All My Blogs

Kiri busking in Banff during the summer of 2016. Young people are rarely aware of the treasures and burdens that await them in life.  The nature of that journey will likely be determined by the choices they make.  There is a constant battle between immediate desires and striving to achieve long term goals.   Do they embrace the moment or sacrifice it for other gains?  Some may see this as a derisive slant towards those seeking pleasure over prosperity.  I am not speaking about acquiring material things, because in them there is rarely peace and happiness.  I am talking about joy. The pursuit of joy is often an elusive endeavor.  Instead of viewing it as an ethereal commodity like the water level in a cup, it needs to be viewed over a person's lifetime, more akin to the water in a lake.  Shallow lakes called playas are at risk of drying up.  They ebb and flow depending on the conditions around them.  Deep lakes fed by nourishin...

Making a difference, one sweep at a time. As a photographer, I am always looking for definition.  Although this implies sharpness, what I am really talking about is the impression which a casual observer is left with after viewing the shot.  There are many different insights to be gleaned from such an image; which one is being expressed? A photograph can convey many things.  First off there is what someone looks like.  Fundamentally, this is achieved with most representations.  I find it is often not enough; a passport photo will achieve this.  Then there is the relationship angle.  This is a key concept to photography as it alludes to some level of care and history between those in the image.  An image can include places and props to denote some event or milestone.  This comes close to what I consider a character shot, although it misses the mark. A character shot tells more about who someone is rather than being about any of the abo...

Mergansers (left), mallards (right), and Canada geese (bottom). Habituation refers to the decrease in response to a repeated stimulus over time.  Basically, the more you are around something the less likely you are to notice it or be affected by it.  It has its advantages and disadvantages.  One of the reasons I like to photograph wildlife in areas where people are relatively abundant is because the organisms barely notice their presence.  For me, this is a clear advantage.  I can get a much better photo of my quarry without them fleeing for their very lives at a mere glimpse of me. The disadvantages are equally stark.  Larger wildlife presents physical risks while smaller ones often are responsible for property damage.  Bears habituated to humans, especially their garbage, can become aggressive and are usually moved or occasionally shot.  Rodents of all forms and many birds cause all sorts of grief, usually with little concern about the hum...

A bass fishing paradise? As someone who enjoys fishing, part of me likes the fact that a healthy population of largemouth bass now inhabit the tributaries and water bodies associated with the Pitt River.  Of all the fish I have caught, the most memorable is the bass.  Large bodied creatures with a voracious appetite and ability to consume anything half their size, they readily will take almost any lure they come upon.  I caught one in Lake-of-the-woods in Ontario once and was surprised by the strength of the Piscean Arnold Swartzenagger.  Bending my rod in half, it gave me the fight of my life.  Even large pike never gave me that kind of battle. Aside from the sport of it, bass is a remarkably tasty fish.  White, succulent flesh, easy to denude the flesh from the bones, you have to appreciate their food value.  Trout and salmon have more bones than an ossuary but are harder to find.  Inevitably I get one stuck in my throat.  Instead of ...

Pitt Polder - not only a wildlife refuge. Nature can be savage, brutal, and uncaring.  It can also be therapeutic, nourishing, and inspiring.  The amazing thing is that it is all of these things - and more - at the same time.  It is odd and somewhat ironic that, in nature, great beauty often means great peril.  As with all things wonderful and dangerous, Nature is something to be enjoyed with a measure of sapience.  The scouts have it partly right with their motto of, "Be prepared."  It would do us a lot of good to also hold onto the idea of, "Be aware." As much as I love Nature with its great variety of living things and landscapes, I also respect the side of it that has substantiated Darwin's axiom, "Survival of the fittest."  There may be a thousand ways to die in the west, but there are a million ways to die in Nature.  For the most part, we have it easy.  There are plenty of trails to enjoy, maps and landmarks to follow, people to ...

Keisha, asking to see her puppy.        I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if I did, I would have to say that Einstein came back as my dog.     The above picture was taken a couple of years ago.     That is Keisha, on the right.     We taught her a lot of tricks when she was a pup herself, and she remembers all of them.     What’s amazing though is how she uses the things she has learned to communicate with us.        In the above picture, for example, she is saying, “Please.”     We would hold a treat and say to her, “Say please,” so she would sit pretty and get her treat.     What was really cool though was that she learned to generalize.     Her Please trick became a way of asking for things.     Hold something that she is interested in and she asks for it ever so nicely.     Toy, treat, baby, whatever.     ...

