On another trip back to my homeland of Iowa, I thought I should take the opportunity of being here to document a little bit of history while the caucus[wiki] happened yesterday.

With my camera in tow, my nephew drove Rebecca and I around town to check out a few of the locations where fellow caucus goers gathered to chat politics, hear from some representatives of the presidential candidates, and eventually circle the name of the person they want to represent the Republican Party in the 2012 election.

As a non-resident of the state, I can’t participate in this event, but this is the state by which I vote in federal elections in the U.S.

Walking into one caucus location, the woman just looked at us and said, “Alright, let’s do this. Who are ya and where do you live?”

I just told her that we were there to observe but also pointed to Rebecca and said, “Don’t live here.” (I’m a long time independent voter in terms of party affiliation, but for some reason, the last time I registered to vote by absentee, my registration card came back as Republican, even though I know that box for independent was checked.)

The only locations big enough to hold multiple large gatherings of people in this area are churches, and ascending from the basement where you register, it was easy to see why the woman at the front door was anxious to get our paperwork all in order. Seating was just at capacity with a few people standing at the back.

This is where everyone gathered to hear people speak on behalf of the candidates running in this caucus, but only a maximum of two people per candidate could speak for just a few minutes. If you had something to say, all you had to do is raise your hand and speak your mind as to why people should pick the person you wanted other people to vote for.

At the end of the evening, it was very easy to see and hear how many people were passionate about this caucus, the last speaker almost yelling at the crowd to vote for the person who will remove Obama from the White House as he waived his cane in the air.

As people broke off into smaller groups to actually make their vote, the battery life in my camera blinked empty. Shortly after all of the pieces of paper with one name circled were collected, we made our way back to the car and chatted about what we witnessed.

I’m glad Rebecca got to experience a small slice of Americana like this. Small towns and politics run almost hand in hand, and the way it happens can be like a thunderstorm in the heart of summer. The clouds will suddenly turn violent and rain down destruction, only to turn sunny and calm in a matter of minutes. But then you also know, another storm will eventually come along. It’s just a matter of when.

All of my photos can be found in this flickr set.

As this year is coming to an end, I’m thinking about all the things that has happened this past year and doing my best to catch up on them as a recap as much as sharing some of the photos I’ve been taking.

In late June, Rebecca and I took off for the Oregon coast for almost a week as an effort to get out of the city and recollect ourselves. 2011 has been a roller coaster of sorts, so we needed to spend some time listening and watching to the ocean in front of a fireplace from the comfort of cozy, seaside refuge in Cannon Beach.

It was such a charm to be in a smaller town that had feeling like being in B.C. but new to my list of states yet to cross off my list of places to visit.

Haystack Rock is the icon of this area, and we stared out at this natural rock formation from our room that the ocean seemed to place replicas of every so often along the coast.

In the last remaining hours of our stay, we were walking around the beach when I spotted a bald eagle heading straight towards the Haystack, where many puffins make their nests. Making a straight line for the rock, I stopped us both to watch what happened next.

As the eagle approached, a swarm of birds arrose from the Haystack, circled around the eagle, followed as it swung out and then back around towards its top, only to dive straight down to its surface. At that moment, the swarm collapsed on the same spot the eagle had just swooped into. The circle of life was in full effect as the nest were raided.

The one thing that I’ve always known and interested me about Cannon Beach is that this is the location where the Fratellis had their hideout in The Goonies. While that shack was built just for filming at Ecola State Park, we still had to explore it so I could say I’d been where Chunk had once tread.

I smell ice cream…

And while we did explore the town of Cannon Beach itself, it was tough to bring my camera along for the simple fact of not having a DSLR attached to my hip. This was a vacation after all.

But there were a few things I fell in love with other than just the piece of Oregon coastline that we called home for a few days.

One thing I’ve been told is how good Oregon beers are, and Bill’s Tavern and Brewhouse in Cannon Beach did not disappoint, especially after getting a little warm from the sun popping out from the clouds during yet another walk along the beach. The list of brews were all enticing, so I asked if they had a sampler that I could try.

The guy taking our order replied to my question, “You wanna try my beers?”

Yes I do, and I think I had just met either Bill himself or the brewmaster. Either way, it was tough to find a favorite as it’s a location pinned as must-go-back-to.

Other things of note: there is no sales tax in Oregon, it’s state law that you cannot pump your own gas, I love getting breakfast at the Pig ‘N Pancake if deciding to pass up the numerous cafes or bakeries, there is no better place than Cannon Beach to have a flip flop replacement emergency, and bird watching is serious business in these parts.

And speaking of serious business, so is cheese.

