Archive For The “street photography” Category
The rainbow crosswalks on Davie St. in Vancouver’s westend gay village on a night of heavy April rain. (Robin Rowland)
A freighter anchored in Vancouver’s English Bay is seen through fog and heavy rain. (Robin Rowland)
Attempting to dig out in Kitimat, as the blzzard continues, Saturday morning, Feb. 7, 2015. (Robin Rowland)
A “Pineapple Express” brought a major blizzard to the Kitimat region last week, dropping approximately 180 centimetres of snow from the morning of Thursday, February 5, 2015 until the skies cleared late on the afternoon of Saturday, February 7. In my neighborhood, the power first went out at about 3 pm on Thursday, came back at 11 pm. It went out about 11 am on Friday and didn’t come back until about 2:30 pm on Saturday.
Power was also out at Kitamaat Village from Thursday until late Sunday. Early Sunday morning, the Haisla Nation Council ordered a voluntary evacuation, with two convoys of vehicles heading to Kitimat. While many people stayed with friends and families, about 20 people took refuge at the Riverlodge Leisure Centre. Other members of the Haisla Nation stayed in the village, gathering at the Haisla Recreation Centre.
The clean up continues in Kitimat.
Images from Thursday night until Wednesday afternoon. A mixture of photos and frame grabs from video.
This gallery does not include the images I fed to The Canadian Press.
Here is a link to the CBC News photo gallery of my CP images.
Thursday, February 5, 2015, approximately 6:15 pm
At this point, early into the storm, all the power was out in Kitimat, with the exception of the street lights on Haisla Boulevard, which illuminated a few trees as I shot this on Albatross Avenue. Sony Alpha 6000, ISO 3200, 1/30, F3.5 from my window. (Robin Rowland) (Higher ISO images were too noisy)
Friday February 6
The same view, from ground level, the next morning. Framegrab (Robin Rowland)
Heavy snow on branches (Robin Rowland)
As the power goes out again on Friday, heavy snow continues to fall. (Robin Rowland)
Trying to dig out in the early afternoon. Framegrab. (Robin Rowland)
A pick up tries to make it through the heavy snow. Framegrab (Robin Rowland)
A District of Kitimat crew digs out the fire hydrant in front of my house, Friday afternoon. (Robin Rowland)
A woman in white makes her way through the blizzard, Friday afternoon. (Robin Rowland)
The snow was really heavy near sundown on Friday. (Robin Rowland)
Trying to dig out as night falls. Note that is supposed to be a pedestrian crossing. (Robin Rowland)
Friday night
This front end loader was called in late Friday evening. Framegrab (Robin Rowland)…….
….so a Kitimat Fire and Rescue pumper could get back to the fire hall. Framegrab (Robin Rowland)
Saturday morning
About 3 am Saturday, some lights came on in the Kildala neighborhood, while much of the rest of Kitimat was still in the dark. (Robin Rowland)
On Saturday morning, much of Kitimat was buried under about 170 centimetres and the snow was still falling. (Robin Rowland)
Digging out begins again as the blizzard tapers off. (Robin Rowland)
A raven flies overhead as the snow stops falling. (Robin Rowland)
As the storm ends, two people walk on the heavy snow on Albatross Avenue. (Robin Rowland)
With the storm ending, the beauty of the trees and snow. (Robin Rowland)
A view of the snow covered Kitimat estuary and Douglas Channel after the storm. (Robin Rowland)
Sunday, February 8
Volunteer chefs hard at work in the Riverlodge Leisure Centre kitchen during the voluntary evacuation of Kitamaat Village. Framegrab. (Robin Rowland)
Digging out the trailer park. Framegrab. (Robin Rowland)
BC Hydro contractors at a road block at the entrance to the Kitamaat Village Road. Framegrab. (Robin Rowland)
Monday, February 9
Clearing a roof Monday morning. Framegrab. (Robin Rowland)
The snow was clearly a heavy load on one roof. Framegrab. (Robin Rowland)
On Monday morning, side streets were still clogged with snow. Framegrab. (Robin Rowland)
And the Service Centre was still digging out. Framegrab (Robin Rowland)
While the District of Kitimat snowblower was still working on main roads, like Nalibila. Framegrab (Robin Rowland)
Tuesday
A snowblower clears the sidewalk behind my house. For those not familiar with Kitimat, as part of the original Garden City plan, sidewalks are generally behind houses. (Robin Rowland)
Wednesday
Heavy equipment digs out the fire hydrant in front of my house. As seen above it’s usually two guys with shovels. I estimated there was at least three metres, perhaps four metres, of snow on top of the hydrant, put there earlier by the snow blower clearing the street. (Robin Rowland)
The Shell station in Kitimat, seen on a foggy, foggy night, Dec. 11, 2014 (Robin Rowland)
Go for a walk on a foggy night and the Christmas lights look oh so different.
