Botany Bay

Still working my way through the images we shot on our trip to the west coast of Vancouver Island, but here's one from our first morning, at Botany Bay near Port Renfrew.

Botany Bay

Terrace Beach Sunset

The view from our cabin on Terrace Beach in Ucluelet, looking out over the secluded beach where we were married back in 2002.  A very magical place...

Terrace Beach Sunset, Ucluelet

This image was taken with a Sony A7R II camera, with an adapted Canon EF 16-35mm f4L IS lens.  This is a single image, shot hand-held, and the shadows were opened up by increasing the exposure in Adobe Lightroom.  The dynamic range of the Sony camera is quite remarkable, as is the sharpness of the Canon lens.

California Quail

While we were home visiting my Mom last weekend, she was having some large trees on the property cut down.  We spent a day cutting up one of the large pines, and piling up all of the limbs to be hauled away.  Early the next morning, we found a family of California quail (an introduced species in southern BC) had moved in and made the pile of limbs their new home.

The longest lens I had with my was my 70-300mm f4-5.6L IS, but it did a nice job capturing this male standing guard on top of the brush pile.

California Quail (Callipepla californica)

California Quail (Callipepla californica)

California Quail (Callipepla californica)

California Quail (Callipepla californica)

Summer Solstice at the Majorville Medicine Wheel

Time for another "better late than never" blog post, with one of my favourite subjects... the Majorville Medicine Wheel, this time at the summer solstice.  Trust me, it's much easier getting to this location in the summertime.

Majorville Medicine Wheel, June 2015

The weather was fairly cooperative this year, with no clouds to obstruct our view of the sunset (although I was hoping for a slightly more interesting sky but I guess you can't have it both ways...)

Sunset on the Summer Solstice, Majorville Medicine Wheel

There were a number of other visitors to the site this year, most of who said they had heard about the site thanks to the article in the August 2012 edition of Alberta Views magazine, which featured a number of my photos.  In years past, we'e always had this hilltop all to ourselves.

Watching the Sunset, Majorville Medicine Wheel

These images were captured with the remarkable new Canon EOS 5DsR, the world's highest-resolution 35mm DSLR camera.  Although it's not apparent in these heavily-compressed and downsized web images, the amount of detail this camera captures is simply staggering.  Here's a crop from the last image above:

(cropped from image above)

Winter Solstice at the Majorville Medicine Wheel

Okay, these photos were actually taken the day before the winter solstice - sometimes our schedules don't allow us to be at a location at the precise time we would like to be...

Interpretive Sign, Majorville Medicine Wheel

This visit to the Omakh, or more popularly called the Majorville Medicine Wheel, coincided with the arrival of my new Sony FE 16-35mm f4 lens, and I wanted an interesting landscape subject to put it to the test.  Getting to the location was a bit of a challenge, as some of the snow drifts I had to drive through were very deep, and proved to be a good test of the off-roading capabilities of my VW Touareg.

Majorville Medicine Wheel in Winter

Majorville Medicine Wheel in Winter

Winter Sunset at the Majorville Medicine Wheel

I had planned to return to the site a few days later, but another snowfall had made the trail to the site completely impassable.  My next visit will have to wait until spring arrives.  

In the meantime, be sure to check out my web site for more photos of Omakh - The Majorville Medicine Wheel at www.imageswest.ca.