April 2022
It's nice to get out of town
Ports are great for timelapses because there
is lots going on which leads people to watch the video again and
again to get all of the details. As Spring goes into summer,
sunset is at a reasonable time so I picked a spot at the end of
Canada Place and shot east toward the Vancouver Centerm
Terminal. You can see the sunset falling on the mountains,
the sea bus going back and forth to the North Shore and the
terminal stopping operations around 8pm.
Weekend in Victoria
Horth Hill is one of my favorite parks for
spring flowers in Victoria. It's a short walk (good with the
kids) and it really highlights how flowers grow in micro-zones -
just the right combination of light and exposure. The
last time I
walked the trails at
Horth Hill was back in April 2017 when it was just me and
the kids. I asked Claira how long of a hike she wanted
and she said short so we picked the viewpoint trail - maybe 2km
and the same trail I did last time.
Right when you star there are some patches of
trillium. These are slow growing plants - it can be
years between the seed starting the first flower. I was
surprised to see so many plant growing together here - they are
easily trampled and in Vancouver they are considered a theft
target.
As you get a little higher on the hill you
spot patches of White Fawn Lilies. These short plants are
one of my favorites, but they do require getting down on your
hands and knees to really appreciate the flowers.
As you walk a little more up the hill, the trees thin out and
small meadows reveal more flowers! I have a soft spot for
the shooting stars, but I also really enjoy the monkey
flowers. Again, you need to get close to really appreciate
them.
The one down side of a short hike is that
it is over quickly. Maybe next time Claira will want to
spend more time exploring and we can see more of the hill!
Botanical Beach
It's not a short drive, but the weather
was good and the tide was low around 9am so Helen, my Dad and I
decided to drive out to see Botanical Beach. The last time
we were out here Nara was just a baby but she didn't want to make
trip a second time.
There is the actual shore where you can
sometimes spot things in the rocks. As the tide was already
rising when we arrived, I decided to go there first to see if
anything interesting was out of the water. Normally this a
good place to see sea stars, but no such luck on this trip.
There were lots of Chitons though.
A little further south are the giant pools that Botanical beach is
famous for. These huge windows into the ocean hold enough
water that the inhabitants aren't stressed out with every tide
change and we see a window into the deeper water.
Shooting deep into the pools is hard because of the surface
reflections and glare.
About two years I saw someone had a short video of duck. The
duck wasn't doing anything special and it wasn't particularly rare
species (I think it was a Harlequin Duck), but it did strike me how
alive the animal looked just before it was in video. Taking
video of wildlife turns out to be much harder than I thought -
tricks you can use for photography like VR lenses don't work nearly
as well with video. Similarly, it's not enough that your
camera is stable, the object the thing is on also needs to be
stable. I've learned a lot more about post processing, but I'm
just scratching the surface of the skills needed to take video.
We had to hurry back because we had two kids waiting to go on their
Easter Egg Hunt!
We probably should have hurried more because the crows got into some
of the packages. We figured out it was the crows because the
crows kept coming back to the same spot the day after day looking
for a refill.
Project at Grandpa's house
Nara has an Ikea shelving/drawer unit in
here room that has very deep shelves - maybe 45cm deep. What
normally happens is that books get jammed at the back and we can't
find them later. We decided to make boxes so that Nara can
put soft (and hopefully light) things in and take them out as
needed. We went to Home Depot and bought a sheet of thing
plywood which we had ripped into four strips. Using my Dad's
tools (chop saw and a router table) we made the sides and bottoms
of the boxes and then glued them together in a jig. The kids
helped paint.
We got the boxes home and they do help make better use of the
space. Materials was about $60 dollars and it was time well
spent.
At the Swartz bay ferry terminal there are often cormorants on the
structures around the ferries. Sometimes they are close to
the ferries, sometimes they are far away. Today, I noticed
some birds when we drove on and once the car was secure I got out
my big lens to see if any had stuck around.
There are three species around Vancouver - The Double Crested and
Pelagic Cormorants. There is a third species - Brandt's that
does occur in the lower mainland and gulf Islands, but I didn't
see any of them today.
Tags: Botanical Beach(5), tide pool(3), woodworking(3), time lapse(1), sunset(1), crane(1)
People: Claira(5), Nara(5), Helen(1), Janet(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Blogs for 2023 to 2005 > April 2022
Last Modified Saturday, January 28th, 2023 at 20:58:15 Edit
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