van der Valk Photography

Tuesday night I decided I would get up early and make my way down to Mariner’s Village to see if I could capture a nice sunrise. Set the alarm, got warmly dressed, picked up my gear and headed down to the parking lot and made my way up to the 4th floor. In doing contract work for them in marketing, this allows me access to 4 stories above Sooke Basin and a wonderful vantage point for the sunrise. Around 7:30am I noted the first little bit of orange/red in the sky and hoping my early morning venture would pay off. And did it ever!

For the next 45 minutes I clicked one shot after another, each minute different colours and shades of the most dramatic yellows, reds, purples and oranges. This was a spectacular sunrise!

I also made an 8 photo panorama that is very large and cannot be totally appreciated unless seen at 100%, but will include this in this post as well for you to see.

Quite pleased with these capture and the results of this effort. I might have to start waking up a little earlier now. Or not.

This photo was taken in August last year. I’ve been organizing my photo folders and happened to take a peek into one of them and spotted this photo that I never did anything with. This was taken while I was shooting one of three commercials for the District of Sooke for the Subaru Sooke Triathlon Series that aired on TSN.

I woke up very early and climbed to the top of Broomhill, just north of the town core of Sooke. It took about an hour to get to the top because it was dark and steep as well it was the first time that I had actually been here, so there are many bike trails and paths one could take.

I got to the top and had this spectacular view of the Sooke Basin to the East of me.

It was a very blustery day outside. Wind, lots of gusting wind. Rain and even some hail for a brief moment. I’ve had a shot planned in my head for some time at Sandcut Beach. There is a terrific waterfall that cascades over some limestone, I believe, and down onto the ocean rocks, straight into the Pacific. In the winter and spring it runs quite fast and powerful. I’ve been waiting for the right time. I wanted wind and clouds, both which we had in excess today.

Grabbing my camera gear and trusty old dog, Pork Chop, I travelled west for 30 minutes, just shy of Jordan River to the Sandcut Creek parking lot and hiked in. Saw a few remaining winter Chanterelle mushrooms beside the path, which, by the way is in great shape with some fresh gravel on it, and took the brief jaunt down to the beach and oceanfront. The surf was pounding hard against the rocks and the tide was quite high. The clouds above were racing to the east and the sun was breaking through over the Olympic Mountains creating some nice sun rays over the Juan de Fuca Strait.

We slowly made our way east along the rocky beach, crawling over driftwood and dried bull kelp to this magical place with the waterfalls.

I set up my tripod, put on my 10 stop ND filter and clicked away. Some of these exposures range from 10 seconds, to near a minute. Since we are dealing with a lot of contrasting, bright sun and dark forest, in order to get a proper exposure, as you see in these photos, I needed to do some layer blending between frames. This is a timely process but well worth the results when you feel you have the right photo, which in this case I felt I did.

The ND filter casts a magenta cast since it is so dark, and when converting from RAW, chose “cloudy” in white balance which warmed it up, creating a sunset like photo. Working with that, I’ve created these two shots. Please enjoy!

Yesterday I spent some time at the Sooke Potholes. I was in search for some foggy photos, as it appeared the hills were blanketed in them, however when I got up there, it wasn’t as thick as I had hoped for, however the waterfalls were spilling over with fast moving water and the moss and vegetation popped so brightly in near fluorescent greens.

Stalking them around each bend, looking for just that right angle, I stumbled across a few great vantage points. I find landscapes can be a little more difficult this year when you have a mix of trees with and without leaves, so in this case I try to let the waterfalls and the path of the water do most of the talking.

Here are a few shots that I managed to get. I hope you enjoy them. I look forward to getting out some more this week while I’m still enjoying the Christmas holidays.

All of these photos were shot on a tripod and between 0.5 – 2 second shutter speeds, ISO 100 and a small aperture, most around F22.

Another gorgeous winter day, sun shining brightly and the smell of the ocean was in the air. We headed to Whiffin Spit for this last family photo session located just west of Victoria in the small town of Sooke on Vancouver Island, BC.