Visiting gardens can be a great source of photographs. I have to say that, outside of going to a butterfly exhibition, getting good photographs of butterflies tends to be a venture of chance.  Going to places that are likely to attract such insects increases those odds significantly.  It helps to be aware of the lifecycle and over-winter habits of these creatures, and if you are looking for a particular species the more knowledge you have the better. I find late spring and early summer tends to be the best time to find these four-winged treasures.  Yes, its true, butterflies have four wings, like most insects.  Flies and beetles have only one pair but most other insects have two pair.  It just so happens that butterflies beat their wings in tandem; all of them going up and down at the same time.  Not all insects fly like this; the dragonfly alternates its fore and hind wings. Since butterflies are nectar feeders they are most commonly found around f...

Glaucus gull eating a fish on the Pitt River. Seagulls are ubiquitous in nature.  There is a great irony in the name as saltwater is not a necessary part of their existence.  Many are landlocked, generations never even seeing an ocean.  In fact, the closest many come to salt happens when a french fry goes astray at an outdoor eatery.  Landgulls would also be a falsely descriptive moniker as they are common around all bodies of water.  The term gull by itself is apt; the dictionary clearly defines what a gull is and does not place it over any particular surface body. Gulls are instantly recognizable by both sound and sight.  Identifying them by species is another thing entirely because of the various plumages they have.  Some gulls have a juvenile stage and an adult stage, but some go through four different phases before reaching maturity.  When trying to identify a gull, my first step is to narrow down the likely varieties based on range....

A glacial erratic on the Coquitlam River. Hopefully, you got my pun.  The term erratic is often used to describe someone's behaviour that is unusual and unpredictable.  However, it is also a geological term referring to a large rock which seems out of place, usually an isolated feature.  Erratics are post-glacial relics, prominent signs of a retreating mass of ice.  Sometimes boulders will fall onto a moving glacier and will be carried along with the flow and then deposited.  Other times these enormous testaments of mass movement are literally plucked from the rockface, being scoured by the eroding embrace of the ice. I have always had a fascination with glaciation, both alpine and continental.  I grew up in southern Ontario where there are tremendous numbers of glacial artefacts.  Drumlins, kettles, eskers, and endless deposits of moraine cover the landscape.  I remember going on a school field trip to explore some of these features in Grad...

How motion is captured by shutter speed. Understanding shutter speed is one of the cornerstones in photography.  Shutter speed is one of the main controls over blur - caused by motion instead of focus condition - and it has a significant impact on the outcome of the shot.  Fast shutter speeds reduce the effect of movement on an image while slow shutter speeds enhance it.  The exact way in which shutter speed affects a photograph is highly dependent upon the situation and equipment.  This is highly conditional; there are a tremendous number of parameters involved in what the outcome will look like.  Without putting specific numbers on it though, suffice it to say faster shutter speeds produce less blur due to motion and slower shutter speeds produce more. A good example of a parameter relates to the speed of the pinwheel-like spinner above.  How fast is it actually going?  This is important because, if it were perfectly still and the camera was ...

My daughter, Leanne, along the Coquitlam River. My favourite time for photographing is in the morning on a sunny day using a fill flash to hide any disparaging shadows which might fall upon my subject.  There are issues with this scenario though. The need to arise early is a chief concern, especially if your location requires significant travelling.  Then there is the temperature issue; it doesn't do your subject much good if they are clad in enough clothing to effectively bury them.  Then there is the weather factor, as the sun isn't always in a charitable mood. These are all reasons why I find cloudy days excellent for shooting portraits.  The sun does not produce harsh shadows.  Foreground and background lighting tends to be even.  Fill flash is always a welcome addition to a shot, but it tends to be ineffective when the subject is not close to the camera.  In order for fill flash to work in the above shot, I would need an external, more power...

Lily bud at 100x power through a microscope I recently bought a Zeiss microscope through eBay.  I like to look on the Canadian site because prices are listed in CAD not USD and shipping is straight forward.  No risk of delays or border taxes.  It was listed for sale at $600 Canadian.  I was watching it and let the sale go.  No one else bid on it and an opportunity was presented to me to purchase the thing.  I know Zeiss optics are good, even old ones, and put a bid in for $400 thinking it was low and would be rejected.  To my surprise it was accepted and I had a contract.  I paid the money and my purchase showed up a week later, all shipping included in the price. Feeling like Christmas had come early, I tore open the shipped box with great enthusiasm.  Removing the device carefully from the packing materials that enshrouded it, I carefully set it on a table and installed the two oculars which were packed separately.  All the objec...

The Northern Shoveler in flight. OK, so it's not one of my better photographs.  I am doing a blog on this shot because there is value in what it allows you to do.  Often, when in nature, the opportunity to capture an image is fleeting at best, in this case literally.  There may be only a glimpse of a creature; mere seconds to see it, identify it, and learn something about it.  Distance, cover, or disappearing down a burrow or under the water can often thwart understanding what it was that I just experienced.  For some odd reason, I have a deep-seated need to know what something is when I look at it.  This applies only to creatures I find in the wild.  Plants usually don't hold my interest and zoos or conservatories have signs or fact sheets to help in the process.  I think I have thirty or so field guides on every organism likely to be found in North America.  Birds, insects, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, sea creatures of all sor...

