Day 315: Totem poles

I've walked past these totem poles many times on my wanderings, always saving them for another day. I'm running out of days in this project and I've finally realized that I cannot get the photo I want of these poles, which requires a mid-summer sunrise. I had an alternative shot in mind that involved a damp, misty day, but the mist and rain has never been dense enough for my picture. I walked down to the beach again looking for more water's-edge ideas, though I snapped a couple of totem pole photos before I descended the 400 or so slippery steps to the beach. Sifting through the day's photos, I decided that today would be the day for this pole.

Haida mortuary pole

Day 314: Golden eyes

I managed to haul myself out of my chair and take a walk down to the beach this lunchtime. Not only that, but a small flock of Barrow's goldeneye followed me along the beach begging to have their picture taken. OK, so it wasn't quite like that: I stalked this group, bobbing merrily on the waves, for a couple of hundred metres along Tower Beach hoping to get a closer view. For the most part, as soon as I approached the water's edge, they would turn and swim away from the shore. My solution was to move ahead of them and crouch behind the rocks of the next breakwater. It's not the photo I was after, but it's pretty close.

It's my very own pi day - day 314 ;-)

Barrow's goldeneye

Day 313: Happy New Year!

Wait, didn't we do that a month ago? This time it's the Chinese Lunar New Year, bringing in the year of the (water) dragon, and simply by asking the Tiddlies managed to get themselves into the parade. With help from a few extras (including stray Morris men), they danced their way along the route for almost two hours. In the capacity as "official photographer" I walked along with them. That was quite a surreal experience, being in the parade like that. It's not a perspective I'm used to at all. I did my best to stay out of everyone's way though I was caught by the TV cameras a couple of times. And most remarkable of all - the rain stopped while they were dancing. Afterwards we all filled up on copious quantities of Dim Sum.

Camera notes: I had the external flash on and armed at all times, and it fired just about every shot - all 300+ of them! To my surprise, I had no battery issues at all. I'm really impressed with those new Eneloop Extra batteries.

A parade's-eye view of the parade

Day 312: Rivulating

After a rich and delicious hot chocolate from Cocoa Nymph (it is the hot chocolate festival, after all), I took a spin down to Locarno Beach to grab a photo or two before the day disappeared into the gloom. The tide was quite low, and I took a photo of a heron hunched over at the waterline, a light pole in the distance and incoming waves in the foreground. All very nice, but walking further along the beach I came to a stretch where water running off the beach had created a complete dendritic drainage pattern. I can get heron pictures any day of the week, but I really liked this pattern.

Rivulets in the sand

Day 311: Planets and moons

Today passed without me even thinking about getting outside for a photo, and it was with some trepidation that I set off home wondering what I could get tonight. Last night, the slender crescent moon was close to Venus in the sky, making for a beautiful sight. I looked up to see where they were, not believing that I'd see them due to the cloud cover. Lo and behold, through the clouds, Venus and the Moon were shining brightly, along with Jupiter a little higher in the sky. Now for the next challenge - holding a small camera steady enough to get a decent picture. Zooming in for a detail shot was a no-go, but at full wide angle, I could easily get all three in the picture. My exposure time was still quite long at half a second, but I leaned my elbows on the bike lockers, took a deep breath and took a handful of shots. And as has been the case so many times before, one of them worked well enough to post.

Jupiter, the Moon and Venus

Day 310: Climbing

The days are getting noticeably longer as the year climbs out of mid-winter. For the first time in over a week, the sun appeared at dawn and I could not resist the opportunity to get a sunny photo early in the day. Quite by chance, I sized up this view of Crown Mountain just as a float plane passed by, gaining height all the while. A nice alignment, I think, of the partially-lit snowy mountain and the bright aircraft against darker clouds. I tracked the plane until it passed overhead. I can't wait to ride in a float plane again - we have a voucher to use, so I foresee a flight to Victoria in the not-too-distant future.

Sunshine catches a float plane

Day 309: Indigo

This is the closest to indigo that I could get after my first target didn't work out. To my eye, they looked reasonably close, though usually I think of it as a deeper (darker) colour. The camera hasn't really captured the colour as I saw it, but it will have to do. A bit further down the road, the streetlamps were decorated with the gay pride rainbow banners - what better place to scope out indigo! Well, to say I was disappointed is an understatement - their rainbow was missing one, and only one colour. Bet you can't guess which one... Back to today's photo, I've had this scene in mind for a while, primarily because of the perspective rather than the colour, so I'm twice as happy with it.

