New posting at Saltwater & Rain

April 1, 2012 | Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment 

Catching up with this blog, emails, Facebook and my Tumblr blog for my Pacific Northwest photography project Saltwater & Rain. Check out the latest post there at:

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/saltwaterandrain

Omen of Bones

December 6, 2010 | Filed Under Omen of Bones, Personal Project | 1 Comment 

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 I tell them The End Of The World. You can almost see the eyes rolling, as I’m sure yours are right now. However, I’m not talking about aliens invading earth, all out nuclear war, or a giant meteor striking the planet end of the world kind of event. I’m talking about death by a thousand cuts end of the world. That’s the way I see it, we’ll go with a whimper not a bang. A little bit disappears here, a little bit there.

Most of us are familiar with salmon as a resource, a source of food for man and beast and we’re all (mostly) aware that salmon stocks have been dwindling over the past decades. Studies (private and government) and some steps at conservation haven’t stopped the trend. Some people got quite excited earlier this year when an early run of fish, which spawn in British Columbia’s interior, came through in record breaking numbers, an unprecedented event but that’s all it was, an anomaly, a freak show that won’t be repeated.

This year I didn’t get out to check the rivers until late and I’d  already heard the Goldstream run was way way down in numbers but even so I was shocked by how few bodies were on the shore and in the river.

What most people don’t realize is that it’s not just as a food source as living animals that make the salmon important but it’s their contribution to the general environment after they die that impacts the world as well. The bodies provide nutrients in the river water needed for the growth of other species. They fertilize the ground not just immediately next to a river but for miles around (animals and birds carry the carcasses).

That’s why I’ve been photographing the bodies, trying to draw some attention to an equally important part of the lifecycle of the salmon as well as their impact on entire ecosystem they inhabit.

We tend to view death as something terrible but for the salmon, it’s a needed part of their life cycle, they spawn and die, ensuring another generation lives on. Their death also ensures life goes on for a myriad of other life forms and without them we all die a little.

There’s also a certain bleak beauty in these images, images of death AND life,  if you know what you’re looking at.

Good Friday Walk with the Cross

April 4, 2010 | Filed Under Personal Project, Photography | Leave a Comment 

For more than a decade now I’ve been trying to get out on Good Friday and photograph the annual walks with a wooden cross that some churches do. It’s a project I call Weight of Faith. It’s an event that’s great for a photo project, visually the cross is an amazing symbol. It’s also a rare example of mainstream Christians  showing off their faith in public. I started the project while living in Calgary and have continued in Victoria.  This year there was a good turnout for the Christ Church Cathedral’s Good Friday Passion Procession despite rain showers and really heavy winds.

Working On Projects

November 11, 2009 | Filed Under Personal Project | Leave a Comment 

It’s always interesting when working on a project how certain themes or subjects start to repeat themselves, often threaten to become a project in themselves. Boats have begun to show up in many of my island photos, it makes sense as we have such easy access to water but until you start looking you don’t realize how many people do have boats and how they store them in unusual places and how often they’ll have several, just sitting in the yard year after year the way people in other locales store old automobiles.

I was out this morning to Goldstream Park to work on another project dealing with spawning salmon. This male chum was still alive but barely, still breathing while lying on his side partly out of the water.

On Conscientious

November 10, 2009 | Filed Under Personal Project | Leave a Comment 

It was more than a pleasant surprise today during my daily check of photo sites to click on Joerg Colberg’s Conscientious site and see one of my photos from the Salt Water &Rain project.

It was especially heartening as this is one of the first projects where I’ve moved away (or at least I feel like I have)  from my newspaper photojournalism background.

The project is based on the idea that despite increasing globalization and commodification of culture we are all, no matter where we live, still strongly shaped and given identity by our landscape and weather. Those two factors work to keep us distinct. Living on the western edge, actually off the western edge, of Canada on islands, surrounded by the ocean and often, certainly in the fall and winter months, living in the rain and fog does affect how you live.

These photographs are an attempt to look at and understand that effect.

Don Denton Website & Blog Updated

August 2, 2009 | Filed Under Blog, Website | Leave a Comment 

My website www.dondenton.ca and blog have been updated and given a bit of a new look and a couple of new galleries added, thanks to Tristan Shouldice at Introvenus Design. Please check back over the next few weeks as I’ll be adding more photos to existing galleries and posting new projects. Thank you.