Craigdarroch Castle

This mansion in Victoria was completed in 1890. It was built by Robert Dunsmuir, the richest man in British Columbia. Dunsmuir, a coal baron who began his career as a coal miner, died before the castle was completed. It was occupied by his wife and other family members until 1908.

Craigdarroch Castle is stunning, with spectacular oak paneling and some of the most beautiful stained glass I’ve ever seen. If you’re day tripping from the Olympic Peninsula or making a longer trek to Victoria it’s well worth a visit. This time of year it’s decorated as if for a Victorian era Christmas and it’s lovely.

Reflections on travel photography

Shooting new places as a traveler a photographer becomes something of a voyeur, snapping shots and then letting the images open up the imagination. I wonder about the rooms below the roofs, the places that chimneys open into, the sounds of people living within. Travel, for me, inflames curiosity.

I love to see how today crowds its way into a picture, how tradition makes way and adjusts.

Theme Day: The beauty of decay

Today’s City Daily Photo theme post is “the beauty of decay.” This long-abandoned cabin in the woods is my response. A tiny one-room shack, it caves to the effects of nature’s persistent drive of reclamation.

As the boards molder and succumb, vines, grasses, ferns, and bushes weave up from the cabin’s lost floor and through gaping holes toward filtered forest light.

I passed this little cabin on a driveway monthly for over a year and a half before I noticed it out of the corner of my eye. There’s a beautiful, sturdy house and a serene pond nearby. And this cabin slowly returns to the earth and fades from memory.

Click here to see submissions from other participants in City Daily Photo.

Sold

It seems every time I drive anywhere I see more houses for sale. At one of them the other day I saw a woman nosing around a front window, trying to look in. Swallows are doing much the same with our birdhouses. It’s nesting season and at long last it appears that things are picking up for humans. The house this sign advertises had barely hit the market before it sold, a good thing for the sellers and the buyers. Not so good for a neighbor – me – who hates to see the sellers go. They’ve been the best neighbors, ever.