The centre of the cascade

Sitting Lady Falls, Feb 21, 2009
Originally uploaded by Mary Sanseverino

With this post I am going to start a few weeks of writing about some of my favourite parks in and around Victoria. I love getting out in them for hiking, photography, picnicking, and just generally goofing off.

I just finished taking a nature and travel photography class with Josh McCulloch . It was an excellent class and I learned a lot from it. The course involved several field trips, and I got this image of Sitting Lady Falls out at Witty's Lagoon on one of them. I like the colour and movement in this image, but my lens (75 - 300 zoom) is not a particularly good one, and with a 1.4 teleconverter attached sharpness and contrast seem to suffer. Although I love the movement here, this shot seems a bit "soft".

Going to Witty's Lagoon reminds me how much I enjoy and appreciate the regional parks on southern Vancouver Island. Witty's is particularly enjoyable because you get ocean views and forest walks, along with lots of bird life. This park is also known (to me and my friends at least) as a veritable horn of plenty when it comes around to blackberry season. I have enjoyed many blackberry pies, margaritas, and crumbles furnished by the bushes in this park. The park also has an old apple orchard and the fruit makes for some very tart and spicy pies. There must be something about growing apples in sea spray that makes them so crisp.

Sitting Lady Falls is on Bilston Creek. For most of the year there is just a small stream going over the rocks, but in late winter and early spring Sitting Lady is full to the brim. This shot was taken with a time exposure of .6 of a second. Recently I printed it on some fine matte paper and it looks like a painting. The "soft" feel given by the poor lens and the teleconverter worked out after all!

ttfn
Mary