Vancouver Olympic Village

Saturday was Scott Kelby's annual worldwide photowalk, where almost 30,000 photographers around the world meet up in local groups to take... more

by Alexis Birkill

Title

Vancouver Olympic Village

Artist

Alexis Birkill

Medium

Photograph

Description

Saturday was Scott Kelby's annual worldwide photowalk, where almost 30,000 photographers around the world meet up in local groups to take photographs.

A friend of mine organised the photowalk in Vancouver, BC, located at the Olympic Village. I've been tending to avoid organised photowalks for the past few months, as I don't necessarily find them conducive to producing photos I'm happy with. However, Olympic Village is an area of the city which I haven't photographed that much, and when I have I've taken shots I'm somewhat happy with, so that, along with it being scheduled at dusk, got me to sign up.

In case you couldn't guess, this bridge is called Canoe Bridge (next time, bring wire clippers...), so named because of the way it is wider in the middle. I've always liked this bridge, especially at night with the lights under the handrails, but I've struggled to get a shot that I'm particularly happy with. Despite this, I thought I'd give it another go.

In order to capture the dynamic range and pick up the faint texture in the cloudy sky, this is an HDR shot, with a series of eight exposures in one-stop increments from 2 seconds to 4 minutes. Acquiring these shots took rather a long time due to this bridge being on the seawall, and being rather heavily used! The thirty second shot was the worst -- long enough to make it really hard to get a shot with the bridge clear, but short enough that anyone who was on the bridge would make a noticeable shadow. After about twenty minutes, I'd finally managed to get the component photos.

In the background on the left is the end of False Creek, and the Science World building and geodesic dome. The dome, along with BC Place (out of shot behind and to the left) are lit up in pink this month for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. On the right are some of the apartments and shops that make up part of the Vancouver Olympic Village, first developed during the Winter Olympics in 2010, and one of the fastest-growing areas of Vancouver.

Uploaded

October 7th, 2013