Vancouver Island 2024

A twelve-entry photographic journal of my trip to Vancouver Island in 2024.

  • Victorian Tulips

    Victorian Tulips

    As promised (more than once) I am finally beginning to post about last month’s trip to Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Before the actual photo tour began, my friend Barrett Lowe and I spent an afternoon and a morning wandering around Victoria with our cameras. Of the many things to photograph, there were tulips in… continue reading

  • Fairy Lake

    Fairy Lake

    If you search online for “Fairy Tree Canada,” you will find a lot of images of this tree. Given how many images there are, it is remarkable their variety due to the variation in light and weather. But even if it is popular, it is such a neat tree that it is irresistible. As is… continue reading

  • Fairy Forest

    Fairy Forest

    As mentioned in last week’s post, we visited Fairy Lake twice while on Vancouver Island. After the first visit, we spent a couple hours exploring an area of forest that was adjacent to the lake. It was a small recreation area with a few campgrounds (that were closed, probably due to the season) and a… continue reading

  • Trunkated

    Trunkated

    Last week I promised some very different images and I’m a little worried that the first two might not live up to that billing because they are both foresty. But the later ones will get there! I love the combination of mottled light and patchy colors on the tree trunk above. The trunk itself barely… continue reading

  • Eden Grove

    Eden Grove

    Photographing a lush forest is a lot easier in soft overcast light, but even in those conditions two basic challenges remain: finding a subject amidst all the chaos and then making an image where it is clear what that subject actually is. So when I spot a scene like the one above, I jump on… continue reading

  • Harris Creek

    Harris Creek

    One nice benefit to maintaining this blog is that it encourages me to go through all the pictures from a trip like this one to Vancouver Island and actually post-process some of them. I am particularly happy with my results for the image above. It is a blend of five separate photos, each focused at… continue reading

  • San Juan River

    San Juan River

    As mentioned last week, my intent is to wrap up the Vancouver Island forests this week and then move on to a couple beaches we visited. This week’s post is about a campground we visited along the San Juan River. As usual for this Vancouver trip, there was a lot to photograph and it took… continue reading

  • Sombrio Beach

    Sombrio Beach

    For the last two weeks I have been promising that the blog would go to the beach and here we are! Well…the image above doesn’t look like a beach, of course, but is right next to one: this is a petite little slot canyon carved into the beach’s cliff. (My wife reads this blog and… continue reading

  • Botany Bay Up Over

    Botany Bay Up Over

    Botany Bay is a popular name: Vancouver Island’s version has homonymous counterparts in England, South Carolina, and—most famously—Australia. I have not been to any of the others (yet!) but they all seem to be more dramatic landscapes than this one. This beach was kind of a tweener: it was a lot rockier than a proper… continue reading

  • Sandcut Beach

    Sandcut Beach

    This is my penultimate post about the Vancouver Island trip. Next week, as is my usual practice when wrapping up a series on a big trip, will have some lens usage statistics and an assortment of stray images that I wanted to share but never found a home for in the earlier posts. This week… continue reading

  • Vancouver Island Wrap

    Vancouver Island Wrap

    I declared that last week was the penultimate post in this series, which makes this week the ultimate post, and it is. Whether it proves to be your favorite post or even your favorite ultimate post remains to be determined, but feel free to let me know in the comments regardless. The image above is… continue reading