THEY AIN’T LOCALS!

Some people react oddly when they see the Pacific ocean for the first time………,thank God!

BEAUTIFULLY BARELY

THIS IS WHERE THEY DISCOVER THE BONE NUMBING COLD!

NIPPLY

EARTHMOTHER

Adam & Eve

I shot this originally back in 07.As you can tell,It was overcast & rainy here in Tofino today! So I didn’t get out.
It’s during these winter storms that I need to be patient.
This is a Spruce grove on Meares Island. I’d like this spot to stay pristine,so you’ll excuse me if I do not say exactly where on Meares.
I shot this with a medium format film camera. I only shoot my nudes in the forest when it’s overcast.
The clouds diffuse the light so there are no blow outs. A portrait photographer achieves the same affect by using white diffusing umbrellas to reflect the flash off of.
Personally I prefer Mother Natures technique!

A Natural In Nature

Day 17 since I was last out in my boat! This cloud and rain will be the ruin of me!
The Lions will have probably doubled their numbers at the very least I suspect? All the wildlife will keep doing what their doing during the cloudy,rainy days, I just won’t be there to record it! My opportunity’s are few and far between it seems!
Tuesday looks good,but thats still a long ways off. Too much can change in 3 days during the winter periods. I will remain patient and just enjoy my time out even more next time!

I decided to do a pano of a nude shoot I did in the Spring. The Pano takes in alot of space,so I thought I’d add two more closer shots.
Sweeping vistas are really my fav’s!

Flying

It’s now day 15 since I’ve been able to get out in my boat! I think my record is 22 days straight! I am not looking to break it either!

I went out to Chesterman’s today because I saw some clearings coming but the low cloud snuffed the light. Didn’t even take one shot. Not very often I get skunked!
Here is another shot from that Spring Nude shoot I did last year. This shot works because of the bird and her pose! It’s the icing to the cake!
The light was fantastic that day!
Hopefully I’ll be able to get out soon??
Fingers crossed…..

West Coast Boots

It’s been raining on and off for 12 days now! I’m just not getting the weather windows. If we get any clearings,they seem to be arriving at night.
Thats the way the cookie crumbles.
Mother Nature is the one that will decide if I’m going out or not. When she is ready, she will phone me up & invite me out!
She’s just taking her sweet time about giving me call!
This is the only part of my photography where I find I need patience! Waiting for the light! When I’m out there, I find I need no little or no patience. I just love it so much that I do not need patience!

Until I am able to get out,I’ll just be posting a few from some of my favorite shoots.

I liked this nude shoot. It worked out just perfect. I met two young women from Europe traveling across Canada. I managed to persuade one of them to pose for me.
She was a brave soul and I certainly appreciated her physical candor! I think she looks stunning in this light and the background wallpaper is excellent!
I’ve been trying to get this shot for several years now and all the ducks seemed to be lining up.
I asked her to wear the boots over to the spot I wanted her to pose. I didn’t want her to cut her feet on any of the broken shells scattered around. As I watched her,I realized that the boots looked cool & asked her to keep them at the beginning of the shoot! After all,this is Tofino!
Just 2 weeks after I took this,the temperature had increased enough to melt away most of the snow pack!
I shot this up in Lemmens Inlet,just out front of Miner’s Bay. There are several small islands there.
The mountains are inside Strathcona Park & are 22 miles away.
I wish I could meet more women as beautiful and brave! I have many more locations that would be excellent for nudes,but I need a great model and they are just so darn hard to find!

Natural Beauty

First of all,I did not shoot this today. It’s been raining for over a week now and I haven’t been able to get out on the water.
I’m getting fungus on my shooting finger! I decided to post one of the nudes I shot a few years ago.
This tree is called “Earth Mother” and is on Meares Island. It is not on the “Big Tree Trail” on Meares. People get confused about that.
Earth Mother is in a spot that requires you to get someone to guide you there. It’s not a long hike by any means,but you would be better served by someone showing you. Not many people go up to visit her anymore. You see ,she was blown down in a huge Winter wind storm.
I shot this in August of 96. She was taken down in the following January.
I was the first person to find her.
I went up to clear out the pathway a bit with a Machete. It was getting overgrown & I thought I’d clean it up a bit and visit my old friend.
I got to work cutting all the bush growing in on the path. I was cutting for well over a hour. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was exactly. I realized at one point that I had trimmed all the way up to where Earth Mother was. I remember stopping cutting & turning around and not being able to understand what I was seeing! It literally caught me off guard so badly that I could not understand what I was looking at! It suddenly came to me that she had been blown over! I was so shocked to see my friend just laying there hopeless & broken! She had taken out 1/2 dozen very large trees on her way down! The root ball was vertical now and reached at least 25 feet high!
Seeing all this made me feel profoundly sad. The scene had caught me unprepared and startled me.
This tree is most certainly over a thousand years old!
Earth Mother is listed as being the 6th largest Western Red Cedar known on the planet.(“Forest Giants of the Pacific Coast” Robert Van Pelt,pg 31)
The volume was calculated at 10,350 cubic ft.
In comparison…….the largest known tree is the “General Sherman”. A California Sequoia roughly 5 times the volume of Earth Mothers!(55000 cubic feet)
Earth Mother started as a seedling during the crusades! She has seen many a moon! She had a full life. These ancient giants are numbered and their numbers are dropping!
Anyone who had ever seen her knew instantly what direction she would fall. She had a natural lean to the south. I am looking north in this shot. One of the reasons I believe she was able to survive for so long,was the fact that a north-south ridge to the east of her blocked all the huge storm winds from the SE! This ridge protected her for over a thousand years!
When a tree becomes so large like Earth Mother,it’s canopy sticks above the rest of the tree’s in the forest. This huge surface area takes on a wind load during a storm. Kind of like the sails of a sailing boat! Earth Mother leaned against the normal storm winds, and that ridge decreased the winds force dramatically!
At the end of January(97) we had a “sustained” north wind all day. It was a very strong wind from the north. We do get storm winds from the north when a storm’s vortex passes over,but they are usually not sustained winds. They are transient winds. The storms rotation is just passing over the area.
For whatever reason,this wind storm drove very strong winds down from the north all day! Earth Mother was already leaning to the south and I guess the sustained northerly was the final bell tolling for Earth Mother. She was brought down on that fateful day!
Of course nobody was there when it happened.I was the first person to find her & that was almost a month after the storm!
After doing a little research on the recent wind storms,I came up with this theory. I’m not really sure what happened but this is my best guess. Nobody will ever know what happened,but does it really matter?
I feel lucky to of seen her standing! She’s not dead by the way. Her root system is still intact on one side. She appears to be getting enough water/nutrients. She’s not growing,but she’s not dieing either!
I think she’ll be around a bit longer.
I use to love hiking up to her and reading at the base. It was always deadly quiet up there. You could here a mosquito coming at you from meters away!
However,this is natures way. These large trees will eventually decay into a “nurse logs” and provide nutrients for many more trees and insects.
Everything gets recycled………including us!