Portrait Photographer, Victoria, BC

Long Beach, Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Today the gallery that I have uploaded to my website is of Long Beach, which is in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Traveling during a time of pandemic is something very few people will be doing for a while. So I have been putting up galleries of my personal work recently for others to enjoy the places I have been, and the things that I have seen and photographed.

Cumulus Reflected, Long Beach, Pacific Rim National Park.

To view, the Long Beach gallery click on the above photo or this link. https://paulkerins.com/long-beach/

Certain places can trigger powerful memories, whether it is returning to the area where the memory happened, thinking about a place where the memory was first formed or looking at a photograph of a familiar location can bring you back to relive those moments like they were frozen in time. It is something that I understand well, almost every photograph I have made has a story behind it, looking at certain images that I have created automatically triggers memories for me, the people who where there when I made the photograph, my mood on that day, the energy of the moment be it peaceful or chaotic, all the positive or negative feelings that I had in that moment come roaring back.

Long Beach is for me one of the special places that has very powerful, beautiful memories for me. I have only been there three times in my life. Once as a kid, once as a young man, and once as a middle age man. All wonderful experiences, all very memorable.

I was very young the first time I saw Long Beach, it was 1975 and my parents took my brother and I on a family holiday in British Columbia. They had borrowed a camper-van from an acquaintance and we drove through the Rockies to Vancouver Island to the most Western edge of Canada to Long Beach. I had seen the mountains many times before, but even though I was born by the Atlantic ocean, I have no memories of it. Seeing the Pacific ocean stretched before me for the first time as a kid is my earliest memory of seeing an ocean.

The second time I was at Long Beach I was in my twenties on a romantic weekend with the woman I was seeing at the time when I lived in Vancouver. We went there in the winter during storm season. If you are planning to go to Long Beach sometime in the future one of the best times of the year is in the winter during the storm season, when there are fewer tourists. It is during storm season that you will witness the power and raw beauty of nature in its purest and unforgiving form. The biting harsh winds, and the spray of cold saltwater on your face from the crashing of the massive waves hitting the shore can only be best described as exhilarating.

The last time I went to Long Beach was with my mom to celebrate her birthday. We drove from Victoria to Tofino and stayed for a few days and we had a wonderful time. My mom and I went to all the local beaches which were all incredibly beautiful in their own way. The best day by far was the day we walked the length of Long Beach. Photographically speaking the whole day was perfect, all of the photographs in this gallery of Long Beach were taken on that day. The tide was out so many of the rocky outcrops were exposed, there were many small squalls that day so the light was constantly changing and the waves were pronounced. Other than a small handful of other people we pretty much had the whole beach to ourselves. We both remember that day fondly, a perfect day, a perfect memory.

Thank you for visiting my website and viewing the Long Beach gallery, be sure to visit my blog again soon to see the next gallery that I will upload, it will be, “Creatures” gallery. A collection of images of different creatures that I have photographed. Please check back to see this gallery.