The Artful Engineer

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 hardly an original composition—with lots of vertical trees framed in a wide panorama—but it is evocative of the Vancouver Island forests. The moss-laden branches break up the verticals and add a little bit of chaos. I didn’t do too much to this image beyond merging three frames for better depth of focus: mainly I lifted the blacks to reduce the contrast in the isolated portions of background that are peaking through; this gives the image more depth. I do wish, however, that I had taken another frame or two that was focused even closer, since a few of the hanging clumps of moss are blurred do to the limited depth of field.

I really like dead trees. Something about the graphic nature of their bare skeletons is often visually appealing to me. In the image below, I like the way that the bleached tree and its scattered death-mates stand out against their living neighbors.

As much as I like looking down off of bridges at raging water, I usually find the corresponding photographs to be uninspiring. It might be because the compositional options are are often very limited. Fortunately, in the image below, the little thread of water coming down from the corner of the frame has enough prominence to be noticed and to provide a contrast to the main river. The river has beautiful greens in the water, too, which helps.

In the other image below, the bright green leaves on the vine make a nice study in contrast from the texture and subdued color of the moss and underlying granite.

So many of the trees, large and small, on Vancouver Island were covered in moss that it is frequently featured in my images. Here the moss makes the dark background behind the delicate bright green plant growing out of the host tree.

Once I wrap up a trip I like to look at which lenses got a lot of use and which didn’t. Many photographers like to keep their selection of lenses simple; there is certainly something to be said for that, but on slow-moving trips like this there is plenty of time and if I am not mixing up the lenses a lot I think I have just gotten lazy. I find statistics like in the table below to be interesting, but, if you don’t, just skip ahead a few paragraphs. In studying the numbers for this Vancouver Island trip (labelled “Canada” just because it has fewer letters) a few things stand out to me.

Lens	Featured in Series*	Canada # / %	Portugal # / %	Andalucía # / %	Santorini # / %
Nikkor Z 24-120mm f/4 S	42	2068 65.3 %	5324 45.1 %	1504 65.2 %	1403 78.0 %
Nikkor Z 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S	21	541 17.1 %	5134 43.5 %	275 11.9 %
Nikkor Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S	7	312 9.9 %	430 3.6 %	285 12.4 %	189 10.5 %
PC Nikkor 19mm f/4E ED	1	87 2.7 %	70 0.6 %	43 1.9%	48 2.7 %
AF-S Fisheye Nikkor 8-15mm f/3.5-4.5E ED	3	86 2.7%	121 1.0%	112 4.9 %	30 1.7 %
Laowa 9mm f/5.6 W-Dreamer	1	42 1.3 %	364 3.1 %
PC-E Micro Nikkor 85mm f/2.8D	2	29 0.9 %	363 3.1 %	41 1.8 %	15 0.8 %
Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.8 S				47 2.0 %	51 2.8 %
AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4E PF ED VR					29 1.6 %
Other	1				33 1.9 %
Total	78	3165	11806	2307	1798

First, the overall relative proportions are pretty similar to the Andalucía (Spain) numbers, with about two-thirds of the images made with mid-range focal lengths, and nearly all of those from the 24-120mm zoom. For this trip, there is some skew in those numbers because I did do some focus blending which generated a few hundred near-replicate images. What is more, I have about 700 images with the 24-120mm of waves at Botany Bay. This is nothing compared to the Portugal trip where I had thousands of extra images from high-speed sequences of breaking waves and crashing surf. Even so, it is enough to skew the numbers, so my usage was somewhat more balanced than it seems.

Second, if you add all the wide-angle numbers together, you get a total (527) that is nearly identical to the 100-400mm telephoto zoom. So, in the end the numbers are about 17% : 66% : 17% (wide : mid : long). This seems like a decent balance to me, and probably better than the 19% : 69% : 12% I ended up with in Spain. I think somewhere between 20% : 60% : 20% and 25% : 50% : 25% is about perfect (and if I discount the focus-blending and wave-crashing sequences, I was right in the middle of those ranges).

Finally, that mid-range 24-120mm lens is clearly the work-horse of the bunch and is worth every penny. The armload of four wide-angles (9mm, 14-24mm, fisheye, 19mm tilt-shift) covers an assortment of distinct jobs well but undeniably adds a lot of bulk to the kit. They are all so different that it is hard to leave any of them behind, but I may well do that on my trip to Europe later this year. On a trip like this one, though, bringing them along is not a burden.

I also mull these statistics over when I consider adding new lenses to my collection. I think seven lenses is my limit for packing on a trip like this and if I bring something else once of these gets bumped. So, upgrading to better versions of these lenses is easy because that is a one-for-one swap, but adding something truly new is more problematic. But I think that is a post for another time.

On the way back to Victoria, we stopped (again) at a little road-side coffee shop called the Cold Shoulder Cafe in the small settlement of Jordan River. Despite the lack of nearby competition, it is a great little place and a welcome stop. They also have a bunch of interesting odds and ends around that I had noticed on the outbound leg of our journey. I wasn’t going to miss photographing them this time. First, there was the colorful wall of buoys:

And there were more buoys, this time posing with of all things a shot-up propane tank. I have to admit, this seemed like a very American thing to find in Canada, but perhaps shooting at random stuff is also a north-of-the-border pastime.

I also liked the humorous juxtaposition of the somewhat concerned-looking raccoon figure perched next to the skull of an I-don’t-know-what (but I am sure whoever shot the propane tank can identify it).

I actually have material for a couple more posts in this series, but I like variety and want to move on to other topics (even though I haven’t decided which). A few of those images left behind will probably find their way in to more thematic posts where they will be mixed up with images from other locations. For example, I have quite a few images of reflections from the Victoria marina that would be nice to feature with those from other marinas at some point. They’ll get their moment eventually.

Thank you for sticking with this long series. The series page (with all of the related blog posts in one place) and the related gallery are now live, too. It will probably be a couple months before I am ready to brave another long series, so expect a good run of onesie topics.

As always, I appreciate every reader and every comment. Thank you.