A big display of Christmas lights on Lahakas Boulevard, Kitimat, seen through the fog (Robin Rowland)
And here’s what the lights look close up. (Robin Rowland)
My own rather modest display of Christmas lights.
All images taken with my new Sony Alpha6000 mirrorless Emount camera.
Night time skateboarders on Davie Street, Vancouver’s West End, September 7, 2014.
With riots continuing across England tonight, earlier today I saw a tweet reacting to politicians who wanted to ban Twitter since it is alleged that Twitter is escalating the violence in the UK. The response from at least one person on Twitter was “why not ban hoodies?”
In 2008, I visited Liverpool, and one of the things I wanted to do was visit one of Britain’s largest model railway shops, Hatton’s, which turned out to be just around the corner from Penny Lane made famous by the Beatles. I shot this sign from the Liverpool police in the window of a shop as I was waiting for the bus back to my hotel in downtown Liverpool.
A few hours ago, the last roll of Kodachrome came out of the developing soup at Dwayne’s Photo in the small town of Parson’s, Kansas.
From the time the film was created in 1935 until the last hours of 2011, Kodachrome produced some of the greatest colour photographs of the Twentieth Century (and a few in the Twenty-first)
The end has come for Kodachrome.
So it is entirely appropriate that I choose to use this image, taken in Kodachrome at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park London, back in 1978 for this blog. Although I have seen the “The End is at Hand” image in countless cartoons, especially, of course, in the New Yorker, this is the only time I have actually seen and photographed such a sign.
Last February, after Kodak announced the end of Kodachrome, I posted on the blog some of the few favourite shots I took with Kodachrome, of my 1976 visit to Pompeii
I said at the time. “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” quoting, of course, the Joannie Mitchell song.
I also said I would post more photos, but taking early retirement, selling a house, moving across the country and getting settled in took up much of time.,
Now the Kodachrome epoc has ended, I have gone through the all to few Kodachrome images I shot. As I said in an e-mail to a friend I was a kid (the first roll was shot when I had just turned 15, the last when I was 35) for someone with not much money, it was more convenient both in budget and time to shoot Ektachrome or another colour slide film. Then it was more convenient to shoot digital.
So I have created a photo gallery called Kodachrome and the kid
The first roll was shot on Dominion Day (now Canada Day) July 1, 1965, in my old and now home town of Kitimat, BC, during the Dominion Day parade. I shot two cameras, an old Kodak 620 using black and white and my father’s battered viewfinder camera (I hope it was a Leica, but I can’t remember). I must have been a budding photojournalist even then, the subsequent roll, likely Ektachrome, shows that I was running across the street to get different angles.
The next two photos don’t jog my memory. One is of Jesse Falls, which flows into Douglas Channel south of Kitimat and the other appears to be a river rapids. I have no memory of any boat or river trips or taking those pictures.
The next photographs are from my post university back packing trip to Europe. I bought a few rolls of Kodachrome and used the film for some special areas. The first was the Essex coast, where my father grew up. Next ones are from my two day hike along the central portion of Hadrian’s Wall. I am not posting the standard, cliched shot of the wall when it climbs a hill near Housesteads, but a couple from the fort at Corbridge and a portion of fortifications along the River Tyne, south of the wall. There are images from the River Rhine castle cruise and finally a shot of the Roman Forum (after which I was running out of money and film and bought more Ektachrome).
The next few images are back in London in 1978 at Speakers Corner, a year later from San Fransisco (again on both trips I shot mostly Ektachrome). The last images are from the time around Christmas 1985.
All I can say, like many, I wish I had shot more.
