Currently the home of the the Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre, the Roxy was formerly the Roxy Cinegogue movie theatre. It looks more like an industrial or farm building than an arts centre.
Roxy Theatre, Victoria, British Columbia 2015
All posts filed under Landscape
The Powder Keg, Kamloops, British Columbia 2015
The large mural on the side of the Powder Keg gun and ammo store and the Lotus Inn restaurant on Tranquille Road are long time business landmarks in North Kamloops.
British Columbia Photography – Art and Archive 2015
I get asked the question, what do you?, regarding my photography a lot. It’s easy to answer when I talk about the photography that pays my rent. I am an editorial photographer who supplies images to accompany articles, illustrate stories and/or provide news, sports, entertainment coverage for newspapers and magazines. People get that. It is much harder to explain the project work. I often use …
Parksville Beach Resort, Parksville, British Columbia 2015
The beaches were crowded during a recent visit to Parksville on Vancouver Island. Crowds were watching and participating in a big interprovincial beach volleyball tournament and lots of people were taking in the sandcastle sculpture competition. Then there was the Parksville Beach Resort, all boarded up, just above the beach and crowds and next to new towers of other hotels. I don’t know the history …
BC Transit Bus And Metal Scrap Yard, Victoria British Columbia 2015
A BC Transit bus lies at the bottom of a heap of scrap metal waiting to be torn apart and added to the pile in Victoria, British Columbia. The business sits on Victoria’s waterfront just on the edge of the city core. The city has voiced support for keeping industry on the waterfront but one wonders how long a recycling plant will stay (be allowed …
Dion Manastyrski and Prairie Sunset
I met photographer Dion Manastyrski a few years ago when I gave a talk to a local photo group. He contacted me after and asked if I minded meeting up to have a look at images from a project he was working on. The photos he showed me were from the Canadian prairies, mainly Saskatchewan, and examined the disappearance of rural and small town life …
The end of the Old Oak Bay High School, Oak Bay, British Columbia 2015
The old Oak Bay High School buildings will come down now that the new school building is constructed and will be finished for the 2015-16 school year. The new building will be new, certainly brighter and bigger and up-to-date certainly nicer for students and staff alike. What will be lost will be the collective memories of the old buildings added to each year by by …
Queen Street West, Toronto 2015
A vacation in Ontario provided the time for a stroll down Toronto’s Queen Street West and the incredible variety of small businesses along the street. I’d meant, during previous visits to document the street, but didn’t get the chance until now. Many of the stores are short lived so the streetscape is constantly changing.
Poet Robert Service on Vancouver Island, British Columbia
Almost everyone living in Victoria knows that Robert Service, the writer who became known as the Bard of the Yukon for his poems such as The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew after moving to Whitehorse, worked as a bank clerk for the Bank of British Columbia on Government Street before that move. The bank building opened in 1862 and operated …
Athlone Apartments, Victoria, BC 2015
This amazing apartment building always catches my eye driving down Quadra just before Beacon Hill Park. The Athlone Apartments feature three stairwell towers on the front that open to outside curved stairs. The back side of the building faces out over large treed lawn to the park. The building apartments are now owned and the building is run as a co-op. It was designed by …
Surf Motel, Victoria, British Columbia 2015
The Surf Hotel is an architectural fixture on Victoria’s Dallas Road waterfront. A visually appealing anomaly among the residential units lining the road. The motel was built in 1960 by a Saskatchewan farmer Peter Mangelson who had been spending his winters in Victoria. He spent $3500.00 for the lot. The building was designed by architect Bob Siddall, who designed other local projects including UVIC’s McPherson …
Vancouver Island Documentary Photographers
I find it interesting to look at other photographers who are working on similar projects, if only to see how they look at the world differently. Locally a number of us are photographing our immediate world, shooting land/street/environmental scapes of Vancouver Island. One surprising discovery was that all these photographers are men, the women I know shooting documentary tend to shoot people, not exclusively, of …
British Columbia Ghost Towns, Victoria, British Columbia
A good read from Mark Hume with photos by John Lehman in the Globe and Mail about ghost towns that still exist (for now) in British Columbia. Story can be found here. Another reminder about how our built landscape disappears from view, taking a part of our history with it.
