WC Bean Photography

It all started when Judy asked me last fall what I wanted for my birthday and Christmas. I told her I didn't want much but there was a Photoshop seminar in Vancouver just after the New Year that I'd like to attend and it was agreed that I could do that. Reservations were made and I was on the way. And here's the story behind the trip:

January 4 -Getaway day! Arrangements have been made to leave work early and meet my son at home for a ride to the airport for my 8:00 pm flight to Seattle. I hadn't heard from the seminar folks since September so I decided to call them and the adventure began. A sad tale of woe...the instructor had double booked so there was no seminar in Vancouver and their computers had crashed so they had no way to contact me. Here I am, non-refundable plane tickets, getting close to cancellation deadline for my Friday night hotel, and I got no seminar to go to. Well, the folks really stepped up. They made arrangements for me to attend a mini-seminar on Vancouver Island the next day. After some frantic phone calls I changed hotel reservations, reserved a spot on the ferry from Anacortes WA to Sidney on Vancouver Island and things were peachy. The plane arrived in Seattle on time, I got my rental car and headed for Anacortes and my Friday night hotel. No details here but for physical reasons I have to have sunglasses if I'm outside during the day no matter what the weather. Without them we're talking Migraine city. When I travel somewhere I usually remember something I didn't pack just about the time it's too late to turn back and sure enough, somewhere over Montana I remembered the sunglasses sitting on the dash of my car. I got off the highway north of Seattle to find an all night Walgreens and saved the day with the only pair of clip on sunglasses that would fit my glasses. Back on the highway and headed for Anacortes. I pulled into the hotel just before 12:30 am and turned in immediately.

January 5-I had to be up early to catch the ferry. It left at 7:30 and since it was international I had to be in paid up and in line by 6:45. No problems with that and by 7:35 we were on the way to Canada! A beautiful boat trip through the San Juan Islands where I'd spent some time boating and visiting during my college years. We docked at Sidney right on time and I found my way to the seminar location easily. The only bad part was that instead of a 2 day seminar with about 20 participants I was now being comped into a 1 day seminar with 200 participants. There was some good information but like many single day seminars I realized that I could teach about 80% of the ciriculum so I left a bit early and spent some time exploring Victoria. I'd visited here in 1971 with my parents and while it's still basically the same, it's much much more spread out than it was then. Still, the Empress Hotel is an imposing landmark on the skyline. Back to my hotel to get settled in then I went into Sidney for supper before turning in early for a good night's sleep.

January 6-I was up early and headed west from Victoria towards the coast when the sun came up. After a hearty breakfast I was looking for photo opportunities! It was cloudy and grey so there was no sunrise opportunity, a theme that would be all too familiar before the end of this trip, but I didn't let that discourage me. I had a new camera in the bag and a great day of shooting ahead of me. My first stop was just east of the village of Sooke on the Strait of Juan De Fuca. The water was so peaceful and calm and the boats looked like so many toys floating in a bathtub. A grand subject for photography. I shot a few frames and was on my way further west. Now understand, when I travel on a photo expedition I'm not in any great hurry unless I have a specific destination and a specific time to get there. So I spent the morning kind of poking my way along the coast looking for shots. A little ways west of Sooke I came across the first area of Rain Forest on the trip. At last! This was one of the things I'd come for. There were ferns everywhere and a little stream with moss growing on everything. I spent a good deal of time shooting there and came away with some good images and a fistfull of Devil's Club thorns. (more on that later) Then back on the road west towards the Pacific. Coming down a hill near River Jordan I could see the swells where the Strait of Juan De Fuca met the Pacific and was amazed to see lots of little black dots floating on the surface. Seals! I picked up the pace hoping to get to the beach quickly for some shots before the seals vanished. Skidding into the parking area I rushed to get the telephoto lens and tripod put together. I headed to the beach and to my surprise they weren't seals at all...They were SURFERS! Apparently the water temperature here is only about 4 or 5 degrees colder than in the summer. I shot some images and spent a while watching them before packing up the equipment and heading back the way I'd come. It was past lunch time and I'd seen a small B&B a few miles back advertising lunch so I headed back that way.

