July wandering

Paddling the Discovery Islands

While last month’s wandering was replaced by my review of the GFX100 RF (I love the camera, by the way), this month I am returning to a more flâneur like perspective. 

During July, we were fortunate to spend a week living on a very small island in the Discovery Island group, near Quadra Island, in the traditional territory of the Homalco and Klahoose First Nations. We paddled and camped in the area last year, while this year we stayed put and paddled daily from our small paradise. 

During that week, we saw humpback whales every day, but one. Sometimes many kilometres away and once a mere few metres away (see below). Most of the time, we were at least a few hundred metres from the humpbacks. I was fortunate to capture a few images of the whales, but most of the time I just enjoyed the spectacle from my kayak. 

As I do while paddling on home waters, I enclose my X-T5 in a Sea Frog underwater housing to keep it dry and protected. As you can see from the images, the perspective from the water is unique and shows the scale of the surrounding land and seascape. While the photos only show relatively calm conditions, the reality was that we had many winding days. On those days, I concentrated on paddling and not making photos!

Until next month, I will be looking for more whales…

A note about this image: While we often saw whales in the distance, either from shore or while paddling, on one occasion a humpback swam into our small bay. The end-of-the-day light was terrific, creating golden highlights on the water and the whale. Below are a few more whale photos, most captured from the water.

Some of my shore time was spent making infrared images. It’s always interesting to see how the IR filter alters the visible landscape.

NB: Photos captured with a Fujifilm X-T5, fronted with the Fujinon XF-16-80mm f/4 and XF100-400mm lenses and the terrific Viltrox 27mm f/1.2 lens.