Day 284: Reflecting on the year...

It's the last day of 2011, a year that seems to have sped by. Time for one last walk on the beach. We walked around the pond in Jericho Beach Park, stood on the bridge and admired the reflection of the trees in the water. I took more pictures as we walked as far as the pier (the afternoon light on the city was nice too), but this one just felt right.

In reflection

Day 283: As the sun sets

The last Friday of the year, and I slung the camera over my shoulder as we went for a walk up the street for a hot chocolate. I could see a little colour in the sky as the clouds began to break up and the sun made an appearance. I was hoping to see a rainbow, given that the rain hadn't completely stopped falling but it all came to nothing. Back at home, I could see the western horizon was beginning to get its sunset orange glow, and I went out into the freezing cold wind (where did that come from?) and tried a few photos. I've taken many sunset photos, so I wasn't convinced I'd get anything good. But then I saw an aeroplane taking off from the airport, rising into the orange sky and casting a long shadow on the ribbons of rain. I pointed the camera at the plane, but it decided to re-focus and by the time it had done so the plane had risen and the shadow had faded. Darn. I waited for another airliner to take off to see if the same thing would happen. It never did, but I was happy with this particular aeroplane shot, taken just as the sun had set, the sky now looking like a bright orange portal. Quite appropriate for the "time" travellers on board.

Sunset flight

Day 282: Self portrait

I have a cold, it's dull outside so what else to take a picture of? Me, of course! Ha ha, yeah, right... I'm not into people pictures, preferring to capture things as they happen rather than getting someone to look directly at the camera, and I'm definitely not into the self-portraits that adorn the photostreams of so many. But I hit upon this idea early in the project when taking some test photos of my bass guitar. I saw my reflection in the body, and thought about saving that shot for another day. I have several more guitar pictures in mind - I think many musical instruments are things of intrinsic beauty and I like trying to get good photos of them. At the interface between photos of people and musical instrument is the musician, and one of the reasons I like following the Morris crowd is to try and capture those moments where one of the musicians is totally engrossed in what they're playing. I find those photos quite fascinating.

Self portrait and bass guitar

Day 281: Words of wisdom

Between showers I went for a wander down the street to look at camera bags and pick up a coffee for me and a chai for Maria. On my way out of East Is East I noticed a rough-cut stool with a message that I thought was worth sharing: "Do not resent growing old - many are denied the privilege". And with that, I will get on and allow my own ageing process to take its course.

Words of wisdom


PS I should welcome the first picture with the newest camera, a Canon SX230HS. I've been after something pocketable for a while and when I saw this one for a sale price I couldn't refuse, well, I simply couldn't refuse :-)

Day 280: Christmas tree

I'd not heard the expression "Charlie Brown Christmas tree" before, but it turns out that it refers to the type of tree that looks sparse so you can see everything on it from any angle. This year, we picked up a small tree again, this time from the local school, and although it is a little sparser than trees we've had in the past, I like that fact that it's not trimmed. After our visit to the Vancouver Christmas Market we had accumulated yet more tree decorations. We have quite a collection now after a decade or so of finding new decorations every year, and we had to leave maybe half of them in their boxes as we can no longer get a big enough tree to take them all. I can't see how this situation can improve any, but I have to admit I have a weakness for nice tree decorations...

Our "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree

Day 279: On the contents of boxes

Boxing Day, and these days that means dealing with all the empty boxes from Christmas. In this case, it means dealing with the contents of one of those boxes, and today's photo catches Ed and Maria assembling one of Kara's toys.

Some assembly required

Day 278: Christmas Day

It's Christmas Day - Merry Christmas! Today was dominated by present opening, with Kara doing all the hard work :-) Mostly I was using the external flash to get "nice" photos, but when the rain stopped and the sun made an appearance, I couldn't resist a natural light picture. At the time Kara was engrossed in trying out the Play-Doh set she had just unwrapped, with Brenda sitting behind her. Even though this is heavily underexposed, I like this shot for the lighting, which highlights just enough to see what's going on without needing to illuminate every part of the frame, and the human elements of the connection between mother and daughter and the expression on Kara's face. She loved the Play-Doh.

