Pretty In Pink Around Deer Lake
West End of Vancouver in Spring Time
I took this photo last April while on a bit of an assignment by Rebecca to “just get some shots of Robson Street”. She sends me out of photowalks from time to time to gather shots for various material that she publishes. Going back through some old photos, I rediscovered this one.
This really captures why we like the West End of Vancouver as much as we do. We you get down to this end of Robson, things slow down a little, and the city isn’t as loud. This was in April when it was just starting to get warm and the sun bathed the city for much longer than anyone expected.
I especially like the nice convertible in this shot, patiently waiting for the guy crossing the street. If this were a Sunday morning, that would probably be a Lamborghini and in multiples of three to five. They seem to have a bit of a driving club around these parts when the weather is nice enough to bring them out.
Don’t you know that it’s summertime?
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.
Lighthouse Park at the end of spring
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?
Photowalk: Iona Beach
Google Maps is chalk full of places for you to discover locations that are begging to be explored, especially with a camera. One of these is Iona Beach, an area Rebecca and I have wanted to check out for a while.
Once you get past the airport and head out to this narrow stretch of land, you can walk along a good mile of shoreline and vast sandbars during low tide. Aside from the number of tires and lumber products in my shots, this is really a beautiful place. You could easily spend a day at the beach out here, but the pet friendly folks were all over on this day.
The weather was cool and cloudy when we started out, but the sun and warmth eventually showed up as we hit the turn around point to venture back.
Continue reading “Photowalk: Iona Beach”
Photowalk: -20 Days to Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
I know that at time of publishing this post, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics are eight days away. The photos contained in this post are from January 23rd, just twenty days before the opening ceremonies. Rebecca and I wandered on foot from the Olympic Village to downtown with our cameras.
A lot of what you see in the post has changed quite a bit, but I thought it would be interesting to have these posted for the sake of Vancouver history.
This is one of the gates to get you into the Olympic Village. It reminds me of when I traveled to Berlin with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law and visited Checkpoint Charlie. Inviting, don’t you think?
I heard this would happen, and no building is too large or tall to put wrap on.
I pass by the official countdown clock everyday and never forget to sneak a peak of it. And more recently, I too was a tourist in my own city.
I used to work in the building pictured above. My first radio gig in Vancouver.
Steps out of Robson Square. While they looked painted, they’re actually wrapped.
The Robson Square Ice Rink in the opposite direction of the stairs. This will probably be a stopping point more than a few times depending on the mayhem going on here.
Granville Street with art installations and an ode to Hole In The Wall. Well, not really, but you could just imagine if it was.
These venue signs went up practically overnight. I’d like to see them keep these with references to popular landmarks in Vancouver after the games.
What do you do with a building in downtown Vancouver that is under complete renovation? You wrap a huge, Canadian flag around it.
Canada Place is for the media and accredited guests. Getting down here during the games will be tough unless you’re on foot.
No one is completely sure what’s inside these walls. It might be a “satellite cauldron” for the Olympic flame. Some even say this is where the actual flame will reside, which isn’t crazy being that the Olympic stadium, BC Place, is a dome.
Finally, the “VANOC Only” signs that are popping up all over the city. Unless you have that going for you, driving should be the last thing on your mind during these games in Vancouver.
Kudos to John Biehler who let me borrow his 35mm lens for some of these shots. You can see the entire set of photos from this photowalk on Flickr.
I’ll be posting more photos over the next few weeks as my adventures with True North Media House will see us doing photowalks among the other various things we get ourselves into. I don’t usually put explanations on my photos, but I’m doing this more for my family and friends who are watching these events from afar. I wish they could all be here to experience this once in a lifetime event, and this is my best attempt to share that with them as well as the world.
Photowalking around the Iowa countryside
Rebecca and I are back in Iowa for the New Year celebration with my family. Even though it’s cold outside, and I mean really cold, we braved the elements to take a venture around the countryside to see what we could find and do a little photowalking.
Here are a handful of my favorite shots from the trip, all shot with my 18-105mm lens.
The bridge in the above photo was built around the turn of the 20th century, and I’ve wanted to get some photos of it for a long time. It was so cold that I wasn’t overly happy with how a lot of them turned out, and you can see evidence of this in the photo below that Rebecca took of my while I was probably taking this exact photo above.
As cold as it was and as thick as my gloves were, it didn’t lend to a lot of time to mess around with any settings on my Nikon D90. In time, I hope to understand my camera more so I can plan ahead a little more. The -20F wind chills were just not the most ideal conditions to take the time to make such adjustments.
Photos from the BarCampVancouver09 Photowalk
As mentioned in my previous post, this year’s BarCampVancouver had a morning photowalk where we ventured out around this year’s venue to explore the area through a lens. There was probably twenty of us wandering around mostly empty, over grown property next to the rail yard near Main and Terminal.
Here’s a selection of my favorite shots that I took on the photowalk (all my photos from BarCampVancouver09 are here).
Peter has a good shot of me taking this photo.
What’s fun about going on photowalks like this, at least that I’m discovering, is when in the company of fellow Nikon owners, you get the opportunity to try out different lenses to at least experiment with other components that I could get for my D90. For example, the final shot above was wide-angle lens of Peter’s that he let me borrow about half-way through the photowalk. It really gives you a good idea of how something works and feels before you consider purchasing said gear.
But it doesn’t matter about what lens you have. Jordan always looks sharp.
The biggest element that I get from photowalks like this is just learning my camera. It’s how I learned the ins and outs of my Canon S5 IS, and the Nikon D90 is no exception. I’m refining what I already know to get a better grasp on pushing my photography, but when you’re around people like this who know even more, you are constantly learning. The conversations are incredibly geeky at some points, but understanding terms, sharing concepts, and having someone grab your camera to show you some setting that you didn’t know existed is invaluable. It’s a true testament of only getting better by simply giving it shot.
Actually, in photowalking terms, you give it about 500 shots in hopes that you come up with a handful of good ones.
Continue reading “Photos from the BarCampVancouver09 Photowalk”