A street view in the 300 block of West Hastings Street on the edge of Vancouver’s downtown east side district.
300 block West Hasting Street, Vancouver, British Columbia 2013
All posts tagged: Cascadia
Local Bands Live, Victoria, BC 2015
Recently I’ve managed to get out and photograph a few local bands playing live, something that at the beginning of my career I did a lot. It’s still fun and there’s nothing like a live performance in a small venue. I’d never photographed any of the three bands, pictured below, before and they were photographed on different nights. What I found most interesting was how …
Roxy Theatre, Victoria, British Columbia 2015
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.
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 …
Summer Fog, Oak Bay, British Columbia 2015
I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and I was freezing in the fog that had rolled in off the Pacific and over Willows Beach. Bus loads of tourists were sitting on blankets on the sand, unable to see beyond the first waves and pretending to enjoy their picnic lunch while shivering. At the end of the beach a man was wading through the shallow …
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 …
The Pointed Sticks – Victoria, BC 2015
The Pointed Sticks, came out of the Vancouver punk scene in the late seventies. I photographed them quite often, perhaps only second to DOA, back then. They haven’t played a lot in the intervening years although they have been performing and recording. I last saw them perform at the Rio Theatre in Vancouver in 2009 . This Victoria gig was their first in the island …
Portraits of British Columbia writers
I spent over a decade photographing Canadian writers, a project that resulted in a few exhibitions and two books published by the Banff Centre Press (the second one here). That project petered out after the second book, pushed to the side by the usual reasons, making a living etc. Two years ago I thought I might start creating portraits of writers again but while I did …
Coaltown Auto Wreckers, Nanaimo, BC 2012
Old school garages and auto wreckers are almost as appealing a subject as neighbourhood corner stores. They are disappearing just as fast too. Coaltown is a reference to Nanaimo’s past as a coal mining town.
Entertainment Posters Victoria, BC 2015
I like seeing texts in photographs, signs, billboards, posters, they all add information about a scene or time. Street signs can locate a photograph. Grocery store signs and cafe menus can show us familiar or unusual food and/or how much prices have changed since the image was created. This photograph of entertainment posters in the window of a guitar shop on Blanshard Street in Victoria …
Store Street at Johnson, Victoria, BC 2015
Pedestrians use an protective covered walkway to walk in front of the historic Janion building (not seen) on Store Street in downtown Victoria, British Columbia on Vancouver Island. The Janion, a long empty and decrepit former hotel, is being converted into micro-loft condominiums. To the left is Swans Hotels and Brewpub and across Johnson Street on the left is Market Square.
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 …
Old Car Ruin, Nanaimo, British Columbia 2013
The wreckage of an old car lies along along a creek bed in the Richard’s Marsh Park area in Nanaimo, British Columbia. You can see enough of the vehicle still to tell it is 1920/30’s range of vehicle so has been there quite a while. It’s impossible to tell if it was just dumped there or whether it was placed there in a haphazard manner …
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.
The Travellers Hotel, Ladysmith, British Columbia 2012
The Travellers Hotel on the main street in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island has seen better days. The construction of the hotel was completed in 1913 when the town was an important coal shipping port. although a miner’s strike in 1912 had halted the economic boom that had been underway.
Impulse Foods, Saanich, BC 2015
This family corner grocery store closed right at the end of December 2014. It sits across from a small garage and hair stylist, a small pocket of neighbourhood commercial enterprises. When this photo was taken there was someone inside the premises cleaning and packing up. The details in the window already attest to a time in history especially the sign referring to the DVD sale …
Bay Grocery, Bay Street, Victoria, BC 2015
The Bay Grocery is one of those neighbourhood establishments, the corner store, that get get harder and harder to find each year. I enjoy how they look front the street, at either dawn or dusk, lighting up the street for the residents.
Totem and Architecture, Duncan, British Columbia 2014
Duncan, on Vancouver island, is known for the totem poles displayed around the town. Duncan is actually nicknamed The City of Totems. The very walkable downtown is a nice mix of older small town architecture and this unusual circular office building next to the courthouse. I like this view of the one pole and the office tower.
The Uchuck III in drydock Victoria, BC. 2014.
The MV Uchuck III was built in Oregon in 1942 originally for use as a minesweeper. It now carries both passengers and freight along the west coast of Vancouver Island. Website at http://www.getwest.ca/the-uchuck
Surfer and van, Jordan River, BC 2010
A surfer walks past a van and board at Jordan River, British Columbia on Vancouver Island.
Canada For Sale, Port Alberni, British Columbia 2011
Even the Canadian flag hanging from the building seemed dejected by its current status
North Park Bicycle Shop Victoria, British Columbia 2013
The North Park Bicycle Shop is a community fixture along Quadra Street in Victoria, in the North Park neighbourhood. The building always looks, to me, wonderfully scruffy and invitingly homely.
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.