British Columbia Photography Archives
Looking for inspiration for my own work I’ll look at the work of contemporaries but I also like to look through collections of the work of documentary photographers who photographed in earlier eras. The British Columbia Archives is the largest collection in the province (and the most diverse) but the Vancouver Library has some interesting holdings including images from the collective the Leonard Frank Memorial …
Dominion Market, Victoria, British Columbia 2015
A classic, corner grocery store, still open and serving the local neighbourhood.
Alpine Motel, Hope, British Columbia 2014
The thing about older hotel/motels, much like independent corner grocery stores, is that they have a uniqueness and really do tie in to their surroundings, history and place. This photo was taken while standing in the parking lot of the ultimate in generic commercial property, a McDonalds but the view from there was very much a local one.
Canada For Sale, Port Alberni, British Columbia 2011
Even the Canadian flag hanging from the building seemed dejected by its current status
Tongs Grocery Nanaimo, BC 2012
A traditional neighbourhood grocery store in Nanaimo, they are getting harder and harder to find, replaced by 7-11s and Mac’s style stores.
Canucks Jerseys, Coombs, BC 2011
Canucks jerseys, protected from the rain in plastic, hang outside a shop in Coombs on Vancouver Island. An image from the ongoing Salt Water & Rain series and the British Columbia photographic archive.
Unicyclist and Legion Branch #28, Cumberland, British Columbia 2011
An image from one of my ongoing projects, Salt Water & Rain, which looks at west coast life, in particular the small town urban landscape. This photograph was taken on the main street in Cumberland on Vancouver Island. The photograph is also part of the British Columbia photographic archive.
Smile Restaurant 400 Block West Pender Street Vancouver British Columbia 2013
Photographer Wendell Phillips introduced me to this cafe when he met me here for breakfast one morning. The cafe’s street sign now reads Smile Diner rather than restaurant.
Wing Sang Building, Vancouver British Columbia
Wing Sang Building, Vancouver BC 2012 Don Denton photograph The Wing Sang building is the oldest in Vancouver’s Chinatown. The Pender Street heritage building was restored and now houses the Rennie Collection, the private art collection of Vancouver real estate mogul Bob Rennie.
Derelict Boat, Coopers Cove, Sooke BC 2008
I was at Coopers Cove last week. The derelict boat in long gone although, for now at least, the former naval ship seen in the background is still anchored in the cove. It’s a reminder how photographs, while they must stand on their own as visual images, also serve as historical records, a document of time passing. This was one of the first group of …
The Forest Transformed
An image from a project looking at the forest of the Pacific Northwest.
Fishing Boat and Fire Hydrant, Maple Ridge, British Columbia
One of the things I like to do is find other photographers who use the Pacific Northwest as a subject. Lately I’ve been looking at the images of Missy Prince, a Portland based photographer who seems to divide her time between Portland and the southern USA. She’s interesting as well in that she doesn’t have regular website but appears to simply use Flickr as …
Bucking The Trend, Printing Photographs Small
A couple of weeks off which has been good for some travel, Kamloops, Maple Ridge, Vancouver and Portland, and now I’ve been doing some printing. I know everyone seems to be going for big photographs but I’m enjoying making small prints.
Olympic Peninsula Weekend Road Trip
Hit the road for a weekend with a trip around the Olympic Peninsula. I’d been down the east side before travelling to and from Portland but hadn’t done the whole loop around the peninsula. Great trip although the weather was constantly changing, providing a number of challenges for driving and making it difficult to get all the photos I wanted. That said it was a …
Wrong Side Of The Tracks – Ian Willms
An interesting set of moody images titled Wrong Side of the Tracks from Ian Willms of Boreal Collective.
Omen of Bones, British Columbia
I’ve been working on a project the past few years, shooting every fall when the salmon return to spawn. These aren’t the images you always see of scarlet bodied fish fighting their way upstream but instead are images of the dead and decaying bodies of the spawned out fish. I’ve been calling this project Omen of Bones and when people ask me what it’s about …
Vancouver skyline at dusk, Vancouver, British Columbia
Quite a few trips on BC Ferries across the Strait to Vancouver recently but never have quite enough time there, even on the rainy days. A wet evening view at a constantly changing skyline.