Playing with Play-Doh

Day 277: The night before Christmas

Last night we caught the ferry over to Vancouver Island to spend Christmas with our friends Brenda and Ed and their daughter. On the way to their place we drove past this house all done up in its Christmas lights. I ventured out to get a photo of it tonight and was treated to Christmas tunes along with coordinated lights. I had to wait until all the lights were on to get this photo, and there were plenty of near misses!

Seasonal dwelling

Day 276: On the outside looking in

Last day of work before the Christmas holiday - hooray! Even better it's only a half-day. The campus is so abnormally quiet - I was one of only 2 passengers to get off the 99 when it pulled in - but oh so peaceful. The Student Union building (SUB) was empty and everything (except Starbucks) closed. I took a couple of pictures of the empty concourse to see if they would work (they didn't) and then noticed that the seating area under the two partial globes was empty. I thought I'd try and get a picture of the one of the night sky, and I must admit I've never looked at it long enough to try and work out exactly what part of the sky it's showing. I set the camera down on the floor pointing straight up to get this shot. A square crop seemed like the obvious thing to do, and I made it black-and-white because I could not get a colour balance I liked. I'm happy with it: the B&W works quite nicely, and in reality the piece is a silvery-grey.

So what does it show? It's looking at the south celestial pole at stars which cannot be seen from here. Growing up in the northern hemisphere I don't recognize any of the constellations, except for Crux, the Southern Cross, and in trying to identify them I realized that the constellations appeared to be backwards. Then it dawned on me: this partial globe is showing the stars as if you were outside the Celestial Sphere, whereas star charts and planetarium programs put you in the centre. Mystery solved, but I'm still having a hard time identifying the constellations!

Stars of the southern hemisphere

Day 275: Second by a second

Yesterday was actually the shortest day, and the solstice occurred last night for us here on the west coast. Today is the second-shortest day of the year, longer than yesterday by a whole second (according to timeanddate.com). I checked when the sun would be at its highest today and decided to head down to the beach for that time (about 10 minutes after midday). This time I chose Wreck Beach, as I haven't been there recently and by now all the naked people will have given up and gone home. (I wasn't quite right on that one: a topless woman - for a welcome change - dashed into the water for a quick swim.) As soon as I reached the beach I saw my picture for today: the array of vertical poles in the sand casting long shadows. I walked up to the tallest one and stopped when I could no longer see the sun. I sized up my shot, and backed up a little until a little bit of the sun was peeking over the tip of the pole. With the small aperture (I was on f/22) and only seeing a tiny fraction of the solar disc I was hoping to get a nice little "starburst" effect. See for yourself.

The midday sun on the second-shortest day of the year

Day 274: Winter Solstice

It's the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, or the longest night depending on your preference. Actually it's not until tomorrow, but tonight was the Secret Lantern Society's mid-winter celebration and Tiddley Cove Morris were at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown. I love watching them dance and though I wasn't feeling too well, I wanted another chance to test out the new flash. I'd say that as ever, results were mixed. One thing I was pleased about was that inside the warm hall, the batteries lasted just fine, not even one missed shot waiting for them to recharge. On the other hand, the lighting was low and I was perhaps a little too far away for the relatively slow lens we have for the camera. I got a few I'm happy with, but really it wasn't until I was in a much better lit area to take the group photo that I'd say the flash showed what it could do.