I met all of them in the parking lot, some from Manitoba, some from Ontario, some from here. They were raring to go and put their best smiles forward, at least most of them did most of the time.
The family gathered this year in Sooke, to spend the holidays here and to enjoy the lovely weather we’ve been having.

There were 3 kids and 7 adults in total. When you’ve got a couple of hours to get as many good shots as you can in, having 10 people to get is exciting and difficult all at the same time. The challenging part when strolling around the park is catching up with the rest of them. Stop for a moment to capture one person or couple and the rest are playing elsewhere, which I’ll have to switch my New Years Resolution to Gym Membership after this.

What a great way to spend a morning, walking by the ocean taking photos of a beautiful family and getting to know them. Turns out one of the family members lived in the same city I did for many years. Such a small world.

Without further hesitation, I give to you a sneak peek into this family photo shoot. Enjoy!

I had the pleasure of shooting this lovely family at a lovely walking trail and river near Sooke. We arrived at 10am and the sun was trying to poke its head from out behind the clouds. It was a mild December morning, crisp, but refreshing. I had not walked this path before so it was all new to me.

Along for the shoot was Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad and their two daughters. We had about 1.5 hours together which was spent down by the river and the trees lining the pathway which provided a lot of fun and photo opportunities. Who says you need green grasses and leaves on trees to make a photo great!

I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with this lovely family and getting to share a brief moment with them in a family outing. I’m very pleased with the results and got many, many wonderful photos I hope they can cherish for many years to come. Here are just a few from that wonderful Saturday morning.

If you’d like to book your family photo session, please use the contact button on the menu located right above this post.

Spent a little time around the new Salmon interpretation centre located beside Charter’s Creek off Sooke River Rd. This area has nice lush rainforests, a lot of moss on the trees and rocks and ferns grow abundant on the forest floor. Charters Creek meanders through all this and is a very good place to watch the Salmon spawming during the fall.

This is a shot I took using my tripod and shutter release cable. The shutter speed was approx. 2 seconds using ISO 100 at F22. This allowed me to get a long shutter speed to blur the water in the foreground. I was attracted to this scene because of the mossy trees on the far bank. I thought the water in the foreground would add some nice contrasting movement. I also like how the background, behind all the trees is dark and mysterious.

I did scout out a lot of other locations but will need different lighting to get the shot that I’m thinking.

Enjoy!

If you are residing around the Sooke Region, are interested in spending time around like minded people, hoping to share your photographic work, give and receive critiques and feedback, learn new tips and tricks and enjoy the occasional photo trip into our beautiful wilderness surrounding this fantastic town, than you should keep reading.

This group will be open to everyone. Someone who just bought their first camera to old seasoned veterans who have shot for National Georgraphic their entire life. Everyone is welcome to participate and enjoy.

I’ve been openly speaking with some members of the DiscoverSooke Facebook Fan Page in the last couple of months who many have expressed interest in joining and helping to create a new, non-profit club that is based around Photography. This is an open club which will give members access to share their knowledge, share their passion and to learn from others in a friendly environment.

I have also been speaking to the District of Sooke and have secured two locations where we could meet each month. The first meeting date has yet to be decided, but will most likely sit somewhere during the second week of January, however this will all depend on people’s availability. The first get-together will be to meet each other, discuss what we all want to get from this and to brainstorm ideas for future classrooms. We will most likely establish some sort of “director” list where we can share some of the duties to help make this a successful organization.

We do have a professional guided hiking tour operator/owner/photographer who has expressed her interest in being part of this group. It will be beneficial to have her around so we can schedule photo hikes to various locations in our region. Some places even the lifers in Sooke might not know about.

We have a couple of Graphic Designers that I know which will be able to help teach the use of Post Processing Programs, like Photoshop, so we can definitely get into processing your photos for show and to get the most out of them by using software.

And of course we will have many unique and talented individuals bringing their own skill set and who will hopefully like to get involved to share their knowledge.
I’m hoping we all can contribute in teaching, if you feel comfortable and to help each and every one of us to grow in this terrific art form.

