I went down to take a few pictures in the harbour this past week.

More pictures at: NANAIMO HARBOUR.

More pictures of Piper’s Lagoon here: PIPER’S LAGOON. These were taken on a couple of mornings during the past week.

Bowen park is a 10 minute walk from our condo – pictures: BOWEN PARK. I took those a couple of days ago.

Englishman River Falls is a 45 minute drive – pictures: ENGLISHMAN RIVER FALLS. I took those yesterday morning. My car was the only one in the parking lot. It was a dreary day which is perfect for taking pictures of water in the woods.

All of the pictures were taken with a tripod which is why I was alone. The only people who want to go hiking with someone with a tripod is someone else with a tripod.

A tripod is a great equalizer when taking pictures in the woods. Pictures taken with an inexpensive camera using a tripod will generally take better/sharper pictures than an expensive camera without one.

The water pictures were taken with an ND filter. ND stands for Neutral Density. Its only purpose is to cut down the amount of light going into the camera lens without affecting the colours. That allows you to use slower shutter speeds (all the water pictures were taken with a shutter speed slower than 2 seconds).

A couple of friends (Vern and Kerry) have mentioned this little park in Nanaimo a number of times. Yesterday I finally got a chance to take a walk through the park and take a few pictures: BEACH ESTATES PARK.

I finally got around to editing the photos from the trip Kim and I did to Nova Scotia: NOVA SCOTIA.

There are two sets of pictures:

• THE TRIP
• MY CHOICES

Iceland was not on my list of places to go (we mainly went to meet up with our friends). However, now that we have been there, it’s on the top of my list of places to return to.

Iceland is wet and cold but it is also amazing – particularly the south, the Snaefellsness Peninsula and the Lake Mývatn area (we didn’t go to the West Fjords). I would bring a tripod with an ND filter next time (note that shots that show smoothing of waterfalls were taken handheld – about 25 shots at 1/25th of a second – then brought into photoshop as layers, aligned and the mean of all the layers was taken to create the final image; an added side effect is that often the people disappear in the final image as they would with an ND filter). With a tripod you could ensure that all the people disappear – or pick the people that you want to remain in the picture.

Waterfalls would probably not be my subject of choice if I came back, however. There are so many interesting things to see in such a small area. I don’t know of any place like it.

We stayed two nights at a hotel close to the peninsula so had one full day to wander around. Some of the ideas of where to go came from the people who organized the tour and some from the hotel owner. Some ideas were great and some didn’t pan out that well. For example, the first place we stopped was the Ölkelduvatn Mineral Spring. Basically it consists of pipe sticking out of the ground in a farmers field.

The water coming out of the pipe looked pretty clean despite the colourful (and somewhat stinky) water around it. I did like the colours so took a picture but we didn’t experiment by taking a sip of the water.

Next stop was Ytri Tunga which is a seal colony on the coast but there were not seals to be found. It wasn’t that picturesque either – so was definitely a wash.

Another spot recommended was the Rauðfeldsgjá Gorge. Google took us there and we got out in the pouring rain to look at the non-existent gorge. Maybe google made a mistake but there were clearly other google followers there. In any case the picture below does not give justice to the quantity of rain that was coming down. Even my camera had a raincoat on. The picture shows Julie trudging for some distance to try to find the “gorge” while I waited patiently to get this picture.

Another suggestion was to stop at a cosy little cafe in the little town of Hellnar. Sure enough, google pin-pointed a cafe and off we went. When we arrived at the location specified, there was no cafe to be found – not even a sign or other indication that there had ever been a cafe. Since we were in dire need of a pit stop, there were a few tenses moments until we managed to flag down a postman who pointed us to another town (Arnarstapi) nearby. There, at the cafe, the waitress suggested going to the following viewpoint which had not been previously suggested by anyone.

and close by …

I’ll only include some additional text to explain a couple of the photos and will then leave you with the rest. The picture below at Djúpalónssandur beach shows the remains of a trawler (the Espine) that was wrecked here in 1948. Locals managed to save 5 of the 19 crew.

Then there were the fishermen who used to pick up these stones to test their strength. Some of the tourists tried to do the same. Having nothing to prove (other than that I could ruin the rest of my holiday with a bad back), I resisted the temptation.

The remaining pictures are at: SNAEFELLSNESS PENINSULA.