Vancouver Island Part 1

It’s been a while since my last post. This has been due, in part, to several photo trips this spring taking up some of my time. And secondly, when I have had time to process images, my laptop has been running extremely slow. At the best of times, processing images takes time. When I get back from an outing, I do an initial review of my images to select what I feel are images with some potential. I then go through those photos and select what I feel are the better ones that I will process. I use primarily Lightroom and Photoshop for developing my images. As I start working on selected images I often further eliminate some that I initially thought had potential. And even after processing a batch of photos, I often go back and refine some of them. So the whole process does take a bit of time. And with a laptop that frequently will take a minute or more to complete an action that used to happen almost instantaneously, it takes even longer – and increases the frustration level. Anyway, enough whining about that! A solution is at hand. I have ordered a new laptop which should arrive later this month.

So, back to the important stuff. In May, I participated in a photo tour of a portion of central Vancouver Island and Hornby Island, off the west coast of British Columbia. The workshop/tour was led by Adam Gibbs and Alister Benn, two photographers whose work I greatly admire. My primary interest was to capture seascapes, waterfalls and woodland images. I was further interested in concentrating on smaller scenes rather than grand landscapes.

In this post I will share some of the woodland scenes I captured. In Parts 2 and 3 I will share my favorite seascapes and waterfall images.

The arbutus tree, also known as the Pacific madrone, is a somewhat unique tree. It is only found along the Pacific coast and is the only native broad-leaf evergreen tree. The tree tends to shed its bark, revealing beautiful multi-colored wood underneath. We spent a bit of time, one evening, photographing a section of forest that had a lot of arbutus trees.

(Click on an image to open a larger version.)