Richmond BC Photo Spots

I am not a photographer. I own a camera I do not fully understand and a phone I understand completely, and most of what follows I learned by walking the same routes at different hours until I noticed when they looked good. But people ask, especially people who have just moved to Richmond BC and cannot work out where the pictures are, because the city does not hand them to you the way downtown Vancouver does. There is no mountain backdrop from most of here. There is no single view everyone shoots.

What Richmond has instead is two things. Water-level horizons, because the whole delta sits at about sea level and the sky takes up two-thirds of every frame whether you want it to or not. And density, on the No. 3 Road side, where the sign clutter and the reflected light are as good a subject as any waterfront. The overcast that people complain about for nine months of the year is soft, even, forgiving light. It is the best thing this climate gives you.

Garry Point, and why you should arrive early

The obvious one, and it is obvious because it is correct. Garry Point faces west across the Strait, so it is the sunset spot, and in summer half of Richmond knows it. The lot fills well before the light does. Park a few streets back toward Chatham and walk in rather than circling.

Two things people miss out there. The first is that the sunset position swings a long way through the year, so the shot you remember from July is not available in November, and the winter one is arguably better because the sky does more work. The second is to turn around. When the sun is low behind you, the grass and the driftwood and the memorial needle go completely gold for about ten minutes, and almost everybody is facing the wrong way for it. The Japanese garden at the north end is the other subject, and it peaks for a week or two in spring when the cherry trees go, which is also when it is busiest.

Practical: bring something to wipe salt spray off the front element, and expect wind. There is no shelter on that point at all.

Fisherman's Wharf and the working boats

Down at the end of Bayview, the boats are the subject and the light is best early. This is a working dock, not a set. People sell off the decks in the mornings and they are doing a job, so ask before you photograph anyone, and do not stand in the way of a tote of prawns. Nobody minds a camera down there. Plenty of people mind being made into content without being asked.

The detail shots are better than the wide ones anyway. Rope coils, buoys stacked against a rail, the paint failing on a hull in six colours, the reflections in the harbour when it is dead calm at first light. Move ten feet and the whole frame changes.

Britannia Shipyards

The stilt buildings and the boardwalk along the water are the strongest architectural subject in the city, and I would put them ahead of anything downtown for texture. Weathered board, corrugated sheet, pilings, all of it standing over the river on legs. Go at high tide if you want reflections under the boardwalk, and go on an overcast day rather than a bright one, because the wood detail flattens out in hard sun. The buildings you can go inside keep seasonal hours, so check before you plan around interiors.

The dyke in fog

This is the picture I would actually put on a wall. From roughly October to February, a certain kind of cold still morning produces fog on the West Dyke Trail that sits on the marsh and takes out the horizon entirely, and everything reduces to a grey field with one dark shape in it. A single tree. A fence line. Somebody's dog forty metres ahead. You have to be out early, because it usually burns off by the middle of the morning, and it is a coin flip whether it happens at all. The Terra Nova end has more structure in the frame, the plots and the barns and the tree lines. The Garry Point end is emptier and better if you want the minimal version.

The Oval and the Middle Arm at blue hour

The Richmond Olympic Oval from the outside is a long low sweep of glass and wood, and it reads best from across the water on the dyke path, particularly in the twenty to thirty minutes after sunset when the interior lights come up and the sky is still holding blue. The towers of the new neighbourhood beside it reflect in the arm, planes come across low on their approach, and the whole thing gives you a version of Richmond that most people who live here never bother to look at. Bring something to steady the camera. There is a railing, which is usually enough.

No. 3 Road after dark

I would rather shoot the Golden Village at night than almost anywhere in Metro Vancouver. The Canada Line guideway runs overhead down the middle of the corridor and gives you a hard geometric line to build a frame around. The signs are stacked three and four high, half of them in two languages, and after rain the asphalt doubles all of it. Alexandra Road is the concentrated version, one short block with more restaurant frontage than seems structurally possible, and it is at its best on a wet weeknight around nine when the light is on and the crowd has thinned.

Inside, Aberdeen Centre's atrium is worth ten minutes for the escalators and the balcony rails and the way the light drops down through the middle of the building. Be sensible about it. It is private property, staff are entitled to ask you to stop, and a tripod in a mall is a conversation you will lose.

Sea Island: planes and the river

The flight path park on Russ Baker Way is the plane-spotting spot, and the whole experience depends on which direction they are using that day, which is a wind thing you cannot control. Check before you drive out. Long lenses if you want the aircraft filling the frame, but honestly the better picture is usually the wide one with the plane small and the delta big.

Iona Beach, out past the airport, gives you a four-kilometre jetty running straight out into the water, which is a compositional gift and also a long walk with no shade. It is a birding site more than a photo site, but the light out there in the late afternoon is exceptional. One honest note: the regional treatment plant is right beside the park, and on some days you will know it.

The seaplane dock by The Flying Beaver Bar & Grill is a good half hour if you want floats and wake and the river working, and it is easier to get to than any of the above.

The farm side

In October the cranberry bogs flood for harvest and the fields turn into red rafts, and every year people ask me where to stand for it. The honest answer is from the road. Those are working farms and private property, and walking out onto a farm dyke to get a better angle is trespassing no matter how good the picture is. A few operations run public harvest events in season, and that is the way to get close to it legitimately.

No. 5 Road has a run of temples and religious buildings along it that are architecturally remarkable, and I will say the same thing about them that I would say about anyone's home. Ask. Do not shoot services. Do not walk into a hall with a camera up. Several are welcoming to visitors who behave like guests, and the exteriors alone are worth the drive.

A few things that are just true here

Low tide changes everything on the river side, so check it before you commit to a location. Overcast is your friend and blown-out white sky is your enemy, so shoot down and across rather than up. Rain gear for the camera matters more than any lens you could buy. And salt air will find your gear whether you notice it or not.

The best Richmond photographs are almost never of a landmark. They are of weather, water, and the specific way the light behaves over flat ground.

Last thing, which is really the point of doing any of this. Plan the food around the walk, not the other way round. If I am at the wharf early I eat at Pajo's Fish & Chips when it opens, or take a coffee out of Cannery Cafe and drink it on the boardwalk. Outpost Mini Donut Company is the reason my Steveston walks take longer than they should. If I am shooting the harbour and want to sit down properly afterwards, Blue Canoe Waterfront Restaurant is upstairs with the view. On the Golden Village nights, Little Fox Bakehouse earlier in the day or Saint Germain Bakery in Aberdeen for something to eat standing at the rail. Out on Sea Island, Soft Peaks Ice Cream, and Timothy's Frozen Yogurt back in the village if the walk ran long and it is still warm out. None of that will make the pictures better. It will make you stay out longer, which is the same thing in practice.