A place of mind

Day 308: Overlapping circles

Another rainy, rainy day - a torrential downpour one minute, fine drizzle the next. Bands of heavy clouds rolled over Vancouver, and it was interesting to note the change in light levels. At one point, visibility was barely 100 m as the drizzle enveloped everything. Later, and still well before sunset, it seemed as though we were on the verge of the "blue hour", only for it to brighten up again, before darkening again and so on. By the time it actually got dark, I felt like I had anticipated two sunsets already. Between the downpours I snuck out with the camera to get my afternoon coffee, and pretty much the only thing to photograph were the puddles. As the rain started again, I liked the overlapping, spreading circles as the rain drops hit the surface. With such a dull day, the exposure time was long (1/3 of a second!) on the usual ISO setting of 100, and only 1/50 s at ISO 1600. The shorter exposure looked better today, but I liked the long exposure effect too, so that's one to save for a different rainy day.

Overlapping circles

Day 307: Illuminating

I took advantage of the brief respite from the rain and made my way down to Kits Beach to try a photo I'd sized up early on in this project. As ever, that one didn't work - I'll save it for better lighting conditions - but around the corner was a flower bed with a patch of tall ornamental grass, lit from below. The contrast of the white grass heads against the dark night tempted me to try the shot, and after a bit of experimenting, I got one that worked.

Illuminated grass

Day 306: In silhouette

Another day goes by with no pictures taken. But yesterday's tour of Ikea saw us bring home a nice new standard lamp, the shade of which made the perfect textured backdrop for a silhouette shot of the headstock of my bass guitar.

Headstock in silhouette

Day 305: Spooky!

A large portion of today's daylight hours was spent within the confines of the giant warehouse that is Ikea in Coquitlam. With less than two hours of the day left, I bestirred myself to pick up the camera and find something to photograph. Our little green nightlight caught my eye. I let it recharge for a while before setting it on the floor, which required that I lie full length behind the camera to take the picture. I turned off the hallway lights, pushed the top of the nightlight and illuminated the area with ghostly green light. I quite like the glowing-green-orb effect. We bought this little fella from Ikea a few years ago, just because we thought it was cute :-)

Spooky spöka

Day 304: Here comes the rain again

After a few days of icy-cold weather the rain is back with a vengeance. I took this photo of streetlit-raindrops while waiting at the bus stop having just picked up some refreshments for the weekend. Seriously, who wants to drink cold beer in this weather?

And the rain is back

Day 303: A tantalizing view

The forecast was a mix of sun and cloud today, and if there was much in the way of sun, I didn't see it. My afternoon ventures to find a subject have been getting later in the day, following the sunset. I didn't expect to find any colour and I was fully prepared to hoof it down to the beach to catch whatever shades of grey the sunset offered. I got as far as the Museum of Anthropology and stopped to try and photograph one or more of the half-dozen eagles soaring overhead in the cold breeze. None of them really worked - the new camera is fine for capturing scenes, but less good at fine detail, and bird photos are very often about the fine detail. But that didn't matter. Over the course of the next 10 minutes, the light on the mountain tops changed from creamy white to an orange glow and I was drawn to the distant jagged peaks of the Tantalus Range beyond Lighthouse Park. I zoomed in, steadied myself and clicked.

Sunset glow on the Tantalus Range

Day 302: Only a dusting

The recent storm warnings haven't amounted to much snow for Vancouver (though the Fraser Valley has seen more than its fair share). An inch or two fell a couple of days ago and since then the temperature has dropped to something that feels more like winter. Sure, it's not been the -15, -20, -30 C of the Interior but -7 C is cold enough for me. Wandering around on a dull chilly day, I couldn't find much to photograph, but I liked the way the grass was poking through the snow. I traipsed to the top of the knoll outside the Student Union building and managed to find a patch of untrod snow to get this one.

A dusting of snow

Day 301: Aglow

With the clouds breaking up, I was hoping to get some late afternoon colour. I could see Mt Seymour in shadow above the gym which was itself bathed in bright sunshine, and braved the icy wind to wait for the sun to drop below the clouds and light up the mountain. Over a period of a few minutes, the slopes of Mt Seymour were lit up in golden light as the sun sank lower in the sky, until all of the three peaks were glowing brightly against the darker clouds. Another five minutes and the light was gone.

Sunset glow on Mt Seymour

Day 300: Snowstorm

What better way to celebrate the 300th day of this project than with a nice abstract snowstorm photo. Yes, I'm being sarcastic ;-) I thought that with having some nice snowy scenes to view that I'd get something good today. Well, that only happens if you can be bothered to venture out of the office, so I was glad I'd taken a few shots at home before heading in to work, including this one of the neighbourhood pigeons flying around in the midst of this morning's half-hour mini-blizzard.

Pigeons in a snowstorm

Day 299: Lions!

