A little belated but worth mentioning that yesterday was Canada Day. We spent the day in Cloverdale for the Surrey Canada Day festivities out there, and I shot a lot of photos during our time on the ground.

The main reason we were out there was to cover the celebrations on Miss604.com.

• Canada Day in Surrey 2010 Day Blog
• Dragonette at Surrey Canada Day 2010

Even though it was rainy, it was still a great event. I only wish we could have stayed longer, but Rebecca’s health was waning at the onset of early evening as she’s been battling a head cold over the past few days. Short on time right now, but I’ll post some more of my favorite photos from the day later.

Updated: August 2, 2010: It’s taken me a while, but here are a variety of other shots that I took. Event photography continues to grow on me, but it’s really a fun challenge each time. You have to adapt to the venue, lighting, crowd, staging, and entertainment.

This is a great tradition of Surrey Canada Day celebrations. If you come up, you can get a cupcake for free. And quite honestly, everyone loves cupcakes. People from all walks of life, young to old, line up for these things.

Canada Day will be the time in the lower mainland to bust out all of your 2010 Olympics gear for years.

Rebecca with Diane Watts, Mayor of Surrey, B.C.

Live dancing groups are almost a Surrey staple.

Jessie Farrell with bass player, Ryland Haggis.

I kind of fell in love with the Dragonette when they took the stage.

In the last three years we’ve celebrated Canada Day in Surrey, I have never been let down. Even with the slight bit of rain that fell during the day, it still remains one of the best, free events for families.

At this point in the games, I think Vancouver is a little worn down from all of the excitement of what’s been going on up to this point. That’s not to say that the excitement is any less, but it just seems a little quieter.

After a pretty normal workday, it was really cool to head down into Yaletown to check out the official Flickr meetup, put on by the folks at Yahoo! themselves.

Aside from the familiar and not so familiar faces that I see at an event like this, members of the IOC were in attendance to talk about some of their efforts into the realm of social media.

More importantly, these guys were there to talk specifically about the sharing of images taken at Olympic events, which is a highly debated topic among many photographers involved with the True North Media House project.

Essentially, the IOC is endorsing the sharing of your photographs on their Vancouver 2010 Olympic Photo Group on Flickr. This maintains their stance on what you can and can’t do with the photographs taken within Olympic venues. They want you to share what you see and shoot with the world but not use them for personal profit.

Talking to the guys from the IOC, it was even more interesting to hear them talk about Sochi 2014. Essentially, what you will see in Whistler right now is being built from scratch for the Olympics in Russia. They’re tunneling from the city of Sochi to the other side of a nearby mountain where many of the outdoor events like alpine, sliding, and ski jump will magically appear by the time 2014 is on the horizon. You had to agree with them that a project like that is daunting, amazing, and scary all at the same time.

Our evening took a brief detour up to Georgia Street for a quick appearance of Rebecca on CBC Radio 3 with Lisa Christiansen. They had a great setup outside on their recently renovated concourse, and kudos to them for doing their research on their guests. As some one who works in the industry, we cannot have enough of this by on air personalities, if it not being an absolute must. All you aspiring broadcast stars should write that one down.

We wrapped up the night at the Flickr party, having a lot of fun with close friends and recounting everything that we’ve seen and has happened. I even got a free, one year pro membership extension!

Flickr Meetup @ Yahoo Funcouver, Photo by John Biehler on Flickr

It’s been a lot of fun to see how True North Media House has come together over the course of the months before the games and during. A lot of great stuff has been coming through all sorts of channels by self-accredited media contributors, documentarians, writers, bloggers, photographers, Twitter, and everything else yet to come.

So my experience of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics boiled down to letting the wookie win, and this implies the cold that was just a tad annoying the day prior. I waived the white flag in the battle when my head felt like it was in a vicegrip, taking in the games by whatever the TV could bring me while I slipped in and out of consciousness on the couch.

I make it sound worse than it was, but sometimes you just need to rest it out.

Day 6 certainly had some action to it. I missed Lindsey Vonn’s gold medal ski run but caught most of the last handful of skiers who had a heck of a time in Whistler. Shani Davis rocked that 1000 meters in speed skating, and Shaun White pretty much blew my mind.

Combine all of that with Twitter and Flickr, I have all I really need to find out what’s going on between all over B.C. in terms of these games.