Purple asters in close contact; it must be nice. The axiom, "You don't know what you have until you lose it" is true in many ways.  The things we were used to and took for granted have made their absence known.  Not with a shout, but with a slowly escalating awareness which has stirred itself into a frothy, boisterous cry.  Who could have predicted that there was more to life than a cell phone and a lot of social connections?  Could there be too much of a good thing?  Social isolation has left us craving interpersonal contact that is real and not personal. I love my purple aster photograph for a number of reasons.  First off, I took it a couple of years ago when I was camping and visiting my son near Edmonton.  Family, quality time, and camping - for me there is nothing else that I enjoy more.  I remember the scene well; it was a clump of wildflowers growing right beside where I parked my rig.  An amazing metaphor of togetherness withou...

Female common yellowthroat with nest building supplies. Male common yellowthroat. I live about 15 km or so from a bird sanctuary.  Every once in a while I enjoy a sojourn there, either sitting blissfully on a kayak or meandering along a dike.  Camera in hand, there is a sense of peace as I am surrounded by the sounds, sights, and smells of nature.  There is no better way to spend a day. I had the good fortune to go for a walk with a buddy of mine through this paradigm of tranquility.  He had come upon a path I knew nothing about and shared his discovery with me.  Getting there required embarking on a seriously potholed road.  My teeth chattered while I flung my jeep along the pit covered surface trying to miss more holes than I hit.  My success was limited.  Once past the cavity laced byway we reached our destination. There are a number of dykes here which function both as a means of flood control and environmental management.  B...

Bewick's wren - its numbers are in decline. My first encounter with the very vocal Bewick's wren was back in 1997 on a canoe trip to the Broken Islands.  I did not see another one again until a few years ago in a conservatory near Nanaimo.  Today, for the first time, I saw a number of them in a marsh near my home.  This wren is not terribly pretty - most wrens are somewhat drab in appearance - but are remarkably vocal.  This is another thing most wrens have in common; they chatter a lot. I remember seeing a Pacific wren a few years ago atop an enormous cedar tree.  Between its diminutive size and distant placement it was hardly visible, but its song filled the woods.  Other wrens I have seen include the marsh, winter, and rock wren.  Winter wrens are year-round residents here.  The distinctive ticking sound facilitates an easy identification.  My favourite characteristic of all though is the telltale angle at which their tailfeathers po...

Female red-winged blackbird gathering supplies. I was in the mood for a paddle this morning so I wandered off to a local lake and put in there.  Hoping to capture some bird photos I brought along my camera and long lens.  I saw a modest number of birds but nothing amazing.  Sometimes there is just nothing there or they are hiding quietly.  Most likely their absence was due to the late launching (10:00 am) and the generally poor weather at the moment.  Still, an eagle caught a fish, I had a glimpse of a beaver, and I did manage to take about 50 shots. Of the photos I took I like the one above the most.  It is of a red-winged blackbird female.  She is engaged in collecting something, probably nesting material.  Red-winged blackbirds eat insects, seeds, and some berries; whatever it is does not fall into any of those categories.  The reason I like this shot though is mostly because of the great effort she is putting into accomplishing her ...

Same bird, different coloured appearance.  Why? Have you ever looked at a hummingbird, especially a male during breeding season, and been taken aback by how his display colours suddenly change?  This is true for many hummers, but I have seen this pattern very vividly in the Anna's' species. Looking at one, you may initially detect a dull, flat black collection of feathers timing his head.  The next moment produces a vibrant iridescent display impossible to duplicate on film.  The photo above demonstrates this effect well; the left and right images are the same bird photographed from different points of view. The display about the throat is called the gorget; some hummingbirds (ruby throated) have only this while others, such as the Anna's, include the crown and even sides of the head.  The iridescent display is completely based on the angle the bird is viewed from.  A side view produces very little colour (left) while a frontal view (right) produces a...

Helmcken Falls, Wells Gray Provincial Park. Who can pass by a waterfall, especially one with a significant drop, and not take a moment to enjoy its splendor?  Our senses are nearly overwhelmed with the sensations they elicit.  Thundering torrents of water cascading over a steep precipice, clouds of water vapour spuing forth from the cauldron below, and on a sunny day, the tell-tale rainbow that tops off the experience.  The rarity of these majestic wonders causes even more sway as the opportunity to gaze upon them is hardly a daily occurrence. If you are feeling waterfall deprived, a condition most of us are in after a long spring and winter of intense confinement, then I have just the prescription for you.  Wells Gray Provincial Park.  About an hour northeast of Kamloops its way is heralded by the hamlet of Clearwater, BC.  Just north of this lovely town is the entrance to Wells Gray.  This park is renowned for its waterfalls.  There are, i...

