SIJ - Day 05
adanac

SIJ - Day 05

Ricoh GXR Mount A12 - Zeiss ZM 35/2

Yeah, the sun has returned to Vancouver and with vengeance! Earlier I'd shot some straight up water scenes and the city from quite a distance with the ocean as foreground but I never really like these myself... but they were my "safeties" and our dog Kady had a great time running along the beach a Spanish Banks.

On the way home it was clear the light on the downtown high appartment buildings was getting more and more intense relative to where I was, and just east of Granville Island I spotted a place to park illegally and quickly grab a few shots, bracketing a bit but evidently not enough... maybe my GXR is over-exposing; I think its histogram underplays light in these conditions. No matter.

Sadly this shot isn't done justice on my laptop but in full resolution on an IPS display it looks like a painting or HDR.

All I've done is adjust the foreground a little with a grad filter control in lightroom, and increased clarity some overall.

I've a few more shots, one including zero people in the foreground, which is amazing to me in hindsight because just as I ran down to take a few pics an entire class of young kids walked along the seawall with their teachers. In the end what grabbed me most as a foreground feature was this solitary runner no doubt revelling in the lovely scene after all the rain.
As with other city shots for me this reveals a stark and alien environment which has a form of beauty, but serves to remind me how much I would feel out of my comfort zone to be in it, in the park maybe, but not in amongst those high rise buildings.

Barrie
 
I was just in Vancouver last November. First time. Loved the place. And even got a couple of days of sunshine!
 
Armanius, you saw the sun in November? Wow, that's a rarity here.

Barrie, Vancouver is a big city in a small package. While the surrounding area is like a small Los Angeles in that development continues up the valley, for residents of the city proper you can be up in the mountains within 30 minutes. We like to joke that in the spring you can go skiing in the morning, sailing in the afternoon, and be cooking on your barbecue by dinner.

When it isn't raining. :D

Point of interest, none of the buildings in this image existed in 1986 - the far shore is where the Worlds Fair, Expo 86, was held. Downtown exists just beyond those buildings, with office towers not nearly as tall as Houston or Toronto or even Calgary, and fairly compact at that. In fact most of the high rises in Vancouver are residential, giving the downtown a nice character. It doesn't turn into a ghost town at night.
 
Great light, and the contrast of the building against the clouds with a peak of blue is excellent.
 
Nice job balancing the shadows and highlights, and good composition as well! The light on the high rise buildings really conveys the feeling of the sharpness of sunlight when it pierces clouds sometimes...
 
Very nice portrait of your city. Great light and clouds. The runner adds a human touch to the city.

-Thomas
 
Mike, it looks beautiful on my MacBook Pro and does have an HDR quality...almost looks as though it is an illustration! I'm with Thomas re the runner - a very important part of this picture for me, in that it makes it real. (Not that Thomas actually said that.;))
 

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Single in January 2012
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