So what I thought I would do is poke through some of the photos submitted to the True North Media House photo group on Flickr to pull out some great stuff that’s been filtering through the social media news wires. A lot of people are doing cool stuff, and the photography that’s coming through really pushes that concept of cool to a different level of storytelling rather than just saying what happened.

Photo credit: leelefever on Flickr

I met Lee Lefever when sharing a table at lunch during Northern Voice 2007, so naturally I have been following him on Twitter for a while and knew of his plans to come to Vancouver for the games. While waiting in line for Atlantic Canada House the other day, around the corner came Lee. I yelled out his name and found out he had a crew here for the duration of the games.

As it turns out, he got ahold of tickets of the same men’s snowboard final that blew my mind. Oddly enough, getting up to Cypress for the event is not only made difficult by the mandatory bus you have to take, but the buses apparently have a slight issue making it up the road to get there.

Is that guy trying to call a cab?

Photo credit: Stv. on Flickr

Steven has a great shot of the Molson Canadian Hockey House entrance that we went to for opening ceremonies. These houses and tents are really nothing to scoff at. These places are swanky and world class in terms of setup and decor. Vancouver has done a lot to dress up and impress, not that it makes them cheap or a long time to get into.

Photo credit: mike browne on Flickr

Mike got a great snap of Stephen Colbert while taping near Science World, otherwise known as Sochi House during the games. He has probably raised more awareness of these winter games than NBC has in the same amount of time.

Photo credit: Ariane Colenbrander on Flickr

Ariane has exactly what I’m talking about when it comes to these games. I cannot get enough of the foreign media and how they are framing Vancouver when reporting back to their homeland viewers.

As the quote says on the photo on Flickr, “Russian luge athlete Albert Demtschenko giving a live broadcast for Russian television.”

Photo credit: kpwerker on Flickr

Kim has a great shot of what all the hoopla was about with the cauldron being behind a chain link fence down at the new convention center. There is the whole issue with it looking like it’s stuck inside of a prison, but it’s the number of people who wanted to see it that was more confounding. How in the world could you underestimate that in city with a steam clock that probably is the most photographed landmark in the lower mainland?

Photo credit: Jaypiddy on Flickr

JP has a good one of something I don’t tire seeing. I love seeing everyone decked out in gear that supports the country they are cheering for. I got onto the bus this morning with two guys with American flag top hats, coats, and pants after spending the morning on Grouse Mountain during the Today show broadcasts. They were on their way to find some scalper tickets and watch some hockey later on.

Photo credit: dooq on Flickr

Dustin caught the Decentralized Dance Party while they took over Granville Street. This is only just one of the various flash mobs and impromptu gatherings that has been happening around the city. The coordinated dance flash mob seems to be pretty popular right now. I blame the reality TV shows.

Photo credit: simonehudson on Flickr

Simone has what is at the heart of these games to many Canadians. This just helps show how much hockey, or theses games in general, and having a good time go hand in hand.

Photo credit: kk+ on Flickr

Photo credit: kk+ on Flickr

Kris Krug is a ninja. He has been shooting a lot all over the lower mainland, and I think it’s fair to say that his supply of photos to sort through, edit, upload, and share far outweighs his time to get that all done. Regardless, what’a starting to show up here and there is really good. He has great coverage of what’s going on all fronts with these games.

Photo credit: John Biehler on Flickr

John Biehler has been shooting a ton of great stuff. He has access to many of the press conferences with a variety of Canadian athletes who have medeled. Also a big fan of his fish-eye lens stuff.

Photo credit: John Biehler on Flickr

Robert Scales is certainly one to admire with all of his previous experiences at a variety of Olympics. He even went to the Montreal games at the age of four, starting his pin collection quite a while back. Between him, Krug, and Dave Olson, these guys have been my sources of what to expect for when the games got here, even though I’m still in awe and amazement. Check out his Olympics coverage at Vancouver Access 2010.

Photo credit: John Biehler on Flickr

Speaking of DaveO, he has been on the ground and doing everything that was set out to be accomplished when he was brainstorming True North Media House some years back. A grassroots renegade practicing what he’s preaching.

This last image is mine, and I might get in trouble for posting in. If the IOC allows me to keep it, my only intention is to share the one thing that these games probably represent to me the most, and that’s Canadian pride. It’s overwhelming in terms of the abundance, but the fact that it has been embraced as much as it has is impressive. You see it in Tris, Keira, and even our good friend Duane can’t pass up a good party.

If you want to see more photos, check out the TNMH photo group on Flickr, or check out truenorthmediahouse.com to find out more about what this is all about.

