Fall Salmon
Now for something a bit more serene and restful on the eyeballs, though my yellow theme carries on. Or golden if one believes the name. The Goldstream River is located just outside of Victoria, about a 20 minute drive when the traffic is down along the Island Highway which leads to communities on more northern Vancouver Island.
These images are combined from numerous exposures, most of them quite long. They don’t show the moving salmon too well, but do give a nice feel to the water’s surface. The top image is with a circular polarizing filter, the bluer version of the same view is without as are the others.
This is the pinch point in the road, very narrow as it squeezes between a cliff and the river, and a cause of many long waits for commuters, and accidents. In the spring of 2011 a truck carrying fuel crashed near here and emptied some of its load into the river. There are still booms and monitoring stations set up along the river bank, but any longer-term effects are not visible. And, the abundance of salmon when I was there last week bodes well, though I suppose these were born and off to sea prior to the spill.
Once again, and much worse than usual, WP has darkened up these photos, and increased their saturation. I don’t have the time or the will to try to produce new lighter copies for publication, but this time around it comes pretty close to ruining the shots as far as I am concerned. I sure wish that WP could fix this issue.
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The video below is taken to show what it was really like, unaffected by long exposures. Unfortunately there is a bit of traffic noise to go along with the more peaceful river noises.
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Canon 5Dii, Canon 50/1.4 lens for closer views, Nikkor-N 24mm f2.8 for longer views, ISO100, f-22, 3 brackets each, +/- 1.0 EV, polarizing filter for top image only, except longest view is 9 brackets.
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burnt embers 
How absolutely profound. It really is quite wonderful when you stop and consider how you can find beauty in subjects that many would walk right past without second thought.
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Hey Toad. You drive by here nearly every day, but it is so different to stop and get out for a short walk along the river bank. I was just a bit desperate here – it is very difficult to capture the living fish, and pretty much impossible if one is trying to get that moving water look with a long exposure. So I had to rely on dead fish as my subjects.
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big like 🙂
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Thank you! And thanks for commenting
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Ephem, that’s interesting that you find everything is darker in WordPress publication. I haven’t found that happening with my images. I wonder if the dark background changes the perception?
Those water sounds are so soothing, as are the colour tones. I especially like that first image.
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Hi Karen. I have seen this discussion on other blogs, and there is consideration given to what software is generating the uploaded image, what type of image it is, and so on. But, I have made sure that I have those settings as recommended and still find this effect. I think they are a bit better when opened on their own, and depending how one does that, it can be on a white background, so there may be something coming from the black. But there again, I have my image editing software set with gray and black surrounds, so ….. It’s a bit of a mystery.
The colours are very nice at the moment. Many of the trees still have their leaves, which are predominantly yellow (not many reds around here) and so they are filtering the light a bit I think. And the rain helped too. More coming in the next few days.
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I’ll still file this under the “yellow” series (since you haven’t started a “gold” series yet. I do like the color and exposure on the first shot and the last two shot seem lighter than they should on my monitor. I know individual monitors display files differently according to their setup and type and I’m wondering if that is not a key to trying to resolve this issue. This is a tough nut to crack.
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Hi Ken. The salmon is more yellow than gold as far as I am concerned. It actually is quite light in colour. I have other shots that will be coming up of different dead salmon. There was no other way to get nice movement in the water and a clear salmon in the picture.
Monitors are a problem for sure. I think it is just a matter of putting up the best one can, and then letting the chips fall where they may after that. When my son is recording music he always goes and checks how it sounds in the car which has an OK system but one that is much more typical than studio monitors. I think this is a parallel process. I hate to look at it on some laptops which really don’t do any photos justice.
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