The two pictures below show advertisements for cars that were found at the time in various magazines.
Old advertisement of a big american car
Old advertisement of a Pontiac Bonneville american car.
These old representations of a new car favored very bright colors to catch the reader’s eye and increase the chances of a sale. In the two photos above, red and orange are found on cars, buildings, dresses, faces, etc.
Vintage Cadillac parked in Victoria, British Columbia
When I spotted this old Cadillac in 2018 in Victoria, British Columbia, the two previous photos came to mind. Again, several elements of the same red and orange colors are found in the photographic composition: the Cadillac, the motorcycle, the umbrellas, the post office box, the chairs and tables, and even part of the menu. It almost looks like an artificial set-up for an upcoming advertisement!
Click on the link for more photos of Canada and Québec on my blog.
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 main subject, in the picture above, can either be the Canada Goose or the bright psychedelic pattern of colours surrounding the bird.
Moments before three geese swam near Victoria’s Fishermen’s Wharf, in British Columbia, the multicolored houses built along the piers were perfectly reflected in the water.
As the geese swam through the reflections, waves and patterns of multiple colours were suddenly created. I chose to take a picture of the last Canada Goose as she benefitted the most from the interesting shapes and colours in the water.
The very bright colours were due to the paint chosen for the houses as well as the direct sunrays striking the houses since the sun that was approching the horizon. The goose is positioned according to the rule of thirds, but this is never mandatory. The small waves in the lower left quadrant gradually lead the eye to the main subject.
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.
A young girl plays piano on Willows Beach in Victoria.
The photo above was taken with a Canon 5DSR full-frame camera in Victoria, British-Columbia. The exact location is a beach in Oak Bay called Willows Beach.
In many cities around the world, the trend is to install used pianos in unusual places hoping that citizens and tourists will take a few minutes to try their hand at the instrument. While a young girl was starting to play on this piano left beside Willows Beach, a young boy appeared in my viewfinder, upside down on his father’s shoulder. To each his own.
In the distance, it is possible to see the sailboats of the Oak Bay Yacht Club and the Washington State Olympic Mountains, in the United States.
Each one in his own bubble in the Willows Beach Park, Oak Bay, Victoria
In the foreground sits a man in the Willows Beach Park of Oak Bay in Victoria, British Columbia. He is totally in his bubble, absorbed by his book. I have been looking at him for few minutes wondering how I should position myself in order to get an interesting picture.
Suddenly, a bubble, very real this time, appears in the viewfinder of the camera. The bubble is moving, thanks to the efforts of a child that is walking inside of it. An adult is monitoring to situation to prevent accidents.
Street photography sometimes requires luck. For every successful photo, many opportunities are missed. The fraction of a second offered to a photographer to capture an unusual scene always imposes to have the camera settings already set for the ambient light and the expected use.
The picture was taken with a Canon 5DSR full-frame camera.
The picture above represents an improvised artwork that was done on Willows Beach in Oak Bay, a municipality in Victoria, British Columbia. The work, created during a summer afternoon in 2014, was made slightly out of the way from the main activity area of the beach and, by luck, was not damaged after its author left the beach.
However, during the evening, while taking a walk, I saw that a group of young people had installed a volleyball net on the beach, not far from where the artwork was located. The players often sent the ball very close to where the eyes where so I decided to take a picture to immortalize the work.
Shells and rocks of multiple colours had been assembled by a real artist to give the eyes an extremely realistic appearance, full of life. You may note that the artist took care of designing the eyes of different size, as it is necessery to add a three dimensional effect. Few white shells had even been added near the centre of the eyes to add the reflection appearance and bring the eyes to life. A real artist creation!
Merchant navy vessel in the Juan de Fuca Strait near Victoria (2016)
Photographers know that the most interesting hours of the day are either early in the morning or late at night, but before nighttime. These periods are ideal for subtle colors and very atmospheric shots.
The Vancouver Island coast offers absolutely everything to attract many categories of photographers: the wildlife, the mist over water bodies in the morning or late at night and the mountains that are visible almost everywhere.
Travelling through British Columbia, I noticed the great number of merchant navy vessels passing through the Juan de Fuca Strait. But to try to photograph them during daytime would only have given average pictures. Waking up early to get the right picture is never easy, but it always gives interesting results.
The only problem with regards to ship photography is that the latter often navigate quite far from the photographer, thus becoming tiny uninteresting dots on a picture. However, the Canon 5DSR camera and its 50.6 megapixels full-frame sensor solve that problem: new experiments are then possible . The scenery above was shot from a beach in Victoria, very early in the morning. It was mandatory to ensure of the total immobility of the camera since some serious cropping would be needed later on in order to significantly enlarge the ship. The slightest vibration would have been amplified through enlargment and the picture would have been useless.