I need to give a shout out to a place called Point No Point Resort. I stopped in there for lunch and while sitting on the glass enclosed heated patio overlooking the Pacific Ocean, I had a bowl of the best Seafood Chowder I've ever tasted along with a splendid cup of coffee. Just the thing to keep me going on a cold rainy day. I had some seafood chowder at a place in Nanaimo a couple days later but there was no comparison. Point No Point has spoiled me for all other chowder. No contest. For you lovers out there, it's also listed in a book called "The Top 25 Places to Kiss in the Northwest." Check it out!

It was getting late in the afternoon and the stress and travel were catching up with me so I decided to head back to Sidney and get some rest. I got back to the hotel around 4pm and after a hot shower and change of clothes started digging Devil's Club thorns out of my hand. If you haven't heard of this plant maybe you know it's other name....Stinging Nettles. The thorns are small but the cover both the stalks and leaves and have some irritating chemical that will burn your skin for hours after they've been removed. I spent some time working for the Forest Service in Washington state when I was in college and a good deal of that time was spent avoiding Devil's Club, sometimes a lot more successfully than others. Once that was done I downloaded the images from the day's shoot and right away discovered 2 problems with the rain forest images. First, I had neglected to use a polarizing filter so there was a lot of glare on the glossy surface of the fern leaves making them look almost white in the shots. Beyond that, I had shot all day with my camera set at medium resolution Jpeg file settings instead of RAW which yields the optimum results from digital images. There was only one thing to do....Go back tomorrow! I watched some tv and finished doing a rough edit of the images, learned a little more about the camera and made sure the settings were correct, then went to sleep.

January 7-It rained last night then got cold enough for a hard freeze and once again dawned grey and cloudy. I have to advise Budget Rental Cars that their ice scrapers SUCK! Next time, fellas, spend some money and get the 50 cent scrapers rather than the 25 cent ones. Anyway, after spending nearly 30 minutes scraping a thick covering of ice from the windows of the car I was on my way back to the rain forest. Through Sooke, back to the area I'd shot yesterday. This time armed with hiking boots instead of sneakers and a polarizing filter on my lens to cut the glare on the leaves I was able to successfully creat some high res images of the ferns and stuff. Gee, who would have guessed I'd been doing this for over 20 years! I stopped again at River Jordan to watch the surfers for an hour or two and after getting over my initial reaction of "...these fools have no sense of reality" I realized that if I were 30 or 35 years younger I'd probably be right out there with them. This time instead of turning back I headed farther up the coast to Port Renfrew. The road there goes away from the coast for a while and through the coastal mountains and it was quite snowy and slick but I took it easy and made it through only to be greatly disappointed by Port Renfrew. Oh well, they can't all be gems. I'd whiled away the afternoon and headed back to the hotel, eager to edit the images from the day. After that I went for some supper at a place in Sidney called RumRunners. I had a great slice of Prime Rib and returned to the hotel for some tv and some sleep. Another grand day.

January 8-Another day of rain greeted me at sunrise so I had a great breakfast and decided to head into Victoria to see if one of the camera stores there had a bracket I might use for my new camera. My old camera had a different body design to the quick release vertical bracket wouldn't fit the new one. No luck in Victoria so I headed up the east coast to the fishing village of Nanaimo. I drove through rain and snow the entire 100 kilometers and when I got there it was raining softly. Uncomfortable but not enough to discourage me. I really have to get back to Nanaimo in the summertime. It has one of the most interesting harbors I've ever seen and I spent a couple of hours wandering the docks shooting images. Around 1pm I started looking for a place to eat lunch. Nothing near the docks, nothing in the immediate vicinity so I headed north along the inlet and finally found a seafood restuarant overlooking a boat yard. The fried prawns were great and the chowder was okay but like I said, Point No Point has spoiled me for other chowders. I doubt I'll ever eat chowder again if it's not PNP. Back to the docks for some more shooting in the rain (damn it rains a lot here in the winter) before heading back south towards Sidney. I had a vision and decided to take a ferry from Mill Bay to Brentwood which was just a few miles from my hotel in Sidney. The cost was reasonable and what would have been a 90 minute drive was replaced by a 20 minute ferry ride. Pretty efficient don't you think? Back at the hotel I spent a long time luxuriating in a hot shower to wash away the chill from standing in the rain for nearly 3 hours and after downloading and editing images, watched some tv before turning in for a good night's sleep. I have to head home in the morning and wanted to be fresh. I'd made arrangements to have lunch with some dear friends just north of Seattle and wanted to be there in time to have a nice visit before leaving for the airport and my 7:30pm flight.