When British Prime Minister David Cameron told the London Sun that as a 14-year-old, he, his brother, sister and pals had traveled to London and slept on The Mall so that they could see the July 1981 wedding of Charles and Diana, I remembered the kid. The kid who also came down specially to see the royal wedding but, apparently, was too tired and slept through the procession,
I was living in London at that time. In fact, the crazy bed and breakfast where I was staying in Earl’s Court was just a couple of blocks from then Lady Diana Spencer’s posh South Kensington apartment. By July, I had moved from the B&B to a (cheap) fifth floor flat also in South Kensington. The day of the royal wedding was a national holiday. My Australian flatmate and I went to see the fireworks in Hyde Park but my staunchly republican roomie was resolutely refusing to come downtown to watch the wedding.
I wanted to watch from one specific spot. Temple Bar, where The Strand meets Fleet Street (where I was working). That’s because I had once written a series of articles about Canadian journalist Kit Coleman and she had stood at Temple Bar when she covered Queen Victoria’s Jubilee procession in 1898 for the old Toronto Mail and Empire (a predecessor of The Globe and Mail).
So I left the flat at 1 a.m. and walked toward Central London. I passed Buckingham Palace and walked down the Mall passing all those people who were camping out (including somewhere in the dark, a future prime minister). The crowds were already gathering and so it took a couple of hours (longer than normally walking downtown ) to get to my chosen spot. There were already some people camping out at Temple Bar,.
As the sun came up, the crowds grew. Among them was the kid, a punky lad of about 14 (even though he looks older in the photograph), very lively and enjoying himself,
There were also several people with transistor radios and one man had a 1981 version of a portable TV set with perhaps a two inch screen and a long radio style antenna.
A couple of hours later, and still hours before the wedding procession began, the crowd control personnel arrived, with the Royal Air Force as the cordon facing the street and members of the Metropolitan Police watching the crowd.
So before the security personnel took up their duties, this young Bobby took a picture of the crowd as I was taking his picture.
Then, moments later, he was very formal, as he took up his duties,.
Now, it’s been 30 years. and if that young Bobby is still with the Metropolitan Police, he’s probably now one of those Detective Chief Inspectors, a Commander or an assistant commissioner (unless, of course,he was a “constable for life”). But it would certainly be neat to get a copy of that picture of me taking his picture.
High above the Royal Courts of Justice I shot the Goodyear Blimp, sending images back to the television networks.
Now if you’re planning to attend the royal wedding in late April between Prince William and Kate Middleton, and you’re not part of the privileged media pool, and with security much tighter than in 1981, this is most likely the type of shot you will get.
This was taken prior to the wedding and was one of the most interesting parts for me, the parade of the guests going to St. Paul’s Cathedral prior to the royal procession. I am pretty sure you didn’t see that on television but it certainly was a great warm up act. All kinds of characters, from a Labour MP in a beat up Morris Mini to people like the ones in this temporary traffic jam in their Rolls Royce.
And then there was the top hatted toff in some kind of sports car (notice the smiles on the crowd opposite)
Now that shot isn’t the best. I didn’t have enough elbow practice at that time (I never played hockey) and the camera wasn’t working that well (my crazy landlady had thrown the case across our room one day when she was cleaning). I can’t remember which type of Ektachrome I was using but it certainly wasn’t a film with a high speed. Today with digital cameras and their higher speeds, and a little elbow practice, you can get some good images from the front of the crowd.
Also the procession goes by very fast, so my only shot of Diana was a blur (and is included here for the record only). So shoot at a high ISO.
On the other hand, this little girl looked like she was really enjoying seeing a princess.
I wonder how much of it she remembers.
So we stood on the street, listening to the wedding ceremony itself on those transistor radios.The procession back to Buckingham Palace was a lot faster, it seemed, than the procession to St. Paul’s and as soon as it passed most of the crowd turned west to follow the procession to the palace.
As I turned away, that’s when I noticed the kid fast asleep in an office doorway. He must have been in very deep sleep to have not woken with all the cheering crowds. I wonder how much he missed? I hope he fell asleep after seeing the procession to St. Paul’s, but who knows?
As for me, by the time I got near Admiralty Arch and the entrance to The Mall, the crowd was huge and I was really tired, so I decided to go home. I went down a side street, avoiding the crowd and got back to my flat, climbed those five flights of stairs and went to sleep.
So my advice for those going to the current royal wedding and who plan to be among the crowds along the route to Westminster Abbey, shoot the people you are with. it will be a lot more interesting and give you some personal memories. Then you can also buy all the souvenir editions of the newspapers and magazines to get the pictures the accredited pros shot.
Enjoy.