Here is the method that was used: the ISO was set on 250, the tripod planted on the beach (but not in the soft sand part where the tripod could have moved a little during the photo session). Moreover, the remote trigger was used, as well as the mirror lock-up function. In order to achieve an optimal focus, the latter was done manually using Liveview with a 16X enlargment.
A Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS II USM telephoto lens was installed on the camera, with a 200mm focal setting. A ND graduated filter was installed to compensate for the rising sun’s brighter light behind the mountains. Being early on the beach also allowed for a minimal wind speed, limiting even more any tripod vibrations. I tried several shots and decided to keep the one with a bird in the scenery, so as to add a touch of life to the scenery.
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Hummingbird photographed with a Canon 5DSR DSLR camera in Victoria, British-Columbia, in 2016
The 50.6 megapixels full frame sensor in the Canon 5DSR camera is of great help when comes the time for bird photography. It allows major cropping of an image without any loss in quality.
With a little patience, it was possible to take a picture of a hummingbird in a public park in Victoria, British Columbia after the bird finally rested on a branch for a few seconds. Without cropping and a powerful 500mm telephoto lens, it would have been difficult to produce a sufficiently large and clear image of a five centimeter bird.
I used a Canon 5DSR equipped with a Canon EF 70-200 f2.8L II USM telephoto lens. The camera was adjusted on APERTURE mode. The telephoto lens stabilizer was activated. The autofocus was set on the SERVO mode to insure the image sharpness in the event that the subject started to move.
But the hummingbird was so small that the autofocus constantly whizzed between the bird and the leaves. I had to switch to manual focus and use Liveview.
Once the picture was taken and cropping was done, few contrast and luminosity corrections were necessary in order to enhance the bird’s plumage which happened to be backlighted. RAW files facilitated the edition in Photoshop.
Likewise, the background intensity of the colours was corrected to avoid distracting from the principal subject. The initial picture, in landscape format, was later changed in the portrait format, which allowed the exclusion of several branches around the bird which were imposing and diverting attention.
Naturally, the chosen depth-of-field blurred the background, helping the hummingbird to stand-out.
Twin Otter Series 400 parked in Victoria, British-Columbia, in 2016
Knowing I would spend some time in Victoria in 2016, I planned a visit of the Viking Air Ltd installations, the Canadian company who now builds the famous Twin Otter Series 400. This company is unknown from a majority of Canadians since its production is essentially exported. Out of one hundred aircrafts produced so far, only two were bought by a Canadian company. Viking also offers maintenance service for the Twin Otter Series 100 to 300 in activity around the world.
In the foreground, a Twin Otter Series 400 built by Viking in Victoria, British-Columbia. In the background, a CL-215 water bomber recently acquired by Viking. It will possibly be modified into the more powerful CL-415 version .
In the beginning of 2016, Bombardier and Viking sealed a commercial deal that now makes Viking the new owner of the patents and designs for the CL-215 and CL-415 water bombers. Viking not only services the existing Twin Otters but is evaluating the possibility of restarting the production of the CL-415 water bombers. All is resting on the demand. But with more extreme meteorological conditions fueling a growing number of major forest fires, one can expect that within the next few years Viking will reactivate the production.
In Victoria, a Twin Otter Series 400 on floats built by Viking has been bought by Reignwood Air. It is ready for delivery to China (2016).
With the on-going regulatory changes actually taking place in China, Viking is confident to see an increase in its orders for the Twin Otter Series 400 on floats. The company will receive, at their Victoria installations in 2016, the first flight simulator essentially dedicated to training pilots on the Twin Otter on floats.
A Viking’s Twin Otter Series 400 in Victoria ready for delivery to Russia
For now, Russia is Viking’s most important customer despite the ups and downs linked to the political crisis between that country and Ukraine combined with a ruble devaluation that have forced a slowdown in the production of aircrafts destined to Russian companies. With the recent stabilization in the political situation, Viking has been able to hire back numerous workers which now brings the count to at least 350 employees, if my memory does not fail me.
Turbo Otter DHC-3T C-GVTO in Victoria, Canada, in 2016
Nowadays, most Canadians ignore that a Canadian company has restarted the production of the Twin Otters and is evaluating the possibility of also relaunching the production of the CL-415 water bombers. In the meantime, some CL-215s recently acquired by Viking will possibly be transformed into the more powerful CL-415 version. The only thing now missing for Viking is an important order from a Canadian company: that would make its name as well-known as Bombardier or De Havilland.
For other articles on aviation and photography, click on the following link: Aviation photography