January 9-I've had a grand time here and the folks at the hotel have been very accomodating so after breakfast I said my goodbyes to them and was on my way. I had to catch a 9am ferry from Sidney to Vancouver and wanted to get there early to avoid missing a spot. I was about halfway through the line and got on board the ferry for the 9:00 departure. I figured that considering the 90 minute ferry ride and the 2 ½ hour drive time I'd meet Tim and Kristy at their home in Edmonds around 1pm for lunch and if I left by 4 I'd have plenty of time to turn in the rental car and catch my plane. Great plan, eh? Right.....Remember what I said earlier...Man Plans, God Laughs.

The ferry trip was fine and we docked at Tswassen right on time. Off the ferry and down the causeway towards the highway that would take me south into the US. The first problem was that everyone was driving about 10 kph below the posted speed limit. Oh well, I can drive a little faster south of the border and make up a few minutes. Then the "Bill Stuff" began. I got off the highway in White Rock to use the washroom cause that's what old guys do a lot. Then I couldn't figure out how to get back on the bloody highway! It took me nearly 15 minutes to figure out where the southbound ramp was and get there. Duh. Then I got to the border and it continued. I was sitting in a line of cars waiting my turn to go through customs and couldn't help noticing some cars racing past me on the right side and stopping to have a photo taken before heading down the road. There was nobody in the line and I didn't see any indication that I couldn't go there so I pulled over to the speedy lane and blazed to the front of the line. When I got close enough I could see a sign saying "Please stop and hold up your Nexxus card for identification." Nexxus card? I don't got no stinkin Nexxus card! Bigger Duh! Unwilling to continue on and maybe submit to a body cavity search, I drove in reverse about 200 yards to the end of the regular line. Fortunately there weren't any folks behind me that had Nexxus cards. Dumb Yank! I made it through the border with no problems and started beating feet down the highway. My misadventures made me about 40 minutes later than I anticipated but I arrived at Tim and Kristy's in time for tea and soup for lunch and a couple hours of wonderful conversation. I was describing my incident in the rain forest, telling them the story of slipping and sliding down a bank covered with wet leaves and grabbing the first thing I could to stop my momentum and Tim got a big grin on his face..."Devils Club" he said, laughing uncontrollably. See, Tim worked in the woods of Washington too and has had his fair share of encounters with Devils Club. We both chuckled until our cheeks hurt remembering old times. But finally it was my time to go. I had a little over 2 hours to get to the airport and turn in the car before my plane left. I hugged them both, choked down the lump in my throat, and headed to the airport. The flight home was uneventful save the fact that there were only 6 passengers and until the wheels were up I was concerned that it might be cancelled. But I returned home in fine shape.

I was a bit sad to be coming home like I always am at the end of my photo trips but this time it was in stages. Everytime I progressed to another level I got a little sadder. Leaving the hotel in Sidney was a bit depressing...getting on the ferry was a little more depressing and so it went...getting off the ferry in Tswassen, crossing the border, leaving Tim and Kristy, and ultimately getting on the plane. It's always good to get home but I dearly miss the Northwest and the friends I have there. I don't know how long it will be until I pass this way again and that saddens me. The good news is that I WILL be back..as soon as possible. There are too many images left there to photograph...too many dear friends that I miss. I can't stay away. So long Seattle and Vancouver...I'll be back