens. In order to capture the moving propellers, I had to set a low shutter speed. The scene was then cropped to avoid visual distractions. The 50.6 megapixels full-frame sensor of the Canon 5DSR facilitates cropping when it is required.
In the foreground, there is a Harbour Air Twin Otter floatplane (C-GQKN) approaching to land in the Vancouver Harbour. In the background, far away and in the superior right corner of the photo, the pilot of a Turbo Otter floatplane also deals with worsening weather while ensuring that he maintains a visual contact with high ground obstacles surrounding the harbour.
Westcoast Air Twin Otter floatplane C-FGQH arriving in Vancouver Harbour, in British-Columbia, during Summer 2016. The photo was taken with a Canon 5DSR camera.
The picture above was taken in British Columbia, during summer 2016, with a Canon 5DSR full-frame camera equipped with a Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS II USM telephoto lens.
A Westcoast Air (C-FGQH) Twin Otter floatplane (DHC-6) was about to land in the Vancouver Harbour. It is obvious that adjusting the shutter speed to 1/1200 would have given enough speed to obtain a clear image. But this would have taken away any movement sensation by freezing the propellers and background.
The shutter speed had to be slow enough to allow the rotation of propellers. It is clear that an aircraft’s propeller rotates more slowly on final for landing than during take-off. So the camera had to be adjusted for a shutter speed varying between 1/40 and 1/125.
A slower shutter speed increases the risk of getting a blurred photo, especially when the photograph must move with the camera to obtain the desired effect of movement. The fact that a telephoto lens is used also increases the possibility of a blurred picture. It is thus imperative to activate the stabilizer and horizontal panning function of the telephoto lens.
To obtain a background without any precise details, the camera is panning and follows exactly the aircraft’s movement. This requires a progressive acceleration of the panning, according to the aircraft’s position from the photographer.
When the Twin Otter gets closer, things get a bit more complicated as everything speeds up. It is necessary to already have positioned the feet in the appropriate direction in order to avoid a major switch in the body’s posture. The slightest useless or brisk movement would immediately be visible on the photo.
With a bit of practice, a photographer will achieve success by respecting the following elements: a shutter speed between 1/40 and 1/125, an appropriate position of the feet, no brisk movement while pivoting and a progressive acceleration of the body’s rotation aligned with the aircraft’s speed. A slower shutter speed will enhance the aircraft movement. But expect more blurred pictures when working with speeds between 1/40 and 1/60.
A last detail: as soon as the aircraft’s floats touch the water, the deceleration starts. The photographer’s pivoting speed must immediately slow down otherwise the photo will be blurred.
