Friday 20 November 2015

Catching up, part two

Shoot the light #10

Sunrises are one of my favourite things to shoot: it's way easier this year to do it because I don't have to get up at 4 a.m. to do it.grin

This is beautiful downtown Cowichan Bay, on November 4, the day our new government was sworn in: I walked across the road from my hotel to the park, and decided to try some of the new bells and whistles of my new camera. This uses High Dynamic Range (HDR) to create several different photographic exposures from one simple shutter click, and then recombine them into a photograph that lets you see everything (like the town) that's in the shadow more clearly than just one automatic exposure would produce.

And it does it in less time that it takes to read that paragraph....

George or Gracie?

It was lovely and quiet down in the harbour, with the pair of tame-ish mute swans (this is either George or Gracie, I'm not sure which) cruising around the bay in their silent way. There aren't many ways to start one's day that are better than being alone and quiet with nature on a still morning.

Gentlemen

After a hearty breakfast, we (an old friend from university days who retired out to Vancouver Island, and offered to be my chauffeur for the adventure) had a lot of fun tasting wines / beers / ciders, going to a fibre store (where, indeed, I bought some local product), eating some great food, and visiting the pier at the south end of the main drag along the water to see where the Stellar's sea lions raft up to exchange ideas of current interest. You could hear these boys from quite a distance!

Always something going on

We then made our way up to Parksville to spend the night before setting off on my bucket-list adventure to Lasqueti Island. This had been the most complicated part of my trip west to organize, between the research on the ferry schedule, the weather, things to do, and so on. Then, as luck would have it -- and I was remarkably lucky on this trip -- a friend owns property there, and who had been most helpful in the planning, said "hey, as it turns out, I'm going to be there that week: why don't you spend the night at my place?"

So what started out as a quick day trip turned into something much, much more.

Thursday morning dawned calm and bright, and we made our way to the ferry dock with time to spare. French Creek is a lovely little place, with a great cannery/market, where I bought salmon to take over for dinner (along with a great deal of beverages we had purchased on our tasting adventures) as thanks for staying the night.

Our faithful chariot

And so we steamed out on the passenger ferry promptly at 9:45 a.m. ....

to be continued

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