Maria went snowshoeing up on Thunderbird Ridge, which I didn't feel up to thanks to the remnants of my cold. I opted to take a wander round parts of Stanley Park. First stop was Prospect Point and views of the snow showers blowing over Grouse and neighbouring peaks. I walked back along the park drive until I was standing on the bridge over the causeway with its great views long the deck of the Lions Gate suspension bridge. Like the big bridge, this small road bridge also has a pair sculpted lions at each end, miniature versions of those just below me. Overnight snowfall had left a dusting on the head, nose and paws of the lions and I couldn't resist getting that picture. Snowy owls a few weeks back; snowy lions today. :-)

Miniature lion

Day 298: View over Vancouver

To our surprise, the clouds parted after last night's snow to reveal the bluest of blue skies. We didn't have much of the white stuff, but on our trip to the farmers' market we found that other parts of the city did. Having loaded up on market goodies, we drove up the hill into Queen Elizabeth park to take in the view. Pretty - though difficult to get a good clear shot of the city itself thanks to the intervening trees. But there was one spot on the wall that offered the best view, which I duly shuffled over to once the previous occupant had taken their photo. A lovely view of some of downtown and into East Van, with the snow-covered Grouse Mountain area acting as a gorgeous winter backdrop. We could see into the Capilano and Seymour river valleys, and even Lynn Peak looked lovely! I get so used to the view from our apartment that seeing the city and mountains from a different angle is a bit of a treat, especially on such a day as this.

Vancouver and its mountain backdrop

Day 297: Likin' these lichens

Only seventy days to go... The picture I took on Day 70 was of a nice sunrise over Mt Seymour. No such luck today, Friday the Thirteenth of January 2012, a dull, chilly winter's day. I've been trying to get a good lichen picture for ages, mostly due to the fact that it's hard to make them look interesting :-) But I stumbled on this little bush, and noticed it was amply endowed with lots of lichen. Nice - and the colourful leaves are a bonus. Not bad for a dull day.

Likin' these lichens

Day 296: Frosty

Guess what? That big pile of leaves gathered up in the autumn is still there. The last couple of days have been sunny and clear, which has meant frosty mornings. I've been after a good "frost" photo for a few weeks now, and the big leaf pile made it quite easy for me. The sunlight had only just fallen on these leaves so the ice hadn't melted yet - so many ice shots end up taken in the shade, making it difficult to get good colours - so I was very happy to capture these leaves. Ten minutes later and there would probably have been no frost left.

Frosty leaves

Day 295: Spotted!

I have been after a good towhee picture for ages - they're normally very skittish and will disappear into the undergrowth at the slightest movement. So I was delighted to see a pair of them out in full sunshine searching for food by some steps. I edged closer - one of them flew off, the other dashed away only to return to the same spot where I was waiting with the camera :-)

Spotted towhee

Day 294: Reconstruction

I remember the first time I saw a house in Vancouver undergoing renovations: the lower half of the house had its boards and cladding removed, and was propped up on four or five towers of wood. It's a common approach round here to gut the entire property, leaving little more than the framework and then rebuild the house around it. Every time I've seen a house in that state, I've said to myself that I really have to take a picture... A few weeks ago I noticed that the tall cedar hedges on the corner of a nearby street had been removed to reveal the houses behind. Soon after that, the cladding came off, the interiors gutted and the rotting wood and fascia dumped into skips. Today I walked down to see underneath the houses, all the way through to the lane behind. I was disappointed to see that they're not jacked up on pallets, but they still capture the essence of house renovations and reconstruction here. Oh, and that's the shadow of my arm at the bottom of the picture.

Reconstruction and renovation

Day 293: First flowers

January is usually a grey, damp month but one thing always brightens it up for me: the curly yellow blooms of the witch hazel tree.

Witch hazel blooms

Day 292: Plough Sunday

The day after the Twelfth Night party is Plough Sunday, where the Vancouver Morris Men take their plough and dance in the streets, or in this case Granville Island. A small but enthusastic crowd (mostly from the local Morris teams) turned out to watch. The celebrated day is actually the Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Night and the start of the agricultural year but some of us have to work...

Vancouver Morris Men on Plough Sunday

Day 291: Twelfth Night

I don't know if today is the actual Twelfth Night but it was as good a day as any to take down our Christmas tree. That and one of the Vancouver Morris Men is hosting a "Twelfth Night" party tonight. As usual, I'm quite sad to be taking down the tree - I get quite used to it brightening up the corner of the room (or taking up valuable space, depending on your point of view), and I've always liked leaving the tree lights on when all the other lights have been turned off. Oh well, until next Christmas!

Number play for today: 2 + 9 + 1 = 12 :-)

Dismantling the tree

Day 290: Souvenirs and memories

Another day, another cold. Well, it's the same one actually, but it's come back with a vengeance today. So I've been at home, watching the mountains gradually disappear as the next weather system moved in, wondering what I can photograph on a grey rainy day. What can I photograph indoors, that doesn't need setting up? Bingo - our quilt, hanging up in the second bedroom. An excuse to use the external flash too.