Six months ago I wrote about how the project had changed scope since I started it, and I wondered about how I would fare as winter approached. I would say the answer to that has been that the dry weather we've had so far this December has been a huge helping hand. Dismal days are still ahead, but now they'll be longer dismal days :-)

Solstice Tiddlies

Day 273: Symmetry

I'm a big fan of symmetry in photographs. My eye is naturally drawn to it. That and perspective are probably the two main things I look for in sizing up a photograph. Buildings offer both, and the UBC campus has a few which I find myself drawn to. The most obvious is the subject of my "blue" picture, the Koerner Library with its abundant glass and steel lines. I particularly like the atrium, the roof of which forms the spine of the open book design for the library. Nothing else was working today, so I decided to find the right spot to get the front and rear vertical beams to line up perfectly. I also liked the fact that the late afternoon sun was shining through, casting shadows of some of the diagonal beams onto the glass adding a little bit of symmetry-breaking into the mix. If I was being picky, I'd prefer the light to be a little warmer, but that's not so easy at this time of year and I shouldn't get greedy after yesterday's gift.

Spinal symmetry

Day 272: Sunset sands

It wasn't until 3:30 pm that I ventured outside looking for today's photo. I walked through the drizzle, wondering what I could capture on such a dull day. A few water drops on tree branches distracted me for a few minutes, where I was able to photograph the carillon imaged in a droplet, with the tower forming the backdrop to the picture. That was going to be my photo, when I noticed that the drizzle had stopped. Looking up I saw a golden band low in the sky, and the clouds were breaking up. I turned and walked quickly to the rose garden, then onto the MoA grounds to see if something was catching this latest of late afternoon light. Sure enough, one of the totem poles was lit brilliantly by the sun but by now I could see that if I really wanted to catch the light I had to descend to the beach. I trotted down the steps as quickly as I could, and emerged onto the pebbly beach bathed in the most gorgeous golden light. I sized up a few shots, but I was drawn to the beach itself in particular. The low sun was casting long shadows from even the smallest rock, and shielding the sun from the camera as best I could, I took a few beach shots. This one turned out perfectly. Two fabulous sunsets in two days!

Within five minutes of reaching the beach, the sun had set. All that remained was for me to retrace the 400 steps back up to the campus...

Sunset sands

Day 271: A sea of clouds

We set off to Dog Mountain a little later than expected, and much as we did last year, we missed the sunset by a few minutes. Not that it mattered: the sight that greeted us was truly spectacular. Below us lay a sea of clouds, lit from above by the orange-red sky. Venus emerged from the twilight to add a bit of sparkle. What really caught my eye was the way the clouds were "lapping" at the edge of the forest, like a wave that had broken on a beach. The mist draped itself over and through the tree tops, creating the most amazing effect. One of the most beautiful views we've seen from a mountain, and that's saying something!

That was our first hike in two months and it felt damn good to be back in the mountains.

Where the forest meets the sea (of clouds)

Day 270: Midwinter sacrifice

Morris dancing in Dundarave again, this time for the lighting of the bonfire as part of the Festival of Lights. And guess what? No rain today! Yay! My second chance at seeing what our new flash unit can do, and I must admit I was much happier with the results this time. Having freshly-charged batteries made a difference, but even then, 100 shots later and the batteries were pretty much done. Next time I'll have two sets on hand.

Before the dancing got underway, June said a few words about midwinter rituals, one of which involved a sacrifice to bring back the sun. The Tiddlies (and a stray Sheep) formed a hexagonal lock with the longswords and placed over the head of the "victim". On the count of three, they all drew their swords from the lock, "severing" the victim's head from his body (well not really, but that's the idea). And who better to be sacrificed than one of the organizers of the festival :-)

Midwinter ceremonial sacrifice

Day 269: The seagull and the squirrel

The usual late-day foray outside to look for a subject.... I walked west and noticed a seagull standing next to a bin, casting its beady eye on the squirrel perched on the rim, which was munching something it had hauled out of the rubbish. I wasn't sure if the bird was really waiting around for the squirrel, and sure enough it walked away a little while I was standing there. I moved in a little closer to the squirrel and it took off, running across the path to a bench. To my surprise the seagull ran-flapped its way over to the same bench and proceeded to take up its post again, watching the squirrel eat. I started taking some photos, edging closer all the time. Both creatures were so intent on what they were doing that they let me get quite close, and it was only when a grey squirrel moved in and decided it wanted what the black one had that either moved. I went on to look for more photographs, but came back to this one at the end of the day.

