New Photo Exhibition in Comox

The Flying Apron Bakery/Café in Comox BC will be displaying a selection of my photos printed on canvas. All these photos are available for sale at reasonable prices and can be paid for by eTransfer or cash/debit to the café directly.

Thankfully there are businesses like this that allow photographers and other artists to sell and display their wares. Its a direct benefit to both parties!

Please let the staff know you came in to look at the photos and enjoy an excellent coffee or late and one of their delicious bakery items. I must say their fresh banana/chocolate chip muffins are my favorite!!

The Flying Apron is located on the corner of Anderton Rd and Comox Ave in the small strip mall there.

You can also order canvas wall hangings directly from my website here. www.gnaylorphoto.com

Beach Cyclist, Tofino BC

The Snowbirds are back!!!

It’s spring!

It’s a beautiful time of the year, temperatures have warmed, blossoms everywhere, however there is something else that makes this time of the year unique! The Canadian Forces Snowbirds arrive for their annual spring training here in Comox. This year they arrived April 20 and will be here for about 4 weeks. They fly twice a day weather permitting, and they give anyone with a camera great opportunities to capture some amazing shots. Best places to watch from are Air Force beach and the Glacier Greens golf course entrance.

This year, the early session is 8:30am and the later session is 1:30pm. The best choice for photos is the morning one, as the sun will be lower on the horizon illuminating the planes more from the side than above. This gives great contrast and colour.

Taking your photos

Because they are so close, you don’t need huge lenses, cameras with moderate focal lengths work really well. A 70 – 200mm zoom is a really good one to use. Make sure you use a fast shutter speed to try and prevent blurring as they are moving extremely fast. Try not to use the automatic setting, use the shutter setting and set it at 1000 or higher. The lower your ISO setting the better to keep graining to a minimum. I try and keep the ISO at 200 and don’t use the automatic ISO setting. If its a nice day out it should be no problem. Don’t really worry about the F setting let the camera pick it for you when doing this.

If you do want to use a specific F stop the use the A (Aperture) setting but watch the shutter speed, it will not be sharp if its too slow. I usually stick with the S (Shutter) setting and keep the speed high. If you are using fast shutter speed and hold the camera steady your photos will be sharp and you don’t need a tripod. Practice how to hold your camera in the steadiest position for you.

To try something different, select a slower shutter speed and then pan (move the camera with the planes as they move) with them as you take the shot and with practice you can keep them sharp and give the feeling of speed! This doesn’t work well if they are a long way away, but when close it can be effective.

Dinosaur Provincial Park

Skunk Cabbage

Volunteers

For most of my lengthy career I had been involved with volunteers in our Park. It is amazing these people give up their personal time to happily contribute to the well being of the Park and resources. I had a group of volunteer stewards that we grew from maybe 20 people to over 150 in the course of 15 years. We started off with the vast majority being retired individuals, but over time many younger people joined the program and wanted to get involved.

It took some time to realize that if you want to have an engaged volunteer group you must have a sense of purpose, clear guidelines. a commitment of time and manpower and projects that they can get their teeth into! Many of these volunteers have amazing contributions coming from their careers as professionals in all kinds of fields, so its amazing what can be achieved.

We managed this and then the group grew by leaps and bounds! We had project days on a regular basis doing all kinds of things. Helping monitor bears, brush clearing, wildlife safety, human use monitoring, and many other things. We created a yearly internal newsletter, had a group dinner at the end of the season with guest speakers and we had a logo and vests to wear when “working”

Its important to not have volunteers do jobs staff would normally do as it can cause resentment that volunteers are talking away their jobs, so one has to plan carefully. After retiring in 2015 I take great satisfaction that the group is still going strong!

Here in the Comox Valley, Seal Bay Nature Park has become a favorite haunt. It is such a beautiful place. I jumped on the opportunity when I found out from Park administrators there was a volunteer group working on trails to take some photos of their volunteers and staff at work. Here are a few of from that day.

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