As hoped, I got to head to Punta Cana with the radio day job as a sequel to the very short trip that Rebecca and I had there in July of this year. This one was for a week, and it wasn’t as much relaxation as I had hoped but still provided some great, warm weather and tropical sun.

I just got through all of my photos this past weekend, so here’s a small collection of my favorites from the trip.

You can see the whole set of photos on Flickr.

We just got in from a small journey around the downtown area of San Francisco, so I thought I would make a quick post with various photos from our venture with John Biehler after he got into town this morning. Rebecca has a pretty good group of photos you can check out as well.

You can see all of my photos from our trip to San Francisco in this flickr set.

I’m not mentioning this to be mean or rude, but there is something to be said about the sphere of social media that I and many others exist in and what it means to actually be social. It’s a tough line to walk, so let me explain a little.

In the realm of myspace, you add as many people as you possibly can. I never quite understood this mentality until I tried to build an account for RadioZoom and use it as a matter of promotion for the podcast. Pretty soon, promotional reps for various bands were adding me as friends and sending out mass messages of what their bands are doing. That’s a great mechanism for the network, but last time I checked, I have a very hard time making it to rock shows in North Carolina even though I’m on the guest list. I certainly appreciate the offer though.

The point I’m trying to make is that I have never met these people, and it’s fairly clear that they’ve never met me, nor do they know what I really do, where I’m located, and that I haven’t actually published an episode of RadioZoom in quite sometime.

Enter the realms of Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, and I have taken a very upfront, social approach from the onset of joining these networks. For the most part, I try to apply a one degree of separation before claiming someone as a contact or friend. Or to put it in simple English, I like to at least meet someone before I actually say that we’re a contact or friend.

It’s a simple matter of putting a face to the name. If I say that I know you in a social network setting, it makes much more sense to me to actually know you in a setting that goes beyond a connection between your terminal and mine.

And just to address the age old story of the person on the other end not being who they say they are, there is still some merit in that mindset. You can’t let that scare you though because how many times have you not believed something someone told you until you could prove the fact for yourself? It’s the same concept, and the episode of The Simpsons when Bart gets a credit card when he fills out the application as a joke is a bit of testament to that. If the credit company actually checked on this applicant, they would have known that “Santos L. Halper” was the family’s dog[wiki] and not an actual person.

Since moving to Vancouver, the world of the Internet has progressed from this nerdly world of ones and zeros and into a sphere of actual social settings where the computer is replaced with actual meetings and face to face conversations. Of course the convenient proximity I have to a major metropolitan area lends to this compared to others without such social resources, but it’s tough to just add someone to whatever social network because you know someone I know and yet we’ve never had any interaction whatsoever.

Now, yes, I do bend these self imposed rules from time to time because social interaction can derive in the sense of emails, Twitter @’s, Facebook messages, etc. This might happen because I find what you’re saying or doing to be worthwhile in terms of quality. However, if the quantity of what you are producing, in terms of content or contributions into the social sphere, lacks substance or is useless dribble, then that factors into things as well.

With so much to see, hear, read, and choose from, I simply need what’s worthwhile to me and my time. I know I can’t be the only one with these “rules”, so feel free to add your thoughts on this complicated topic below.

I was contacted a few weeks ago about a photo that I posted on Flickr by a rep at Sennheiser Canada. It turns out that they saw my photo and wanted to use it in a press release regarding the new sound system they provided the equipment for at GM Place. Canucks fans might have heard about the new setup at the rink, and a lot of people that I’ve talked to have been really impressed by it, myself included.

When I was contacted and asked for my permission, I ensured that I would get credit in the release and gave my go ahead. I was told that they had numerous photos of their equipment, but they really liked the way my shot captured the system.

If you get a chance to make it down for a Canucks game, it will impress you. It sounds a lot clearer than previously, and your seat will rattle when they crank up the bass. Certainly gives you a different experience at GM Place than before.

I know that it’s only sugar, water, lemons, and ice, and they cost $4, sometimes even more depending on the money swindling location and/or event that you are at. Still, there is nothing better than a lemonade like this on a hot, sunny, summer day.

Three days in Chilliwack, B.C. at Cultus Lake with Rebecca, John, and Duane. Lots and lots of sitting around the campfire, laughing a ton, good drink, good food, and the weather was… good.

The forecast in the days leading up to the trip just got worse and worse. Everyone we knew told us that we were nuts for going camping this weekend. It ended up being awful on Thursday night, Friday was actually really nice, and Saturday was off and on in terms of being cool from winds that would whip up from time to time. Other than that, everything went off great.

