08-11-29

The problem with propping up a camera on rocks and pebbles on the ground is it's difficult to get the horizon horizontal. But it's also nice that in the heart of a city with something like a million people you can walk along an entire edge of the waterfront and hardly see a soul. Not far from this part of the walk they are building the Olympic Village which is supposed to house up to 36000 people in a couple of years which, as someone who comes from a town of 6000, blows my mind. I don't know if introducing that many people to the waterfront will affect how it feels to walk along it at night. My experience is that people mostly buy access to a lifestyle but rarely live it so those that can afford those housing units will likely stay comfortably warm watching their big screen televisions rather than venture out into cold misty nights to walk along the water. At least I hope so.

08-11-28

08-11-27

My new favourite beer. Well, not really, but the Red Racer has a handsome label, not many could argue that one.

08-11-26

This made me smile more than I care to admit. It kind of did again when I looked at the picture tonight.

08-11-25

I did warn that these pictures would be more about snapshots and less about photography, right? Dinner tonight was scrambled free range eggs with this incredible salsa whose first ingredient is jalapeno peppers, fried honey ham, and some pretty decent seven grain toast. Oh yeah, and a pretty tasty cream ale from Phillips called Slipstream whose name and label reference the phenomenon of drafting while riding bikes.

08-11-24

08-11-23

08-11-22

I had drinks with my good friend Johann this evening. Those little tumblers with green vines screened on them are just about the perfect thing to drink wine out of. Shit was good.

08-11-21

The crow.

From WikiAnswer:

Crows are sometimes considered to symbolize an omen. They can be good or bad depending on the context they are being used in and what culture is talking about them. Since they are in the same family as the raven they are often associated with death and darkness.

Another Perspective

Crow is seen by some Native Americans as the left-handed guardian and keeper of the sacred law. While others interpret it as ancient wisdom, and magic. In a tea cup crow is read as ill health. As a child I learned an old English rhyme about crows from my grandmother, it went something like this: One is for bad news, two is for mirth. Three is a wedding, four for a birth. Five is for riches, six is a thief, Seven a journey, eight is for grief. Nine is a secret, ten is for sorrow, Eleven is love and twelve is joy on the morrow.

I'm not sure where my affinity for crows comes from. Native North American tradition suggests animals for each month of the year, much like the more traditional Zodiac signs, and it would seem I'm born in the month of the crow which, until about five minutes ago when I Googled it, I had no idea about and I certainly didn't know that when I took this photograph this morning.

Crow/Raven: Sep 22 – Oct 22
Highly enthusiastic, and a natural entrepreneur, the Crow is quite a charmer. But he/she doesn't have to work at being charming – it comes easily. Everyone recognizes the Crow's easy energy, and everyone turns to the Crow for his/her ideas and opinions. This is because the Crow is both idealistic and diplomatic and is quite ingenious. In nurturing environments this Native American animal symbol is easy-going, can be romantic, and soft-spoken. Further, the crow can be quite patient, and intuitive in relationships. Left to his/her own devices, the Crow can be demanding, inconsistent, vindictive, and abrasive.

But this morning as I went down the street in search of milk for my breakfast cereal the crows were awakening, repopulating the city after spending the night in their murder.

It's interesting to note that the term "murder" is more often referenced in poetry than in science in relation to crows, or so it has been suggested.

What's interesting about this photo is how the eyes of some of the crows are eerily lit up.

And I just happen to be listening to: The Constantines - Young Lions "Make your love too wild for words. Stumbling thru the city with the ordinary birds."

It's in the details.

08-11-20

08-11-19

It's so monumental. And from this angle it seems to stand alone in a barren landscape but it's a block off of one of Vancouver's busiest thoroughfares. Somewhere deep down inside I suppose I'm still an architect.

08-11-18

Mixed feelings about this one. It is beautiful but in celebration of something so tragic. If I remember the story correctly, and I'm sure I'm not, an underage unlicensed kid "borrowed" hid parents' car and ran a red light and killed a pedestrian at this intersection. The flowers are so starkly beautiful in contrast to their seedy environment. There's something about these monuments that I find so intriguing.

08-11-17

08-11-16

I've never thought myself to be that much of a landscape photographer which is probably fine because most are probably thinking this isn't much of a landscape photograph. But while it's -1 and snowing in Calgary I managed to load a bunch of camera crap into a bag and ride a cross bike over to the North Shore in 13 degree weather to be greeted by an incredible moss covered landscape. It felt good to get muddy again and I'm realizing I don't ride a bike purely for pleasure enough anymore though once I was on The Shore I was wishing for a good pair of hiking boots, a tripod, three more hours of free time, and one less bike to haul around. Perhaps next time I'll lock the bike to a tree and throw a pair of hiking boots into my bag and spend more time figuring out just how to capture scenery in pictures.

08-11-15

It's really simple, really simple.

08-11-14

I've changed the subtitle of this blog from "this is where I was" to "it's in the details." The first run of this blog, the first year, was about exploring photography as a medium to convey ideas, emotions, thought. There are vast differences between "pictures", "photography", and "art." I might have been exploring ideas more closely related to art during the first 365 days. These later entries are less about that. What I'm doing now is more about documenting the little things I see each day that make me happy, like a tied spoke on a bicycle wheel, or a particular shade of orange against a particular shade of blue. There are still questions of composition, exposure, etc so these are more "photographs" than "pictures" but they are farther from "art" than I might usually attempt.

I'm still not promising to be here every day but the day that I don't see something really beautiful would be a sad day.

It's in the details.

08-11-13

It was sunny this morning, beautifully so. It made me wish I could call in sick to work. It made it hard to fight my daughter into her trailer to drop her at daycare, it would have been so much more fun to head over to Trout Lake to pet the dogs in the park.

08-11-12

08-11-11

The first run through this it would seem a lot of the time I was searching for a picture as the clock ticked closer to midnight. This time I've been posting the photograph for that day quite often by the afternoon of that day. I guess that means it's been long enough of a break from this, or the project has changed shape enough that it's easier or something.

08-11-10

Blue skies today.

08-11-9

There's a quality to the light in these images on the cover page of this web page that I would like to capture. A soft, cool, comfortable light.

08-11-8

Sometimes digital can seem so cold or calculated, the computers and microchips doing their best to make your pictures "good." The nice thing about film is that you don't have the luxury of previewing the pictures and because film is precious and limited unlike a flash memory card you tend to be more frugal with it. Digital can often become sterile or unemotional because you delete the soft images and you always get the shot with software that removes red eyes and face tracking focus software, and auto white balance. It doesn't mean you can't find the romantic image in a digital format. That's what today is, methinks. I have another version of this image in sharp focus and I had to mess up the white balance to get this image but I find it more comfortable in it's presented state, the inquisitive nature of a 2 year old making a farce of any framing effort, the kid just shows up and you push the shutter release and hope for the best.

08-11-7

This isn't the picture I wanted here. I suspect the picture I wanted here will show up on my other blog taken with a different camera. I also suspect there will be a different point and shoot camera in my future than the one I have now. I really like this idea, more than I should, but the tool (Canon G9, which by most judgements is an incredible camera) is undermining the project.

Today's soundtrack: Duck! Kourtnay was one of my favourite bartenders in Calgary and now that she's in Vancouver she's one of my favourites here as well.

08-11-6

Shhhh! We've been closed for a while now but while no one was looking I've turned on the "open" sign again. This is still active, as is this. But I couldn't leave well enough alone. I'm not promising a photograph every day, or maybe I am. Snapshots maybe. We'll see.