COLUMN: Photography along the Kelowna waterfront

By John Enman

This past week I gave a friend a ride to Kelowna. The day was bright and sunny and since I would be waiting around I was happy to have the opportunity to wander around the city waterfront along the marina with my camera. It doesn’t take much to entertain me and a lazy day with my camera is always the best.

I brought my little Fuji XT1 with two lenses; an 18-55mm and a 55-300mm. I am beginning to warm up to that little mirrorless camera. I know it isn’t a match for my big DSLR with it’s large sensor and quick focusing, but the Fuji is compact and people don’t really pay attention to me as I walk along pointing it everywhere. That little mirrorless is the perfect city walk-around-town camera.

Summer hasn’t started yet in Kelowna, when it does Kelowna becomes a party town with heavy traffic and packed sidewalks, especially along the lakefront. It’s still a really fun place, but it’s impossible to photograph the area near the marina where I wanted to go without including lots of tourists in my pictures. However, there were only a few jacket-wearing folks strolling around on that sunny March day, so my photo adventure couldn’t have been better.

We had decided it would be fun to drive down a day early and spend the night at Hotel Zed. The brightly colored hotel’s advert says, “Hotel Zed is a ridiculously fun and unpretentious hotel. We have completely unordinary amenities like rotary dial phones in every room, plus a bunch of other great stuff. You’ll never be bored here.”

What a colorful, fun place to stay and it was just a short walk along the lake to where I wanted to photograph.

For those like me who enjoy short trips and a day of getting creative with their camera, an overnight trip to British Columbia cities like Kelowna is nothing but fun. The Hotel Zed is special, but there are always lots of other places to stay and gosh, there are so many restaurants. (I ate at one that had a robot that came to my table to deliver my order)

And the Kelowna waterfront is such a great place for enthusiastic photographers to take pictures.

Stay safe and be creative. These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or [email protected].

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City of Kelowna