We took our new Rialta camper van on its second inaugural run over the weekend, heading for French Beach, via Lake Cowichan and Port Renfrew, then on to Bamberton via Sooke, Goldstream and the Malahat.
The trip redefined our concept of perfect weather to include foggy, thought provoking days, that force you to bundle up and wear a hat, to ward off the droplets condensing on pine needles and leaves.
I always tell people, “I’m not a photographer, I’m just a guy who takes pictures.” But as an ex-journalist (if there ever was an ambulance chaser, who could combine those contradictory terms) I have taken thousands, probably tens of thousands, of shots.
So, although the technical and compositional skills of photography remain outside the view finder for me, I have learned something about the Zen of photography – the delight one takes in capturing a perfect moment in the neural circuitry of mind and camera.
B.C. offers so many opportunities for those focusing clicks. In this series, my favourites are the two images of Diana walking on a gravel spit off Bamberton Beach. The fog obscured much of the background, which made the parts it revealed more meaningful, more symbolic.
Careful as she was, observing the seagulls in the first shot, I anticipated the instant she would nudge just a fraction of a step too close, triggering their flight instinct. Birds taking wing are an inspiring image for me, and seagulls, with their long, elegant wings and immaculate white plumage, are a constant metaphor of my coastal existence.
Pleased with my photo prowess, I was repacking my camera, when glanced up and saw Diana heading back to shore, and about to step into the frame of a surreal composition that placed a ghostly boat in front of a ridge of hills looming out of the fog. The territory between that moored boat, and the mysterious landscape, is incognito, which means it’s a zone of possibilities, of unknowns.
Shafts of sunlight penetrating a forest canopy; a fungus encrusted log, the haphazard architecture of a driftwood hutch… to encounter those kinds of visual wonder on a couple of beaches, in a few hours… that’s part of the endless fascination of Vancouver Island.
Stay tuned. We’ll be heading out for the third inaugural trip in the Rialta soon… just as soon as I can get a mechanic to tell me why the engine light came on, as if our camper van didn’t really want to leave Port Renfrew, and complete our South Island circle tour.