Sangan River Dunes
More from my most recent trip to Haida Gwaii, supplementary posts to those I posted in June and early July (see this link) concerned almost entirely with an archaeological project in the southern end of Haida Gwaii more than 200km away. This is another post from a walk we took at the mouth of the Sangan River.
The whole North Beach area along the north-west coast of Graham Island features extensive dunes spreading off into the forest on gradually higher elevated and stranded beach ridges resulting from slowly rising land levels for more than 5000 years. Thus the older shorelines are now many kilometers inland in this area and make for a serious challenge to archaeologists trying to find the older sites.
This map shows where today’s images come from which are all details of the vegetation growing one the dunes at the beach edge. This link has other posts from this same area which is located just east of Massett.
Dune Tansy (Tanacetum bipinnatum) is common on the front edge of the dunes along this part of the beach, and was in flower when we were there, with its yellow balls of blossoms. The Plants of Coastal British Columbia (Pojar and Mackinnon) indicates that the Haida name for this plant translates as ‘sloppy yellow beach leaves’, but gives no traditional uses for any part of the plant.
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To view the images in a larger format click on any of the thumbnails to launch gallery view, use the arrows to navigate and escape to return to this page.
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Canon 5Dii with Canon 100/f2.8 Macro, ISO100 (except two very dewy ones at ISO320), most at f2.8.
burnt embers 
Macro! What a treat. These images are amazing. Great shots.
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Yup – I have a real soft spot for macro shots. Loving this lens in that department, and others.
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Beautiful images……
David.
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Thank you David – it is so opposite to your neck of the woods – lush vegetation everywhere… getting in the way of seeing the underlying structure of the land. Glad you like it.
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Absolutely wonderful!! I love all the intricate details in these images, most definitely a captivating post my friend!
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Thanks so much Toad, its a nice place to visit. The beach is miles long, but there are only a few rivers intersecting, so this spot really concentrates several interesting aspects all in one place.
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Gorgeous with all those little dew drops. I’ve been photographing some little spider webs covered in the smallest drops of dew.
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Hi Karen, dew is one of my favourite subjects, but I find I often get quite wet taking their pictures – wet knees especially. On my knees to nature, could be worse I suppose.
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I’ve missed your work while I was gone.. glad to be back!! I would love to hang the first photo on my wall, beautiful!!
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Hi Jaunita – nice to have you back! And thanks for commenting, such a great comment too 🙂
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Grasses in all their magnificent manifestations beg to be photographed. Sangan grass 2 is a favorite but the whole set is a pleasure to peruse.
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Thanks Joseph – I like that one too for the light but especially because of the miniature dune formations.
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The simplicity of Sangan grasses 6 has all of my attention. The best of this group, but really, they’re all very nice. Must be I’m partial to B&W this week.
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Hi Ken, thank you. That is a pretty heavy crop – it was very difficult to find simple views in this tangled mat of vegetation, and I pretty much gave up trying.
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