I even busted open my right shin a tiny bit when a piece of wood I was chopping got away and clocked me. That’s about par for the course, no other major injuries.

I can still smell the smoke, if not taste it. That’s only the real complaint of the trip, even if the coolness kept us all pretty close to the fire. Couldn’t even fathom jumping into the lake, no matter how inviting or calling it might have been. Fleece under a rain jacket was just right. Bone chilling lake water from ice run off from the mountains in the area, not so much.

Ah yes, we indeed called this drunkcamp02, complete with lanyards. It’s more of a statement of enjoying the time away from laptops and technology and becoming one with nature. Even though there are public washrooms within easy walk and Duane’s family brought us amazing food(perogies, cabbage rolls, and KFC), donuts from Tim Horton’s, and fire wood in three separate trips on Saturday, it’s tough country out there “in the Wack”.

You can see more of my pictures from the trip on Flickr.

I have a mild obsession with the Olympics. The fascination has been with me for as long as I can remember, so it’s no surprise that I watch all the construction with anticipation, all political arguments aside. I just love the games. Period.

So almost six months ago, I took this photo on my way into work in the morning.

This afternoon, I took this photo on my walk home.

The progress of this small city is astounding. We watch it everyday at work, and I battle the lines at the various places to eat near work on a constant basis. No matter when or where, there is always at least one construction guy or gal either buying coffee or having a bite to eat. The day I don’t have to cross the street without the fear of impending doom from a cement truck barreling down the street will be a strange day, especially with that Canada Line going in just a few blocks away.

Here’s another neat comparison of a photo that I took back in January, looking towards Science World from the Cambie Bridge.

And then, today, looking from about the same point, slightly more zoomed in.

I’d say that’s progress, but here’s a couple more photos for fun.

You can see more here.

It must have been nearly a month ago, and it took me a long time to get the pictures posted from our trip to Osoyoos for a quick weekend getaway, so here’s a delayed recap in photos. Rebecca has some good posts about the trips and various portions of it here, here, here, and here.

Lots of rest and relaxation, but we don’t own a car. It’s nice to take long drives through the countryside, see the land, and listen to music. That’s what makes us happy.

CityTV in Toronto had a great story. Burglar gets caught in the act by home owner, attempts to get away by leaping off balcony, busts his leg, and someone snaps pictures of the poor sap while he lays on the ground as cops are called and arrive to the scene. What avid Flickr user Joel Charlebois did with the photos afterward is the real story.

When CityTV heard him mention that he was going to post the photos to Flickr, they not only checked them out but used them in a news story. Problem is, there was no mention of the person who took the images. This is also known as a violation of copyright. As any good Flickr user and avid photographer will tell you (like Duane did on his blog post on this same topic), you protect the things you love. Yes, you can protect your photos on Flickr with a copyright, and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council agreed with the complaint brought against CityTV.

Charlebois, displeased, took his case to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), and today, nine months after the complaint was filed, a majority of the National Specialty Services Panel found that City’s broadcast did indeed violate the Association of Electronic Journalists of Canada’s RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics, which states that “Plagiarism is unacceptable. Broadcast journalists will strive to honour the intellectual property of others, including video and audio materials.” (The full decision is here.) The panel took particular issue with the lack of credit to Charlebois, stating that “the broadcaster knew full well the identity of the photographer whose still shots were used in the news report,” an omission that they deemed unfair, for news reporting or otherwise. (They note that the American RTNDA states that “professional electronic journalists should…clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders.”)

As a result, City must issue a rare on-air statement at least twice, during prime time, over the next ten days. That statement will follow a script set by the CBSC, stating that, in part, the news organization breached the aforementioned Code of Ethics and “included three still photographs of the injured burglar without providing any credit to the photographer, whose identity was known to the broadcaster. By failing to provide that accreditation, the broadcaster has failed to honour the intellectual property rights of the photographer.” [torontoist]

What is important to me on this story is that intellectual property was protected as it should be, no matter how it is being utilized. On top of that, it gives comfort to know that mainstream media will be held accountable for violations of copyrighted material. It’s not a full safety net, but that means that even the little guy stands a chance against big media companies when it comes to protecting your content.

Even Charlebois admits in the story that all he was really concerned about was the proper accreditation, not the punishment handed down to CityTV. I think it’s interesting to note that there is very little discussion of fines or compensation.