Stanley Park juts out as a peninsula right in the centre of the north shore of Vancouver proper and creates a narrow passage at that point through Burrard Inlet. Crossing the park to West Vancouver and North Vancouver on the north shore is Lion’s Gate Bridge. The bridge itself provides a number of photographic opportunities, particular in the area of the Prospect Point turnout at the northern tip of the peninsula. For anyone so interested, there is a small restaurant / bar / gift shop at the end of the parking lot. I sampled their fish and chips platter for lunch before I headed off on my search for photo material. Not high cuisine but that wouldn’t be my taste anyhow but I will say I found the price a little more in line with high cuisine. Oh well, sometimes it’s just the experience that counts.
My primary interest this day was not shooting in the park itself. I had done that the day before and though I by no means exhausted the potential within the park, my main interest was the waterfront area between the park and the cruise ship pier area at Canada Place. I am comfortable making walks of several miles at a stretch, if I can shorten the walk, why not? From Prospect Point I drove around the park’s outer perimeter on Stanley Park Drive (appropriate name) and cut across on North Lagoon Drive, back across Highway 99 (which takes you across the Inlet via Lion’s Gate Bridge) and back to the start of entrance of the park.
Canada Place, Vancouver, British Columbia
It is about a 1.5 mile walk from the parking lot to Canada Place, walking along the waterfront. For anyone not familiar with Canada Place, if you watched the 2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver on TV you no doubt noticed quite often a rather unusual building along the waterfront with prominent white “sails” along the top. It is a multi-function facility serving as in addition to perhaps many other a convention centre and cruise ship terminal. It is from here that in 2006 Sandy and I and our friends Dean and Charlotte Campbell embarked on our Alaska Inside Passage Cruise. At this time of year (March) there are no cruise ships here. At least during the week since the cruises generally start and end on Saturday. It is not yet the season for Alaska Inside Passage cruises.
I did not carry my tripod with me on this walk though I considered it. With the day being relatively good light wise, ok, from my perspective, quite good, I felt that few of my shots would call for a tripod. It’s always a tough call as to whether to carry a tripod on a walk or not. I’ll discuss that more in a follow-up posting. On this walk I had the Canon 40D, the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM telephoto lens, the Canon 100mm f/2.8mm USM Macro lens, and mounted on the camera my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II lens. This is my “standard” length lens. The Tamron lens was fitted with a B+W Circular Polarizer filter. I felt like this filter might provide some nice affects considering the clouds and water lighting. The camera bag I use is a Lowpro backpack model. I won’t go into a description of that one right now but perhaps later.
The walk took me from the main Stanley Park through a small park along the waterfront called Devonian Harbor Park. When I was there the Cherry Blossoms were in full bloom as were several other Spring blooming species (which I don’t know the names of) so for flowering color, this was a good time to be out with the camera. Coal Harbor Seawalk runs along the water’s edge passing marinas with many pleasure boats at mooring. At one point, all by itself amongst the moored luxury yachts and charter excursion boats was a solitary DeHavilland Beaver float plane.
Cherry Blossoms, Vancouver, British Columbia
The harbor area is active with float plane commercial air service. The Beavers and DeHavilland Otters landing and taking off from the surface of the water offer plenty of reason to use a good telephoto lens. For the moment though, I wanted to take in the whole vista, so I kept the shorter lens mounted. Though there is some surface vessel traffic this time of year, there is much more when the weather is warmer. There were, of course the usual pedestrians and cyclists along the path and of course the usual tourist snapping away at the water view, or behind them the city, or each other against either backdrop.
One thing you have to be very careful of on this walkway area and it applies to the park paths as well. Watch out for bicyclist, inline skaters and skateboarders. The paths are split. One for such traffic and the other for pedestrians. The problem is, from place to place they may switch – or it looked like it to me – and you may find yourself walking on the same path as that used by bicyclists. They’re marked but you just have to pay attention. So how safe are you on the pedestrian path? Just be on the lookout for runners. You can get run over just as easily by a foot runner as by a bicycle. Just keep your eyes and ears open and enjoy the walk. Don’t forget to consider that not all interesting photo subjects are just the scenes and the wildlife. People make great subjects as well.
Next, the walk continues.
Dan W. Dooley
Dan Dooley Photography