Photographed from the pier at Dutch Lake Campground. Shooting landscapes can be broken down into three main times, although each of those has categories of its own.  There is the golden hour, which is basically just at sunset and sunrise.  This is a favoured time for many because of the warm lighting associated with the angle of the sun and shadows are full of details.  The day has strong light and provides good contrast; for the hiker, this is the time many shots are taken since that is when you are at that particular point.  Then there is night time. Many of my best photos have been taken at night.  Cities may look grey and somewhat lackluster during the day, but often come alive at night offering a totally new perspective of them.  Even areas that are not directly illuminated by lights benefit from light from the moon and light from populated areas, often being reflected by clouds.  Even the atmosphere returns light to the ground; each tiny su...

A lonely tree guarding the shores of  Portland Island. Sea kayaking is one of those things which causes in me both great excitement and trepidation simultaneously.  Although I have never skydived (also known as jumping out of a perfectly good airplane), I can imagine there being a similar sense of euphoria and pending doom.  The mood swings which comes upon the ocean ranges from calm to cataclysmic.  On a beautiful day, like in the above photo, the ocean yields spectacular vistas and invitations to explore coves and caves alike.  The beaches themselves entice exploration.  Flotsam and jetsam demand perusing while an endless variety of life hiding in the tide pools awaits discovery.  It all seems idyllic. The calamitous side of the ocean is well documented.  Huge waves put kayakers in peril, tides and currents have to be managed; having a copy of tide tables is crucial.  I have been out in thick fog and had difficulty in seeing my coll...

My family spending time together, 2001. As a teacher, I have always valued the ability to spend summers and breaks with my family.  Whether staying at home, away camping, or a trip to the occasional resort, time together was a priority.  There was always some specter of urgency creeping up to claim our togetherness.  Soccer, piano, school, homework, church, friends, and extended family gatherings all vied for the little time there was.  Our own responsibilities claimed other chances as the needs of work and society took their respective tolls.  Although the Covid-19 pandemic has brought chaos where structure and safety once reigned, there has been a silver lining to it, for some anyways.  It has meant time at home, for everybody, and a chance to renew relationships within the immediate family.  There are those who can not take advantage of this situation though, those who are themselves sick and those that are the front line workers have no such ...

Dry Falls, part of the Grand Coulee, Washington. Water is a remarkable substance.  Alternating between the three states of matter within the narrow span of only 100°, this property facilitates the hydrologic cycle responsible for much of our weather.  Water embathes cellular contents and the cells themselves allowing life to exist.  It has been called the universal solvent because, with time and volume, nothing withstands its furry.  Then there is what large quantities of it can do. Erosion and weathering work together to move enormous masses of the Earth's crust, water being the primary agent of change.  Although the process is usually slow, taking thousands or millions of years to wear down (weathering) and move (erosion) the material, sometimes it all happens in a matter of hours.  Such was the formation of the Dry Falls vista and the great gouge across Washington state called Grand Coulee.  As glaciers formed and moved across much of North ...

Caddis fly larva in its test. The saying, "Home is where your heart is," is certainly true for Caddis Fly larvae because their heart is tucked very nicely in the midst of their self-built home.  The home is not any roughly hewn assemblage of whatever happens to be about.  Each species of caddis fly is very particular about the building materials that go into constructing their mobile edifice.  One species is fond of small twig-like components that produce a rectangular test, another uses sand.  The above one prefers the use of small pebbles. Unlike hermit crabs that require a snail shell from its dead benefactor, caddis fly larvae build their own from scratch.  They also don't trade up as they grow like their crustacean cousins, rather the test starts off small like its owner and is built up over time.  It's a mobile home with additions.  The insect uses silk to join the various bits of hubris when the need arises; the pieces becoming larger at e...

Tree swallow in flight - captured with focus tracking and a lot of patience. When I was just starting out as a teacher, I saw an amazing poster of Michael Jordan wearing his 23 Bulls' Jersey, arms outstretched, holding a basketball in one hand.  The poster was simply called "Wings."  It made such an impression on me that I went out and found one, laminated it, and had it prominently displayed in my classroom for years.  This was not during the "click and get" era we are currently in; the search for this rare jewel had to be done the hard way. As I started writing this blog that image burst into my mind.  I thought it would be funny to take a basketball graphic off the web and paste it onto one of the bird's wingtips, but it would wreck the shot and somehow show off MJ - I don't think he can jump THAT high.  Besides, the concept is incredibly silly because passing a basketball to a tree swallow would result in a red, white, and blue stain on the bal...