Vancouver Island Rainforest Photography
Photographing the Temperate Rainforests of British Columbia
Although the camera is how I earn a living, I still consider photography a hobby. Maybe obsession is the better word. I make photographs because I like making photographs. It doesn't particularly matter whether they wind up in a magazine, on somebody's wall, in an advertising campaign, or buried on a hard drive where nobody ever sees them. The act of looking for pictures is enough.
A few years ago Emily and I took a last-minute trip to Vancouver Island. We spent a few days wandering around Victoria before driving north and west toward Tofino. There wasn't any photography assignment attached to the trip and I didn't have a shot list. We were just traveling.
Naturally, I brought a camera.
One of the things that's impossible to ignore on Vancouver Island is the forest. The coastal temperate rainforests of British Columbia feel completely different from the landscapes I'm accustomed to photographing throughout the American West. Instead of distance, there's enclosure. Instead of open sky, there's canopy. Everything seems to be growing on top of everything else.
Trees grow out of fallen trees. Ferns come out of stumps. Moss hangs from branches and covers rocks. Roots disappear into the ground and reappear somewhere else.
It's visually chaotic.
Which is probably why I enjoyed photographing it so much.
Ancient Redcedars tower in the mist, their trunks draped with hanging moss, symbols of rainforest endurance.
Moss-covered limbs of a Bigleaf Maple stretch across a riverbank in the Vancouver Island rainforest — a timeless scene of the Pacific Northwest.
Finding Simple Photographs in a Complicated Place
I've never really classified myself as a "nature photographer" or even a "landscape photographer."
I'm just a photographer.
Cowboys, basketball hoops, barbershops, roadside America, fly fishing, trees—it doesn't make much difference to me. The subject changes, but the process is essentially the same. I'm walking around looking for something that makes me stop.
The rainforest presents an interesting problem because there is almost too much to look at.
Walk twenty feet into one and the entire frame can become green. Branches overlap branches. Vines, moss, ferns, roots, fallen timber and enormous tree trunks compete for attention.
The challenge isn't finding something to photograph. It's figuring out what to leave out.
That's something I've become increasingly interested in with my Minimalist Landscape Photography work. Rather than photographing the grand view, I'm often attracted to smaller relationships inside a landscape—a repeating pattern, a single shape, negative space, subtle changes in color, or the way light separates one thing from another.
The rainforest forced me to look that way.
Sometimes the photograph was a massive cedar disappearing upward into the canopy. Other times it was nothing more than the rhythm created by several narrow trunks standing beside one another.
There were roots hanging over riverbanks, ferns catching small amounts of light, moss-covered branches and trees that seemed to be growing sideways as much as upward.
The more time I spent walking around, the less interested I became in photographing "the rainforest."
I was interested in pieces of it.
Roots spilling over the edge, holding fast to earth even as the river pulls away
Layers of rainforest vegetation on Vancouver Island, with huckleberry leaves in the foreground and moss-laden Bigleaf Maples in the background.
The Quiet Side of Landscape Photography
Most traditional landscape photography is built around spectacle.
Big mountains. Sunsets. Dramatic skies. Famous viewpoints.
There's nothing wrong with that, but I've realized over the years that those aren't usually the landscapes I'm most interested in photographing.
I'm more attracted to places that don't immediately announce themselves.
A stand of trees. An empty road. Repeating grass. Fog. Water without anything happening on it. A strange patch of light.
Or a moss-covered tree somewhere on Vancouver Island.
These photographs eventually became part of a much larger body of work that I now think of as my Minimalist Landscape Prints—images made in different parts of the world that share a similar way of looking.
They're not necessarily photographs of important places.
They're photographs about paying attention.
And there's an important distinction there.
The Vancouver Island rainforest photographs fit naturally into that body of work because the experience of making them required exactly that kind of attention. Walking slowly. Looking past the obvious. Trying to organize a visually complicated place into something quieter.
Towering Western Redcedars rise from a carpet of green understory plants, their trunks textured with age.
A wooden boardwalk winds past massive Western Redcedar trees, their bark furrowed and dark with age.
Texture, Repetition and the Rainforest
What really stayed with me afterward was texture.
The forests seemed almost prehistoric.
Western red cedars and hemlocks rise through layers of vegetation while moss hangs from branches and fallen trees slowly become part of the forest floor. Everywhere you look, something is growing, decomposing, or becoming something else.
There is no clean separation between things.
And yet, inside all of that disorder, patterns start appearing.
Vertical tree trunks repeat through the frame.
Fern leaves echo one another.
Roots create lines through the soil.
Light moves through openings in the canopy and briefly separates one layer of green from another.
That's where the photographs started happening for me.
Not by trying to show everything, but by reducing everything.
The rainforest canopy of Western Hemlock and Redcedar creates a green cathedral above the boardwalk.
oss-laden trunks leaning at wild angles, showing the raw, tangled growth of Vancouver’s coastal rainforest.
Color and Black-and-White Rainforest Photographs
Some of these photographs needed color.
The almost ridiculous amount of green is part of the experience of being there. Moss, ferns and wet bark create subtle shifts between yellow-green, deep green and nearly black areas of shadow.
Other scenes worked better in black and white.
Removing the color turns the forest into shape, line and texture. Moss-covered branches become almost abstract. Tree trunks become repeating vertical marks. Tangled roots become drawings.
Those photographs feel less like descriptions of Vancouver Island and more like studies.
That's another connection to my minimalist landscape work. I'm not necessarily trying to show someone exactly what a place looked like.
I'm trying to show what caught my attention while I was standing there.
A massive decaying Redcedar stump, now host to moss, ferns, and new growth — the cycle of rainforest life.
Looking up through the canopy, the branches weave a cathedral of moss
Vancouver Island Rainforest Fine Art Prints
Several of these photographs are available as fine art prints and fit naturally alongside the quieter photographs in my Minimalist Landscape collection.
I like the idea of these images living in interiors because forests already contain many of the things I want the landscape photographs to bring into a room—organic shapes, repetition, texture and a sense of calm.
They're especially well suited to spaces where the artwork doesn't need to shout.
Homes, offices, hospitality spaces and other interiors can benefit from photographs that give the eye somewhere to rest rather than adding another layer of visual noise.
You can view the broader Minimalist Landscape Photography Prints collection here.
The collection includes photographs made across many years and many different landscapes—forests, coastlines, open fields, water, mountains and quiet roadside places—but they're connected by the same idea.
Pay attention long enough and ordinary places stop being ordinary.
A dense stand of slender Western Hemlocks, each draped in green moss, creates a quiet rhythm in the forest.
Branches heavy with moss, bending like arms under the weight of time
Rainforest Photography Licensing
The Vancouver Island photographs are also available for commercial and editorial licensing.
They can be licensed for editorial stories, travel publications, environmental projects, hospitality projects, advertising campaigns, websites and other commercial uses. Licensing is quoted according to the specific usage, including media, geography, duration and exclusivity.
For licensing, print inquiries, custom sizing, or help selecting photographs for an interior project, contact me directly.
Mostly, though, I'm glad I made them.
There was no assignment. No client. No reason to make any of these photographs other than the fact that walking around a rainforest with a camera seemed like a good way to spend the day.
Sometimes that's still the best reason to make a photograph.
Where giants stand, ferns and moss find their own quiet rhythm below
Roots tangled like fingers, gripping the ancient trunk in a slow-motion struggle
