O Brother, Where Art Thou? (In Ucluelet)

In Victoria, my brother and I are eating sushi at Yua Bistro. I had promised thoughts of adventure to our conscience weeks earlier, but between the layoffs in Washington, D.C,  guests staying at my apartment, and the short five day visit, I had let bury my hatchet of adventure. In Victoria, we have the one day. And we decide to drive to the end of the world. “To Ucluelet,” my brother says. In Victoria, it is three o’clock, and I heed the call. Ucluelet. It has taken us five whole hours to arrive at Government St., the sun drifts into the clouds, and rain pelts the sidewalks as our day turns into night sooner than it echoes the morning. If we do not rally our afternoon, we are goners.

Fortunately, I have a camera, a rangefinder with an eccentric, wide angle Soviet lens.

The Jupiter 12 lens screw mounts into my Canon P loaded with Kodak Color Plus.  It will offer me the chance to shoot wide angle at 35mm. I struggle with my focus as I am left-eye dominant and prefer SLRs, but just as I wish to be ambidextrous, I want to improve my rangefinder skills to develop my framing. I wonder if I will frame pictures differently with my right eye. It doesn’t always work—at times, I gravitate back to my left eye. Focusing on bushes proves to be difficult.

The Jupiter-12 is has been popular among photographers as an affordable alternative to German, or Japanese lenses. Following World War II, parts of the Carl Zeiss factory were transferred to the Soviet Union, with cameras reportedly going to Kiev, and lenses to Krasnogorsk. Zeiss parts were used at first before KMZ, the company that took over the production, manufactured its own glass, switching the mount to L39. The Jupiter 12 first came into existence between 1950-1960.

Ucluelet is four hours away from Victoria. It is three pm, and we are carless. Neither of us has a change of clothes, a toothbrush, or even a spare garment, let alone a bottle of tap water. We have one another, and that is enough. Across the table, we agree to an itinerary. Younger siblings, in our own younger years, are often around to the point of mistreatment, or worse, disregard. Today, I remark that it takes us an entire day run away from everyone to find that time again of brotherhood. The last unexpected trip for me was to Banff, skirting the Icefields Parkway before traversing through the Kootenays, six years ago. The last for him was Tierra Del Fuego, which I measure to be of similar time removed. For one day, this will be it—our venture out West, farther than either of us has gone in Canada, to witness the majestic Pacific Ocean.

We take the Trans-Canada Highway BC-1 N, passing through the towns of Duncan, Ladysmith, past Nanaimo, left at Parksville, towards Port Alberni. We stop at Cathedral Grove; we walk past trees older than our ancestors. We press on, pick up lager in Port Alberni and turn onto the Pacific Rim Highway. The time is Max Parish blue above the trees, and we have over an hour’s drive to the inn we had booked. It’s too dark to take any more pictures, so I listen instead. My brother and I are close, close enough that I think I know everything there is to know about him. I don’t. He is driving, he cannot see the road. Out of the fog, he does his best to make out the reflective road markings. Deer, we consider the risk of deer, we drive in said consideration; the hour turns to two, and with no radio signals, our conversations become the frequency at which we learn more about one another—rather, I about him. (I was in cahoots with film making in my early twenties, he, in his late teens growing up amongst the Breakfast Club that was his friend group at Nest+m, mirroring my own elementary society at my first pit stop of employment in Canada, or JJ Bean, years later, and how those friend groups both ultimately were dismantled by gossip, teenage zest, and those wonky synapses of the heart).

“You mean the time I single-handedly dismantled my friend-group?” he laughs. “Nah,” I tell him, “our passions often bend the way of friendships.”

If only I had a focal length wide enough to capture the expansive span of our brotherhood

We arrive at midnight. Tomorrow I will have my day, as will my rangefinder.

We brew out of our room at seven in the morning. I have one lens and one camera. If I were stranded with one setup for the rest of my life, I would chose the look of the wide angle. 35mm. I’d argue that the focal length equally suitable for portraiture in context, street photography, landscapes, and architecture. I spot a two-group Marzocco machine in a cafe window, and I command, “That one.” The Foggy Bean Coffee Company is choice, and I have picked well. I have an Americano, and my knowledge of the area makes room for a dollop of recommendations from the owner, who at one time had worked for Parks Canada. We have two-thirds of the day; we will have to start driving back at two-thirty pm if we are to make our ferry in time and drop off our car. We can make the lighthouse on Amphitrite Point, and we set out for it.

To stand and photograph the coastline sobers up the sleep in my eyes. The rain settles on our clothes. We spend an hour traversing the Lighthouse Loop. We are alone, save for a passing rain jacket walking a terrier. We are far from Vancouver, far from Victoria, near the landscape we drove four hours to see. I cover my rangefinder with my coat, set the aperture to f8 and distance to infinity, look over my light meter, frame the shot and bring the camera up to my face for an instant as to not let the rain intrude on its mechanics.  I count the seconds of rain. I am not as precise with my focus as I am with an SLR, I see the frame lines but again, I do not know where exactly the frame will end, I let it go, whatever the pictures will be, they will be.

We walk up and down old wooden staircases. I lose Marley’s light meter moments before the sun appears.

We have made the beach. I do not have many frames left. I haven’t take any portraits of my brother.

I do.

There is a crevice of light blue in the sky.