Welcome to the online exhibit
Currently, over 250 photos that John Lowman has taken at Maplewood Flats from 2000-2006 are on display at Corrigan Nature House at Maplewood Flats. Below, we have documented and brought the exhibit to your screens, so that you can continue view these stunning images from home.
Discover the collection
“I was driving by Maplewood Flats one day in 1995 and saw a sign advertising the Osprey Festival, celebrating the return of ospreys to Burrard Inlet,” John Lowman recalls from his first visit to the Conservation Area.
“Back then, it was really terra incognita to me, so I went in. It’s a mosaic of very different bird habitats built on a former industrial site, and it is a critically important nesting and migration stopover site for many kinds of birds.”
After that visit, he returned every week, first with binoculars, then with a spotting scope, and finally, on his 50th birthday, with a present to himself: a Canon EOS3 35 mm camera with a 500 mm telephoto lens.
“I’d taken pictures of birds as a child and I wanted to document the return of wildlife at Maplewood to help them protect the site,” he says.
During the spring and fall migrations, Lowman would spend four hours a day – two hours every morning and evening – photographing birds such as warblers, blue herons, and Cooper’s hawks.
Lowman says he is “trying to create art” with his pictures, and that “the conservation aspect just ups the stakes for me. I get a real reward from creating an indisputable record of the importance of this site.
But what I find most pleasing is that my pictures produce an emotional response in people that makes them want to protect these creatures.
It's like we're saying, here, this is what conservation looks like."