It might not sound like a good time, but the Tillamook Cheese Factory is an experience I won’t soon forget. It was a tad on the insane side in terms of the amount of people with their families to get samples of all things dairy, especially the double scoop ice cream cones and all the cheese curds you can eat until some one from behind shoves you out of line (I’m not saying that because people were rude as much as saying that the curds were tasty enough to get a little violent over the free samples).

In the end, simply driving around the coast is what really made our trip.

When we pulled off to take this photo, a family with thick, southern accents were at the same lookout, telling us that they didn’t have anything close to this beautiful back home. And while we have some pretty amazing scenery in B.C., it doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate other parts of the world that are just as awesome.

I took this photo this morning when Geroy Simon and Paul McCallum stopped by the TEAM 1040 morning show with the Grey Cup that they helped win this past Sunday. It made me think about this professional sport and how I’ve come to appreciate what it is.

Being the American that I am, I have to remember what my parents, as well as many folks south of the border, would say when it comes to this piece of timely sports news.

Most likely, it would be something to the tune of, “Oh, that’s nice.”

When I was back visiting my family in Iowa this past September, I took the opportunity of showing some of them what a CFL football game was like, taking advantage of the NFL Network’s agreement to rebroadcast TSN’s coverage of select Friday and Saturday games. I often send them emails or put out tweets about working these games, so it was nice to finally give them some insight about the technical work I do behind the TEAM 1410 radio broadcasts.

Within a brief minute of turning on a game, one of my nephews had the same reactions that I did when watching my first CFL games.

“How do you score one point? And why are they punting on third down?!”

Those things still trip me up from time to time, but that’s just apart of the game that is played in Canada compared to what I grew up with all my life. The field is bigger, there’s one more player on each team, and multiple players can be in motion towards the line of scrimmage before the ball is snapped rather than only one player being allowed to run parallel as the play starts.

And I really only point that out because Geroy is one of the first guys I picked up on during my early days of working BC Lions games. There’s just something a bit captivating when number 81 is in nearly full sprint as he approaches the line, timing it just perfectly with the snap of the ball as to not be offside, and then wondering if Simon is on a deep route for the end zone to hopefully strike his patented Superman pose when he snags the touchdown.

Not bad for a guy in his mid-thirties and at the top of his game, not to mention sitting in the upper class of several CFL records.

And if you really want to find out all of the differences between the two, there’s a great Wikipedia entry for that.

But what really stands out to me is that this is the 99th time that the Grey Cup has been played for.

An Instagram photo from the 2011 Grey Cup Tweet Up at the Rosedale on Robson

The league that plays for the Grey Cup has changed, reshaped, expanded, retracted, gone up, and gone down over that time, but the cup has remained the same as well as the basic premise that every year, a group of teams battle for the right to get their name engraved for future challengers to see. And that has happened for almost 100 years.

Completely ignoring an all out which league is better debate, that’s a fact the NFL can’t touch.

They also don’t do it for fortune. The highest paid players make six figured salaries with only modest endorsements. The fact that many players have off season jobs to supplement their off-season training speaks to the passion they have to keep playing this brand of football, and it’s something that I have a lot of respect for.

This isn’t a league that you can simply call a “minor league” to the NFL. It’s a league of its own brand of football that has stayed truer, not by much, to football’s divergence from rugby. It’s played and followed by people who have dedication to any other professional sport like golf, tennis, soccer, or baseball.

It’s reality television at its best because I can experience all of the drama at the stadium or on TV, but then I can go to Ricky’s in Surrey for breakfast and catch the players doing the same thing.

My proximity to it all draws me in, and it’s hard to not get into the story lines. Listening into the post-game show after a game one night, a man from Seattle called and said it best.

“You can’t say the NFL is better than the CFL, or that the CFL is better than the NFL and all that. I love my Seahawks, and I love the Lions. It’s like chicken and fish. You just have to love them both.”

Shot with my iPhone from a BC Lions game from now demolished, temporary Empire Field

So true, but if I were forced to choose over watching either or, I’d choose the CFL for the simple fact that 20 second play clocks keeps the action on the field moving and dramatically cuts down on the lull between plays. Even this American boy can get bored with football games spliced with three replay perspectives followed by five minutes of commercials.

More photos of this Harrison River Eco Tour on Flickr.

Dirty Radio at Surrey Fusion Festival 2011.

See more coverage at Miss604.com

Every once in a while, I find that processing a photo in black and white presents a different feeling to a shot altogether. And while that’s an obvious statement, I don’t like to do it very often.

I liked the way you see Jay and Eon (Bedouin Soundclash) come together at the center of the stage to focus on just each other for a brief portion of the song, forgetting everyone and everything else around them.