Our quilt was a leaving present from our friends from Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. We picked out some colours and fabric, but really one person made it all happen - Barb Hunt. Sure, she had some input from other friends, but it was all her effort that created this quilt. The green and blue represent the land and water, with hints of the mountains and a touch of the night sky too. And then there are the little touches, the ones that make you realize what people know about you, like leaves (including a maple leaf as we were moving to Canada), shells and a little bear. We love it. It's our very own personalized piece of art.

Our quilt

Day 289: Even the squirrels are grey round here

I had equally-low hopes for today's photo as for the last two days, thinking that I'd get a trio of grey pictures, but I did at least take the unprecedented step of going out just after lunch. To my surprise, there were large patches of blue sky around with the sun making the occasional appearance. Great! I went off in search of some shots I've been keeping in mind for brighter days, only to find that I have a lot to learn about getting this new camera to focus in macro mode... :-/ But I was saved by a squirrel in the tree above me, with a lovely blue-sky backdrop. I took one photo, and the squirrel was spooked by me hanging around underneath it. I took another just as it moved its paw into a more interesting position to get the shot below, which I'm very happy with. You could say I got my trio of grey after all!

Transfixed grey squirrel

Day 288: Grey clouds, grey water

After yesterday's rain came even more rain, leaving gusty easterly winds in its wake. It was late afternoon as usual when I wandered out to look for a photo. I had a couple of ideas in mind, but the strong wind and dull light put paid to them. I ended up walking out to the rose garden again because I could see the dark grey forbidding clouds over Howe Sound. The angle isn't too good from there so I crossed the road and walked up onto the embankment outside the Museum of Anthropology for a better view. Knowing how digital cameras treat large expanses of grey, I kept the ISO setting as low as practical, but I had to zoom in quite far to get the view I wanted, and was faced with an exposure time that is really too long for the conditions (about 1/20 of a second). I noticed a floatplane fly by and took the shot as it reached the centre of the frame. I quickly reviewed what I'd taken and I laughed out loud to myself: the plane was pin-sharp! Well, my steady hand and image stabilization really works wonders doesn't it. I was mightily pleased with myself until I got home and viewed the photo on the computer. Sure, the plane was perfectly in focus with no signs of blurring, but the backdrop was noticeably blurred - somehow as I wavered, I managed to move the camera in the same direction that the aircraft was moving. A beautiful panning shot, without even realizing it! How about that?

Forbidding weather in Howe Sound

Day 287: The grey days of winter

First day back at work in the new year and the winter rain is making up for lost time. It's been pouring all day (and we're forecast more tomorrow) which hasn't exactly tempted me outside. But I did see something that caught my eye on the way over to my afternoon coffee, rain drops falling in a waterlogged and leaf-logged gutter, with the corner of the library casting a blurry reflection. I know I've used a reflection picture before, but I feel justified in using this one to capture a rainy day. Plus I only took two photos all day so it'll just have to do.

The grey days of winter

Day 286: Goin' postal

I've had my eye on postboxes for a while, as I really like the fake graffiti-covered look. I don't know the story, but I'm sure that covering the box in postal codes is a great way to stop graffiti artists. Alternatively, it could be that any graffiti (at least of the "tagging" variety) that does end up on the boxes doesn't stand out, effectively nullifying the purpose of the graffiti in the first place. Anyhow, there I was, sipping a perfectly pleasant mug of Earl Grey when I spotted these two postboxes side-by-side. Even better, I was sat next to an open window, so all I had to do was point the camera through the gap, zoom in a bit and take the picture. Once back home I realized the two postboxes were not quite as level as I first thought, and I briefly considered a bit of Photoshop trickery to line them up, but in the end I've posted the picture as-is, cropped a little and the contrast and saturation boosted slightly.

A pair of postboxes

Day 285: A new year

Happy New Year, and welcome to 2012 :-) We met up with our friend Carollyne for a walk around Stanley Park, accumulating photos as we went (as usual). There were lots of birds on the water, including a really large raft of surf scoters. I took a short video clip of them as a wave of birds ducked under the water (no pun intended), each bird diving as the one in front disappeared. It made for a really interesting effect. My photos didn't turn out so well, so I've ended up using this one of two types of seagull feeding in the shallow water as the tide was going out. Don't get me wrong - I really like this photo. The long zoom makes the mountains of Vancouver Island look very close, the sky is a lovely peachy colour, the waves are just breaking and the birds are nicely in focus. It has a lot going on, and yet retains a feeling of space.

Feeding gulls