A Photographer Navigates The Thousand Islands

Editor's Note: Appreciation goes to Toronto photographer, Timothy Bentley. We discovered Timothy through email and suddenly we were enjoying a voyage on board his sailboat - and at the same time learning about photographing some of the special sights in our Thousand Islands. Enjoy this lesson and enjoy how he captures some of our favourite views in the summer.

Magical Playground and Challenging Environment

Big skies, abundant water, and glorious wildlife, they all combine to make the Thousand Islands a magical playground for a photographer. They also provide a challenging technical environment for dedicated sailors.

During the hard winters (especially this year!), my wife Esther and I are sustained by happy memories: Jumping off the stern of Second Wind, our 38-foot sailboat, for an early-morning swim. Enjoying simple meals from the galley. Travelling through fast waters between the islands. Falling asleep to the gentle rocking of the waves.

And each summer we renew these memories with several months in the Islands, drawn by their extraordinary peace and beauty.

Not to suggest it’s easy. In fact, it’s a bit of a trek, either running upstream through the locks from Montreal and Ottawa, or downstream, like we do, from the Toronto area. How long it takes will depend on the weather, which can sometimes trap us for days in ports along the way.

On day one, at our maximum of 6 knots, we make the long voyage on Lake Ontario to Cobourg; if the waves are big, it can be gruelling. Next, we’ll head for Trenton via the Murray Canal, which is a fun passage.

Depending on our energy level, we’ll anchor the following day at Hay Bay or Prinyer Cove. The next day we’ll sometimes stop at Kingston. But if we’ve gotten that far, we’re usually eager to get to the Islands. So we push on, weary or not, to Gananoque where the marina has a slip waiting for us.

After a day or two of rest and reprovisioning, we’ll set out to anchor in quiet bays, tie up to buoys beside St. Lawrence National Park islands, hoist the sails in the open expanses, and when storms approach or we run short of supplies, retreat again to our dock.

We find the summer weather generally quiet and comfortable, with prevailing winds from the southwest. But when there’s a storm brewing, look out! We’ve experienced lightning, hail, and fierce winds – all providing exciting photographic opportunities. And once, a tornado.

Most of the time, the challenge is to keep the camera dry and at the ready, while coping with boat traffic, hidden rocks, wind, and waves.

Often, landscape photographers try to avoid displaying signs of human impact in their collections. But I’ve found the boats, the unique cottages, and the massive international bridge all add to the appeal, giving definition to the natural beauty.

From a professional perspective, I enjoy the challenge of shooting photographs from the boat. Whether Second Wind is enroute, at anchor, or tied up to a dock, it rocks and twists continuously. In this situation, it’s best to operate entirely handheld. A tripod is practical only on solid ground.

With all this movement, a wide-angle lens is the most forgiving, but I generally keep a long lens at hand to pick out distant features and creatures.

When I travel away from the mothership in our little dinghy, I pack a waterproof bag with cell phone, camera, and lenses. Walking on island paths, I keep a wide-angle lens at hand, so I can take closeups of rocks, trees, flowers, grasses, and textures.

If I’m trying to capture birds on the fly, I set the camera for burst shooting, so I’ll have a choice of images to edit later. I know from experience that, between the rapid movement of the wild creature and the ceaseless dance of the boat, my subjects will rarely appear in the middle of the image. In fact, it’s not uncommon to look at a sequence later, and find, to my chagrin, that some of the frames show nothing but sky! The first stop in the editing process is often to delete a multitude of meaningless frames.

Although fast-moving click-and-hope bird photography is fun and rewarding, I would classify myself primarily as a compositional photographer. Whenever I have the option, I’m looking for juxtapositions and connections between the elements of my images. Rocks and trees, sky and water, reflections and refractions, all support me in my work.

Sometimes, I find that the breadth and drama of the islands can only be captured from the air. My drone’s images are often less about detail and more about evocative shapes and patterns.

For instance, I thought I was photographing a school of minnows swimming over rocks, and discovered in editing that I’d caught a convoy of tiny kayakers, self-propelling around the islands.

This bird’s-eye view can also reveal structures beneath the waves that are invisible from a boat. If there are 1000 ancient mountaintops poking through the water as islands, another 1000 peaks are just below the surface, lying in wait to scrape our hulls, or ground us high and dry.

We watch and photograph hawks, herons, Canada geese, trumpeter swans, cormorants, gulls, ducks, and other migrating birds attracted by the short distances between land masses. Looking for four-legged wildlife along the shoreline, we’ve enjoyed brief sightings of shy deer, beaver, mink, otters, and red foxes.

The Islands’ picturesque cottages seem to embrace every possible philosophy, some squatting humbly at the water’s edge, some covering almost every inch of their island, while others reign grandly atop the cliffs. It would be an interesting project one day to create a portfolio of cottage styles.

From time to time, I like to take a more conceptual approach in the editing room (actually a small space in the boat’s salon). Recently, I photographed people jumping into the river from a cliff on Camelot Island. One image, a boy frozen in mid-air, especially spoke to my imagination.

With Esther’s input, I edited out the background, cleaned up the image, and placed a frame around the flailing body. The abstracted image, it seems to me, is now less about jumping and more about the struggles of young males attempting to integrate their chaotic instincts with the requirements of civilized society. Icarus for the 21st century.

Near the marina, there’s a great blue heron resident that is happy to pose for pictures. I captured a proud profile as it stood near the end of a dock, fierce and defiant, its whole being alert for danger – or prey.

Back in the editing room, I realized that the impact of the image was weakened by a host of distracting elements and colors. So, I converted it to monochrome – all but the heron’s eye, which in my final edit remains golden and vigilant.

This is a glorious area. Whether your camera is a mobile phone, a point-and-shoot, or a DLSR, whether your interest is landscape, wildlife, or something more abstract, you’ll find images in abundance.

But if you’re a Thousand Islander, you already knew that!

Additional Timothy Bentley island photographs

By Timothy Bentley

Timothy Bentley is an outdoor photographer who visits the Thousand Islands for several months each summer with his wife Esther, on their sailboat Second Wind. He has written for newspapers and magazines, television programs and books. His most recent publication is A Singular Vision. (You can download a PDF copy).

Timothy says, “I’m on a quest for truth with my camera, in the hope that my work will encourage viewers’ love and respect for the earth. I’m captivated by normally unseen moments, ambiguity, curious patterns, and those hidden gems that turn an ordinary perspective on its head. It seems to me that the power of photography is to slow us down from our 21st century rush, to make time to contemplate, to see what’s really around us, to react and to act.”

His website is www.timothybentley.photography.
His work will be on display at the O’Connor gallery in Gananoque, ON, from August 2 to 30.