Pulling the color out of this one gives me more of a feeling that should be replicated by concert photography. It’s easy to get the photo of the lead singer at the microphone while he or she sings to the people in front of them. What’s more important to me is to capture those moments on stage that represents the intimacy of what live performances really are.

After all, I’m more of a fan than I am a photographer because I’ve been going to rock shows longer than I’ve owned a camera.

See more photos from this show at Miss604.com

I shot this on the final day of Summer Live in Stanley Park this past weekend. We were out of town for most of the event that celebrates Vancouver’s 125th anniversary of being the city that it has become, and this was quite the party that the city threw.

Truth be told, sixty4media developed the website for the year long celebration(celebratevancouver125.ca) that is going on, and it was a little rewarding to know that Rebecca and I played a bit part to help spread the word about Summer Live. With everyone hanging out on their blankets, people throwing the frisbee around, all the folks hula-hooping, and so on, I really wish we could have been around to check out more on Friday and Saturday.

“We live on a planet” is what Beck said when I showed her this photo because of the way the moon slipped into the shot. All of this within a 15 minute walk from the west end makes me hope this becomes a regular event every year.

Snapped this photo while photowalking during Hats Off Day in Burnaby Heights on Saturday. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of this event, especially since Miss604.com was a media sponsor.

I feel like I caught summer in this brief moment, even though it’s still, technically, spring.

Bottom line, this is an impressive affair. So many people, so many sights, sounds, and food. You could not have asked for a better day, and my slight sunburn is a tribute to that.

See all of my photos in this Flickr set and the recap post on Miss604.com.

I have been so amazed by this trip that Rebecca is documenting right now in Ghana. It’s wowing me with the imagery she is sending back. You should check them out for yourself on her Flickr set.

At work, I have a screen saver that cycles through my flickr stream, and this photo popped up the other day when I came back to my desk.

I took this a few months ago when Rebecca and I had a great weekend at the Westin Whistler as their guests. We were able to experience an amazing look behind the scenes in their kitchen while their very talented crew of chefs prepared some amazing food dishes for a local children’s hospital banquet and fundraiser.

I’ve always like how I was able to catch the way the clouds sit over the mountains on the other side of the Sea to Sky Highway from the main Whistler Village. You could stare out the window for hours, watching the clouds hover over the slopes.

Going back to 2010, I took this shot while in Iowa during the 4th of July. When you have a camera, some sparklers, and low light around sunset, what else do you do than experiment with long exposure?

Rebecca is remarkably good at making shapes like this, especially reversing a word to make it appear correctly for the shot without horizontally flipping it after the fact.

I had a fairly big project going on with the day job today, but there was a brief moment that relieved a little bit of the stress. I forgot about the email that mentioned Lights was coming in for a performance in our lounge at the station. I snagged my camera and snapped a few shots for the one song that I could stick around for.

I caught Lights about a year ago when I shot photos of Jets Overhead at The Commodore. She was the headliner, but I didn’t have a photo pass for her performance, just the opening act.

Lights takes my musical tastes to realms not usually tread, and I can’t help but appreciate the passion she has in her craft. She was also pretty brilliant live.

I shot this while crossing the Burrard Inlet in a Seabus to the north shore. This kid was a giddy as I often am while looking out the same windows at the city. It always makes me think about how lucky I am to be living in this city, and how thankful I am to all of my friends and family that made it possible for me to achieve everything I have.

I think that in a lot of ways, I’m still a kid at heart. That’s why I took this photo.

Just a little fun with long exposure, Rebecca used a drawing app on her iPhone 3GS to make her screen pink and did her best to spell out “love” in reverse. When you shake the phone, the screen turns back to being white, and that’s how she got the white circle to show up around it. I just had to figure out all the settings on my camera to get this to work, and around the fourth or fifth time, it came out like this.

This photo was taken in my parent’s driveway back in Iowa after the fireworks had just finished for the 4th of July, and this is why you always go back to spend time with your family. Visiting always makes us feel loved.

Last May, Rebecca and I finally made it over to Lighthouse Park on a cool, muggy day. It’s another one of those things that’s been on the list of places to visit after a few boat cruises by it and staring at it from the shore across the way from it.

The park is really pretty, but bring your hiking shoes for sure. As steep and narrow as some of the trails get, I still can’t figure out how, or yet alone why, some people got baby strollers over this terrain.

I’d barely recommend taking a stroller through Stanley Park, but it’s just the idea that some folks leave their front door not thinking about the fact that they are about to go to a park which sits at the base of a mountain.

Might this not seem like an unlikely place you’d want to bring a stroller?