The May 2008 issue is now online with 18 new photographs.

The last few months I have been trying to learn how to manipulate light with flash. I did not realize how well it was working until I noticed that every new photograph I chose to include in this months update was made with flash! I have been manipulating light with diffusers and reflectors for years but only now am I starting to get the hang of using flash in a way that looks natural and compliments the subject.

The biggest advantage I see with flash is I can achieve the lighting I want more easily without having to wait for the light to change or returning later when the light improves. This means I can spend more time making photographs and less time waiting for the sun or clouds to move. It also means I am more able to make a photograph regardless of what the natural light is doing.

All the new photographs this month are from my new book with Anne Murray on the history of Boundary Bay. Tracing Our Past - A Heritage Guide to Boundary Bay is the story of a landscape and the people who transformed it. It is your guide to the history of this coastline, from the last Ice Age to the challenges facing us in the modern day. This is the sequel to A Nature Guide to Boundary Bay and will be available later this month. You can order yours online from Anne's web site. In addition to my photographs, this book also has many excellent historic photographs that show you what the area used to be like.

I made some of the photographs in this new book several years ago while I was living in the area, but many of them were made last summer during a two week trip to Boundary Bay. I showed a few photographs from this trip in the September 2007 update. Some of the images shown on the web site are not the exact same compositions used in the book. I try to shoot both horizontal and vertical compositions of a subject when I can because you never know which orientation the layout is going to call for. Sometimes the layout calls for the composition I prefer and sometimes not. I decided to use my preferred compositions for the web site.

In addition to adding these photographs to the web site, I have also updated the Boundary Bay pages to include more information and more photographs from the books, photographs from Boundary Bay that were not used in the books, a map to show where some of the images were created, and an illustrated article with advice for making your own photographs in the Boundary Bay area.

As part of this update, I have replaced some of the older Boundary Bay jpegs with new improved scans. I have also added some older Boundary Bay photographs that have not previously been displayed on the web site such as this photograph of Greater Yellowlegs shown below. You can see these Boundary Bay images from the galleries listed in the menu on the right side of the Boundary Bay page.


Greater Yellowlegs

Spring is here and the woods are coming back to life! Today I worked at Swift Creek Bluffs. I arrived early in the morning when the light was gentle. High thin clouds helped diffuse the light well into the morning. Spring peepers were singing, a downy woodpecker was drumming high up in the beech trees trying to attract a mate, several chickadees were busy excavating a cavity in a dead beech branch, and the ground was covered in spring beauties, trout lilies, and the first signs of many other early wildflowers.

There was so much going on I was having trouble focusing on my subject. Focusing my mind I mean, the camera had no trouble focusing. Good compositions don't usually just jump out at me, I have to work at it. At some point I have to stop taking it all in and focus my thoughts on what I am trying to photograph. In this case, I was here to photograph spring ephemerals. Swift Creek Bluffs has one of the best displays of spring ephemerals I have seen in this area. I started to think,

"these plants emerge, flower, produce seeds, and disappear, all within a few months. They start growing earlier than most plants in the forest so they can take advantage of the abundant sunlight, moisture, and nutrients available at this time of year. Conditions will become much more difficult for them once the trees start producing leaves, creating deep shade, and absorbing much of the available water and nutrients. It's an interesting strategy, although they still have to contend with cold, and there are not that many pollinators this time of year. These plants tend to remain very close to the ground where it's a little warmer, and they tend to have showy flowers to attract the few pollinators that are out.

Ugh! You see, there I go! Stop thinking about ecology and focus on what you are doing!"

Okay, after beating myself up for a minute, I finally found a nice trout lily, got the camera out, set up the tripod, and started to get down on the ground for a trout lily's perspective. That's when I noticed the poison ivy. Now, you have to keep in mind that at this time of year the poison ivy has no leaves, just little stems sticking up a few inches from the ground, and they were everywhere! They look harmless enough but I have learned from experience not to lay down on these, because if you break them bad things happen a few days later.

So, after awhile I found another nice trout lily, this time without any toxic neighbors. I got down on the ground, found a nice composition and started fine tuning it and working on the lighting. Finally, I was in the zone, time was flying, and I almost had a composition I liked. I did not even notice how uncomfortably contorted my body was as I struggled to look through my camera suspended just a quarter inch off the ground. And that's when I saw it, coming right at me. It took a second for my eyes to refocus from looking through the camera to what ever this was. It was about 8 inches long, skinny, brown, and about 10 inches from my head and closing fast!

"Snake! Oh never mind, it's just an earthworm. I didn't know they made them that big! I can't believe it can move that fast. Where is it going in such a hurry? Okay, what was I doing? Oh yea, I'm photographing this trout lily."

Trout Lily

Today was one of those days. I spent all day working on photography, but none of it involved my camera. Then something happened that I thought was so funny I just had to share.

It's a shame to have to tell a client I don't have the photograph they are looking for. It happens all too often. I was contacted today by a publishing company looking for the rights to use one of my images in a science textbook. They provided a link to the image and gave me all the publication details I needed to quote a usage fee. Everything was straight forward except for one detail. They seemed to think the photograph was of a passenger pigeon!


Rock Dove
Before I prepared the price quote I thought I should check to be sure that was really the photograph they wanted. I informed them that the photograph was of a rock dove, not a passenger pigeon. Since the passenger pigeon went extinct in 1914, a color photograph of a live passenger pigeon was going to be impossible to find. I just heard back from them and they said,

"Thank you for the prompt reply. But I'm afraid we are looking for a picture of the passenger pigeon. Thanks for your help!"

I don't know, for some reason I don't feel so bad about not having photographs of that species!

Brown-headed and red-breasted nuthatches have been visiting my suet feeder for the last few months, and I have been looking for an opportunity to photograph them. Just as I was working out a way to do it, a yellow-rumped warbler decided to claim the suet as his own and defend it against anyone smaller or with less attitude. This included, unfortunately, all the nuthatches.

At times like this I try to remind myself to just go with what works. The nuthatches were run off when ever they came into the yard. The warbler, however, was present constantly as he chased the other birds with his tail feathers flared. I made lots of photographs of him over several days but I like this one the best because of the way it shows his attitude. I get the sense from this photograph that he is staring right at me and I am next on his list! Can you really blame him though? I mean, wouldn't you develop an attitude if people kept calling attention to some obvious feature of your posterior?


Yellow-rumped Warbler