For Sale

Gorge Rd. Church

Been a while since I last posted on this blog, but yesterday was a good day for my photography, so I thought I should mention it. I had my first Gallery opening, of sorts. The store that I work in does consignments, and the boss has been accepting lots of art lately, to get the store ready for what we hope will be a busy tourist season.

Portal to Fan Tan Alley

Last week I got a paycheque from Google for ad content on a few different sites I have. Took a few years to build up to the minimum for them to send me a cheque, but it was worth it. I used to money to get some prints done at Black's Photography, an adventure in its self. I had just enough left to go across the street from work to Opus and get one frame and mat board.

2 signed & numbered

Yesterday I helped a fellow employee find and buy a car real cheap. He sold it today for nearly four times what he paid for it, and threw me a finders few. That was enough to get three more frames and mat boards for the pictures.

So now there are three prints signed and hanging at Barclay's Exchange, with the prospect of more to come.

Up Above

 Sometimes you need to get above it all to really see what is at street level. The building to the left is the Bishops House, here in Victoria. It sits right behind St. Andrews Cathedral and on Sundays seems to attract quite a few panhandlers.

To the right we have a great angle on the Susex Building. A November morning sun to the left and behind with reflected light enhancing the blue glass windows.

The Staples building, or more precisely the building at 747 Fort, with the Staples store on the ground floor, reflects the CIBC building in the next block.

The buildings to the right are over on Yates, but this views the back of the structures. While it may look like I used my tilt shift lens with a short depth of field, it was in fact an hour of time using multiple blur layers in Photoshop. I am really liking the way this effect gives the illusion of a miniatures or diorama set.

Looking down on the Municipal Finance Authority of British Columbia, an older building on Fort St. sandwiched between much more modern ones.

All these shots were taken the same November Sunday morning from the top floor of the View St. Parkade.

The Hudson

Another Thursday night going to the VIMP coffee meet and spotting a great picture to take. This time it was The Hudson building on Douglas St.. Devoid of traffic I was able to capture an unobstructed view of the building at about 10:30PM.

The Hudson was the home to the Hudson Bay department store from 1921 -2002 when it moved to the former premises of its competitor Eaton's in the 1100 Block of Douglas.

October 4

"♪October 4 we open the door, October 5 we go live.♫"

This was our slogan at CIVI (The New VI) ten years ago as we launched Canada's first 100% digital Television station. No analog equipment in the building. It was ground breaking and monumental.

About two dozen of us got together this weekend to reunite and celebrate what we had achieved, a few even still work there. I started as a studio news Camera man and graduated to News Writer and Associate Producer before my nine month contract expired. Its still one of the few jobs that I would return to in a heartbeat.

Pandora Building

Over the course of the last few weeks I have managed, not by design, to come up with a few shots in HDR of the same partially torn down building on lower Pandora St..

The first one (left) was taken from the Fisgard St. side of the block before they obscured the fence. The second image (lower left) was taken a week later from Market Square entrance on Pandora St.. The last image was taken from the Store St. end of Pandora St..

Victoria Steam Expo

This past weekend Craigdarroch Castle hosted the Victoria Steam Expo II. For reasons I wont go into I didn't attend, but my friend Andrew went and got all dressed up for it. He bought a Pauldron from Ian at Skin-n-Hydz a little wile ago and put it on for the Con, and so I could get a picture of it.

The HDR took a bit of work, as it wanted to give Andrew's face a coal-miner's look. I used a layer mask and brought out his cleaner face look. The second image (below) gives you a look at the original 0EV exposure before any processing, so you can see the differences.

Gorge Rd Church

Every Thursday the members of the Vancouver Island Models and Photographers (VIMP) group get together at the Gorge Rd Tim Horton's coffee shop. On my way there this image presented its self to me.

The setting sun just seemed to give it the right ambiance.

About Time

I figured it was about time that I got some more of my images up from that failed shoot two weeks ago.