We can possibly offer a buy/sell service for photo equipment. Newsletters and a website to showcase our monthly pieces. Photo contests and photo walks. Each month we can unanimously choose a topic or emotion and aim to shoot this theme for the next meeting where we can then discuss the photos that have been taken, if you wish to participate.

We can have dinners/drinks/Christmas Parties. Sky is the limit.

Eventually we could even arrange and secure a location to put on an all photographic show where we can sell our pieces to the public.

These are all just ideas in my head. Now it’s time to get everyone together and brainstorm and hear what everyone else can come up with so we can make this group come to fruition.

If you are interested in a Sooke Photo Club and participating in this, please send me your email address and I will add it to the Photo Group email list so you can stay on top of everything and get the latest information on the first set date. Use the contact button up top and send me an email, or send it to jason at vandervalk dot ca

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

Thanks!

Jason van der Valk

I received a call from a family in Sooke last week who had seen me shooting the kids at the Santa Claus Parade a couple of weeks earlier. She asked me if I had time to quickly put together a short photo session for them. Her mother had arrived from Alberta to visit family and would not be staying long, but had tried for some time to get her and her grandchildren together for some photos but had been unsuccessful so far. Playing off each others schedule, we literally had less than 30 minutes together and on their last day in Sooke and the location was far from being ideal. The light was leaving for the day and we were limited to a 30-40 foot space on an outdoor deck. Tough to say the least but I had a feeling we could pull out some gems.

She asked if I might accommodate splitting up their session, some quick time now before Grandma went home and the rest this weekend with the rest of her family. That wouldn’t be a problem.

Yesterday afternoon was an overcast day, perfect for diffused light and perfect for shadowless faces.

Armed with two young kids and grandma, we met. One child seemed to love to be in front of the camera and the other one, the younger one, was playing shy and using mom as a shield most of the time. As I’ve mentioned before in earlier posts, I prefer a more candid style session, so all I needed to do was to find a way to get her out in the open for a few moments and I think we’d be able to get what I was after.

After a while and some close mom/grandma time, the youngest child started to forget why she was there and why this complete stranger was pointing a large camera at her. She started to venture farther from mom and started to hang out with her bigger sister, who had no problem pulling out the large smiles.

Just scrapping the surface of the images I captured yesterday, this image popped out to me and I knew we had a gem here. I had to process this first and I had to send the teaser to the mom.

I’m very happy with this result and will post some more once Saturday’s shoot has been completed and processed, but in the meantime, please enjoy this teaser from yesterday’s mini-shoot.

Don’t forget to book for your shoot before Christmas. We still have some openings.

I’m a big fan of black and white photography, in fact it might be my preference. I generally feel a black and white photo is successful based upon the elements of design which doesn’t need color to assist it. I love shooting color too, but there is something so raw about black and white.

There are certain things that can help your photos, whether they are color or black and white, and that is something that I am doing in this photo.

I didn’t just find any tree and take a picture. I carefully composed this photo this way and the reasons why I chose to do it this way are as follows.

I placed the Juniper tree using the rule of thirds. If you don’t know what that is, do a Google search and read up. I’m not endorsing this as a hard and fast rule to follow every single time, but generally this will help boost the composition of a photo and people viewing photos while using this rule will unknowingly find an appeal to this. They will tend to be drawn to a photo with when doing this.

The other element I’ve used here are lines and shapes. The lines are repetitive and create interest, while the direction of the lines lead the viewers eye to the tree.

It’s important to ensure you don’t just convert to Greyscale and call it a day. Explore the curves tool in photoshop and learn about the “S-curve” technique. You don’t want to blow out the whites or crush the blacks, but you do want to make sure you have whites and blacks and not just shades of grey. Contrast in a scene is great to have and adds more interest.

Hone your skill with some dodging and burning and you’ll be well on your way.

This is photo is of a Juniper tree sitting on the side of a ledge in Zion National Park in Utah.