Haven't had much time or energy to work on pictures lately, but thought I'd take a stab at a couple this evening. Not sure if I'm happy with the results or not, but if I wait until I've made a decision nothing will get posted at all, so here we go.

This (apparently) abandoned gas station is on the road out to Cultus Lake. Although taken in fairly early morning light which is normally good, in this case it didn't work out so well as the sun is behind the station rather than in front of it. I don't think I`d do any better at any other time of the day though, so I'll have to live with this lighting.

Played around with a few different ideas for processing. The first and third pictures we processed similarly, while the middle one was actually processed about two weeks ago and has been sitting waiting for some attention since.

As always, let me know what you think.

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Shed on Thom Mtn.

I spent a couple of days out at Cultus Lake recently; while there two afternoons were passed driving around the area in search of photo subjects, with an emphasis on old barns. Seemed like an achievable task, there's lots of farming going on around there. Prosperous farming, though, it seems, as there were very few old barns around (and even fewer that were accessible without significant trespassing).

This isn't really a barn, more an old shed I suppose, but it's the best I came up with so it'll have to do. I was very tempted to do something a little more adventurous with the processing but have decided on further consideration to leave it as-is.

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Stop Pumping Immediately

First of probably several images - well, it's actually a pair of images with the one below - from my slightly illicit tour of an apparently non-functioning portion of the Ocean Cement plant located just east of the south end of the Arthur Laing bridge.
I'd gone out for a walk Sunday evening, not expecting much as the light had been thoroughly uninspiring for most of the day. And indeed, initially it was pretty dismal at first. But, as I neared the plant things started to perk up.

All of the regular working areas of the plant were fenced/gated off, but the last portion to the east had no gates, and no signs prohibiting access, and no one seemed to be around...

This first pair of images was actually shot legally, from the public road, were there are buildings on both sides of the road and some sort of gantry/pipes/etc for transporting 'stuff' connecting these buildings. This shut-off station clearly refers to the material being transported, but it's not clear if it's just the materials to make concrete, or the mixed concrete itself. I'd guess, from other indications, that it was the dry cement being moved through the system, but it's just a guess.

I'm not sure how this set of pictures will go over, they're a little different from most of what I usually post, and certainly different from what I've been posting lately (no bugs!), so I'll be interested in whatever feedback anyone cares to leave.

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Control Box Closeup

close-up of one of the panels in the image above - from the wanderings around the apparently non-functioning portion of the Ocean Cement Plant.

I'm not sure just yet how many shots will be posted from this group - I'm still going through them and processing shots. At the moment I'm pretty happy with a lot of the results, so it could be quite a few, specially since I'm working 10 of the next eleven days and won't have much time or energy to shoot anything else for a while.

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Christmas Morning #3

Okay, so I'm back in the car after making a circuit of the Cambie Bridge and it's just started to rain again. Time to move on to another location.

Over the next hour and a half I wandered all over the place, from Stanley Park, to Vanier Park, Jericho Beach, drove around UBC and headed finally in the general direction of home. I'd pretty much decided to call it quits, but as I got closer to home the rain let up and the sun came up. Well, sort of came up - it was still cloudy, but now there was light!

Instead of going home I found myself heading out highway 99, which I got off at Steveston Highway, and then drove around the area just near there at first and found the place where they fix up old BC Ferries. I'd known it was there somewhere, but now I know precisely.

Eventually I ended on the road along the dike on the south side of Richmond. You can't drive very far along there however, as the road doesn't follow the dike all the way west. Just before the spot where you have to turn north away from the dike I came across this place. Rumor has it you can still buy this place for less than $500,000...

In case you're wondering, there's actually about 8-10 occupied homes perched on stilts on this little stip of land outside the dike, just to the right of frame. Looks a bit like a squatter's community, but they have power (the Christmas lights were on) and a rickety little community footbridge to cross over the water. This one, however, has obviously been abandoned for some time. At least I hope so.

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