Tag: blogathon Posts

Mojave band is here doing a photo shoot right now. Once they’re done they’re going to be playing a few songs for us, which will totally be cool. Paul is actually a web designer too, and we almost had an opportunity to work with each other a few months ago. But we still hang out from time to time at coffee shops whenever I’m in town: I’ll take some photos during their set and post a few online. But I recently bought Mojave’s new CD from iTunes, and it’s a great listen, so make sure you pick it up.

It’s slow, but the sun is slowly going down out here in Vancouver, which means we’re not only past the half-way point, but it’ll soon be dark. I imagine it’ll be a lot harder to stay awake when it gets dark here, but who knows. Here’s my current view in Vancouver: I’m going to venture down to the Lamplighter in a bit and grab some beers. I probably won’t crack any until the wee hours of the morning, mainly because my stomach feels like it’s about to burst from all the food that’s in it. But it would be nice to have a beer or two at the end of the night in celebration of a very long day. In terms of donations, a big thank you goes out to everyone — we’re currently up to $1,145 for the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation. I still have 12 hours to go, […]

My camera is a digital SLR, and by default captures color instead of black and white images. That being said, once and a while I do take the odd photo that I think would work well as a black and white photograph. I actually converted this photo into a black and white, but didn’t really think that much of it. After uploading it to Flickr though, it became one of my most popular photos — currently 43 people have indicated it’s one of their favorites. Based on the response, I ended up printing out a copy for myself and put it on my wall at home. It should also be noted that the image has a square aspect ratio (the width is the same as the height) — another unusual framing style for me.

Years ago I came across a poem called “Vancouver Lights” that I really enjoyed. Since I’ve down a few Vancouver centric posts, I thought I would also bit a few bits of Vancouver literature up as well. So without further ado, here is “Vancouver Lights” by Earle Bidney: About me the night moonless wimples the mountains wraps ocean land air and mounting sucks at the stars The city throbbing below webs the sable peninsula The golden strands overleap the seajet by bridge and buoy vault the shears of the inlet climb the woods toward me falter and halt Across to the firefly haze of a ship on the gulps erased horizon roll the lambent spokes of a lighthouse Through the feckless years we have come to the time when to look on this quilt of lamps is a troubling delight Welling from Europe’s bog through Africa flowing and Asia drowning […]

While I was taking a quick break from blogging, Keira Mellis decided to help me out by writing an entry. So, this is a guest-entry by Keira. You can read more of Keira’s writing over Keira-anne.com Jordy and I have been at Workspace for several hours now, bringing candy and cheer to Duane and Rebecca as they blog for their respective charities. The space is quiet – almost too quiet – as everyone keeps their heads down, writing at frantic paces. Despite being so focused, it’s hard not to notice the view out the expansive windows facing north. Living in BC, and Vancouver in particular, it’s easy to take for granted the scenery we all see day-in and day-out. Though it struck me how amazing it must be to see the North Shore mountains through the eyes of someone who has never been here before. While the Canadian Rockies primarily […]

I took a quick 20 minute break from blogging, mainly to lay my head down on the couch here at Workspace at try to rest my brain. Compared to the noise levels nearly 12 hours ago, when Blogathon began, one might think that it’s basically over here. People are still blogging away (so much so that when I closed my eyes briefly all I heard was the tappity-tap-tap of fingers scurrying across keyboards), but I think at this point most people are rather exhausted. Most people probably think that writing entries every 30 minutes is fairly trivial. The truth is the opposite — it is extremely demanding, especially if you try to vary your content or stimulate your readership at all. It’s hard enough to write a blog entry or two a day, let alone 49 of them. If you also couple the generation of blog entries with photo taking […]

I moved into a new apartment in January, and for the first time in ages, had a decent sized patio. Since my patio faces south (and subsequently, receives a lot of afternoon soon), I figured I would try growing a few different vegetables. When I started, I had just a few planters, and it looked something like this: When things started sprouting, I got excited and decided to plant a few more things. Here’s a shot a few weeks after I started: I haven’t taken any photos of it in a while, but here’s a shot I took a few weeks ago. Since that time, a lot of tomatoes have formed on my tomato plants, and my peppers are about half way grown. I’m pretty excited for the tomatoes to be done, at which point I can make some home made pico de gallo.

I posted a photo of a cruise ship this morning surrounded by the mountains: I was just reading the news though, and apparently that very same ship ended up killing a baby whale: What appears to be a baby minke or fin whale has been impaled and killed on a cruise ship that docked in Vancouver Saturday morning. The whale, about 20 metres long, was wrapped around the bow of the ship in full view of tourists at Canada Place. A worker from the cruise ship, who didn’t want to be named, said he was not sure when the whale had been hit. The boat — the Sapphire Princess — had come in from Alaska on the Inside Passage, he said. “From what I hear there was a bit of a rumbling this morning,” he said. “It’s too bad; I wish we had some system to detect them. John Biehler […]

We just had a pile of Dairy Queen here, which was awesome and much appreciated. So thanks Dairy Queen, for the food, and thanks Rebecca, for organizing it’s delivery. Things definitely seem a bit less active around here right now, probably because everyone’s stomachs are all full of food now. I wouldn’t be surprised though if people are losing a bit of stream — we’ve all been at this nearly 8 hours already, and still have 16 hours to go. If my brain were a car engine right now, it would probably be firing on only one cylinder. I’ve been having a hard time constructing complete sentences in blog entries, and I’m relying on the built-in spell checker for pretty much everything right now. Thanks to an anonymous $150 donation, I’ve hit my original goal of $1,000. Thank you to whoever donating that amount. Because it’s still early, I’ve raised […]

I was one of the first people in Vancouver to experiment with HDR (high dynamic range) photography a few years ago. I definitely wasn’t *the* first, because I actually got a bit of inspiration from a few other photographers in Vancouver who had been dabbling with HDR. For yucks, I thought I would include the very first HDR shot I ever put together. It’s a shot of Vancouver on a really storm day. I shot it from my balcony using a tripod, and merged three photos together using a tool on the Mac called Photomatix. Here’s the end result: