British Columbia By Drone

The natural landscape of British Columbia is a glorious succession of mountains, lakes, and rivers, as I saw firsthand during a week of travel and photography.

Between the mountains, the cultivated valleys testify to the ingenuity of farmers and vintners.

Esther and I began our June driving trip in Calgary, Alberta, heading for Penticton, BC. Along the way, I launched the drone often to capture aerial photographs.

On the first day, just before we left Alberta on the Trans Canada Highway, we turned off on a sideroad to find out what the drone might reveal. From the ground, we could see very little in any direction, apart from houses and tree trunks.

But as the drone ascended above the treetops to about 100 feet of altitude, I discovered we were not far from Lac Des Arcs, a popular site for water sports.

The unusual nature of this lake is best visible from the air. Only a skinny peninsula separates it from the Bow River, which you can see on the right, curving out of sight.

This image is revealing, but it also exemplifies an issue that’s peculiar to mountain country. A photograph taken by drone will sometimes look little different from one taken from a mountain with a conventional camera.

Looking at this lake photo, for instance, given the massive scale of the landscape, you might not guess that we were actually down low in the middle of a valley.

So the question that sometimes crosses my mind is: does that matter? Does a drone photograph have to look uniquely like a drone photograph to be authentic or interesting?

The drone pilot in me is tempted to murmur yes. But simultaneously, the photographer within is shouting no. And the photographer wins. A photo is a photo, and must be judged as such, no matter the altitude from which it was shot.

Of course, in other situations, as in this image taken the next day in British Columbia, the aerial nature of a photograph is an essential aspect of its story.

I launched the drone to capture this mountain stream racing downhill, cold as melted snow, churning and splashing as it descended. I positioned the drone for photographs from a variety of angles and altitudes, and ultimately settled on this diagonal shot from almost directly above as my favourite.

That was partly because of the contrast between the halves bisected by the stream. On the slope in the bottom part of the photo, the sun is already too low to illuminate anything except the tallest trees. Yet the slope facing the sun directly, in the upper half, is luxuriant and bright, darkened only by the occasional long shadow.

In National Parks, which surround much of the Trans Canada Highway, drone takeoffs and landings are forbidden. So, sadly, the drone often waited in the car while I took photographs with my handheld.

Still, new vistas kept opening before us, and we enjoyed several days of breathless astonishment (“O wow, look at that! And that!”), before we reached our destination.

Finally, up the slopes from Lake Okanagan, an enormous, unmistakable announcement left no doubt that we had made our way to Penticton.

In this valley, a century or more ago, newcomers planted highly productive fruit farms. But nowadays they have largely been re-purposed to grow a single crop, grapes, helped along by the valley’s many soils, slopes, and temperatures. For the past three decades the wines of British Columbia have won plenty of international awards.

To make the most economical use of space and to simplify their care, the vines are arranged in strict, straight, parallel lines. Yet despite this rigorous geometry, they retain an organic feel, rising and falling with the landscape. Seen from the air, the effect is like an enormous blanket tossed over an uneven bed.

Along the eastern edge of the lake, each farm terminates in a steep cliff. Without a switchback, a car could never ascend from the water’s edge.

We tend to think of the Okanagan Valley as lush and green, but that’s largely an illusion achieved by irrigation from the lake. Sometimes it requires the view from the air to reveal the valley’s essential nature – a desert spotted with cacti, succulents, and shrubs, surrounded by the verdant farms which mark the encroachment and success of human activity.