Cow Bay

Exploring, close to home

This week, I made a quick trip up Vancouver Island. It is a trip I have made many times over the past 20 years. I drove over the Malahat for an hour to Cowichan Bay.

Cowichan Bay is on the unceded lands of the Cowichan First Nation, which is made up of seven tribes: Kw’amutsun, Qwum’yiqun’, Hwulqwselu, S’amuna’, L’uml’umuluts, Hinupsum, and Tl’ulpalus. Their traditional territory includes much of southeastern Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and large areas of the Salish Sea.

Settler communities like Cowichan Bay have only been in existence for the past couple hundred years. Currently, Cow Bay is a picturesque combination of faded maritime glory, a few shops and some decent food. The best part of the area for me is definitely the shoreline, waterfront and tidal areas.

On previous trips to Cowichan Bay, I have created black and white (mostly infrared) and colour images. This time, I “loaded” my GFX50S II with the Nostalgic Neg film simulation and shot a couple of rolls of JPEGs. The light was strong and the saturated colours begged for some Fujifilm colour magic. Also, it was too winding to shoot long exposures (my IR filter requires exposures of many seconds) further along the bay, so I stuck to the docks and to colour.

Next time? Who knows which camera/technique I will use, but I will certainly return, hoping for interesting light.