The previous two were taken from the old Eaton's Parkade, as is the first image in this set. This HDR image was taken from the corner of the parkade of the north-side of the Empress Hotel. You can see the scaffolding on the front of the building, where they're doing some restoration.

A look north from the Parkade gives us the Times Building, or at least a facade of it. This is a little part of the Victoria Bay Centre that I'm sure most people never notice. The building on Fort and Broad was the home of the Victoria Daily Times for forty years.

In the Bay Centre is a fantastic Brass & Copper clock with the local time as well as other locations of the British Empire. This view is of the North-West corner of the clock at nearly 10:15am.

At the bottom of the clock is a dedication to the "Victoria Eaton Centre Grand Opening 1990." Yes it was called the Eaton Center when it first opened, and was the location of the Eaton's Department Store prior to that.

"Westward the Course of Empire Goes Forth." is written bellow the right side. Above, on that side, are four smaller time-faces for London, Nassau, Zanzibar and Kowloon.

On the other side of the Bay Centre is a curios building that sits at the corner of Broad St. and Trounce Alley. I really don't know much about it. The dome sits on just the one corner of the building, and really doesn't fit the standard Victoria architecture, I would love to learn more about it.

Today's Shoot

I was supposed to shoot Sun-Dresses and Swimsuits today. Facebook failed to pass me the message that one was sick, and the other had said she wasn't sure she could. So after waiting downtown for 45 minutes, I got there early, I went for a walk and ended up on top of the old Eaton's Parkade on Gordon St.

So far I've edited two images. The first image was a look south between buildings at the Olympic Mountains. To the right is the Magnolia Hotel. The green domes in the lower right are the east side of the BC Legislative Building. I believe the Peak above the Legislative Building is Mt. Pleasant, about 45 miles away.

The second image is from the opposite side of the parkade. I looked out on to Broad St, towards the Bay Centre and realized the perfect opportunity for a tilt-shift image.

A tilt-shift image uses depth-of-field focus to causes a scene to look like a miniatures diorama. See how the cars appear to be toys, and the buildings look like models.

Johnson St. Bridge

Took a little walk before meeting a couple of models downtown last Sunday, and managed to get a nice angle on the Blue Bridge.

For those reading this from outside the area, the Johnson Street Bridge, or the tourist called Blue Bridge, connects Vic West and Esquimalt Rd. with downtown Victoria and Johnson Street and Pandora Avenue. Pandora runs one-way to the bridge and Johnson one-way from the bridge.

Chinese Public School

Was walking through Centennial Square on my way to work last Sunday when I saw a great angle to shoot this from. For those of you not aware, the school is located on Fisgard, half a block from the Chinatown gate.

There is a lot of red in this image, from the brickwork to the lanterns and the painted door and stairs. Inspite of that the HDR really helped bring out the details in the image.

The smaller image to the right was taken the same morning from a different position in the square.

Janion

At the beginning of February the shop that I work in changed its hours for Sundays, and I forgot. So I showed up early for a 10am shift, to discover that we don't open till 11am and no-one was there yet.

So I took a walk with my camera. I wandered down by the water below Store St. and worked on some great HDR.

This is the back-side of the Janion Building, been derilict my whole life and sits right across from Swan's Hotel. When Mosses Znamier was in Victoria, looking for a place to put CIVI (today's A-Channel) he realy like that building and its water proximity. Unfortunately the crazy person that owns it refused to sell it, or lease it at any price.

Water Dragon

I had never seen this sculpture before I took this picture. The water front location by the Canoe Club is perfect for it.

I really like what the artist did in giving both a native and Chinese feel to it.

Smith Bros

Located on Pembroke St. in Victoria is this old brick building, housing the Smith Brothers Foundry. This is a very industrial part of the downtown that is slowly disappearing.

Was happy to see the two black crows stay put on the roof while I took this exposure. The rain also helped accent the image with the street reflection.

Canoe Club

The Canoe Club below Store Street in Victoria. Taken on a damp Sunday morning. There were a lot of good shots taken the same day I'll try to post more soon.