They Roam in Packs

A photographer friend, Phil Douglis, once told me that his wife compared photographers to dogs... "they were always stopping at every lamp post". Put us in a pack, and all manner of chaos may be observed (and documented).

 

 

Thus it was late yesterday afternoon when I accompanied good buddies Holly Enn and David Paul Crombie out to Florencia. David, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is a superb photographer, and produces stunning images. His friend, Holly, was shooting yesterday too, under the excellent tutelage of David, so there we were, a brace of ambulatory lenses, pointing and poking our way along the shoreline. Grubbing for the elusive graphic element that then triggers a composition, and with luck, a potential image... Snap! Next morsel...

 

 

When you add into the fray that all of us were shooting different focal ranges (all 35EQ):

• I was using 18mm, 42mm and 135mm lenses
• Holly used a superzoom with 450mm at the long end (maybe the 18-300)
• David shot with a 24-70mm f2.8 zoom (a magnificent piece of glass)

In consequence, we were all probably working in different focal lengths, and even if we shot the same scene, we could have quite different, individual representations of the original image.

 

 

In the slanting late afternoon sun, peering just over the trees at the north end of Florencia Bay, Holly and David were lit up by the lovely warm light.

 

 

In places, where the water had carved delicate fluted channels in the sand, the sunlight reflected on the wet edges and made the fire-like lines of the pattern come alive as if indeed on fire.

 

Looking back down the beach to where the trailhead is, there were the inevitable band of visitors who seemingly never stray more then a few metres from the corridor between the parking lot / trailhead and the water. The low, long sunlight popped them out nicely against the wet sand, so I forgave them their silliness.

 

Walking north into the sun, the beach was lit up with tidelines and a patchwork of silver puddles on the sand. The aperture blades of my ultra-wide angle 12mm (18mm 35EQ) create exquisite light rays around the sun. (J.J. Abrams approved, dontcha know.)

 

With the sun almost down beneath the trees, you get a curious combination of colour temperatures where part of an image will look warmer (gold colour) and part cooler (bluish colour). The remaining barnacles warm against the cooler background rock. (I'm not sure if the light circles are the remains of barnacle foundations, or the start of a new barnacle!)

 

 

As we ascended up the stairs to the trail above, the sun was just visible through the trees, creating a beautiful dappled light effect and again, the rayed-sun.

 

Lovely afternoon, lovely friends, lovely image to have as the last remembrance of the hike.