Seagull and squirrel

Day 268: Bike racks

I must admit that every day I ride my bike into work, I have visions of returning to it in this state or worse at the end of the day. It's an old bike, one of the first generation mountain bikes with big knobbly tyres, heavy steel frame and no suspension, and it's showing its age. I don't think I've ridden anywhere near as far as I did on my previous racing bike, which was a dream to ride (except on crappy roads, which is most of them...). But I'd still hate to see it mangled, damaged or destroyed by some thoughtless person who felt that it was okay to trash someone else's stuff. It's more the principle - don't touch, take or break stuff that doesn't belong to you. Sadly, I see far too many bikes on campus with missing wheels, buckled wheels or sometimes just a wheel still locked to the rack. I'm not sure why this bike is arranged as it is - I doubt it was the owner - but seeing as it's actually undamaged I found it funny, and it reminded me of those idiot car drivers who seem unable to position their car in a single space.

Bad parking

Day 267: Opalescent

The rain is back - December has been remarkably dry so far. This means that the light levels are much lower and it's hard to get sharp detail shots. I took myself on my usual afternoon wander, snapping a few ideas along the way, but nothing was really working until I walked past a low bush. I looked a little closer and noticed it was positively festooned with clusters of small blue berries, each berry at the end of a bright red stalk. The title "Winter blues" came to mind as I pondered taking their picture. As I bent over to take a closer look, a student walked by and commented on the berries and she used the perfect word to describe them: opalescent. That inspired me to work at getting a good (enough) picture of them, and to use that word for today's title.

"Opalescent" blue berries

Day 266: One hundred days of winter

I have only one hundred days left in this project, which covers all of winter and a bit more. Of course I would have to pick a time period that includes a leap year, so this is not a "Project 365", but a "Project 366". Ah well. One more photo won't hurt, will it? The title of today's post came to me as I wandered round on a dull, bleak wintry day, and I explored a few options to try and match that feel. Mostly, though, they didn't look bleak enough for me - I imagined something more wind-swept, more forbidding, something dormant. Somehow I had to capture that sense of the winter-to-come, and the hunkering down and working through it. As has happened so many times in this project, I had one photo I thought would do the trick, only to find something else on the way back to my office. What better way to conjure up the feeling of winter.

Ice fragments

Day 265: From sea to sky

I looked up at the time and saw 3:55 pm - 20 minutes until sunset, and I don't have a picture for today. I grabbed the camera and dashed out of the office. I went straight towards the rose garden, and then down to the Museum of Anthropology to catch the light on the distant Howe Sound peaks. Last week I'd seen a floatplane flying at what appeared to be mountain-top height, and made a mental note of that as a future option. Well, welcome to the future :-) I heard and then saw a floatplane making its way into Vancouver, checked its height and noted that it was due to fly right in front of the mountain I'd been photographing. I tracked it in, exposed and focussed on the mountain and took three shots in quick succession. The caption came to me there and then: a picture filled with sea and sky, a plane in flight (in the sky), snow on the mountains (formerly sea, then sky), looking up Howe Sound where the Sea-to-Sky highway runs. All very fitting.

Sea to sky

Day 264: Not you again...

After last week's snowy owl watching, I couldn't resist going down to Boundary Bay again, on the pretext of showing Maria (really, I just wanted an excuse to go again :-) Sure enough, in almost the same place, there were three snowy owls decorating a few logs close to the dyke. Not long after we started watching this one, it stretched out a wing, then one of its legs - which prompted a barrage of shutter firing. I shot off a few and caught this one where both of its furry/fluffy/feathery legs can be seen. Oh yeah, and there were a few eagles and northern harriers too, and a short-eared owl sat on a distant fence post.

Snowy owl stretch

Day 263: Lunar eclipse

My luck with lunar eclipses in Vancouver has been quite good, and I've managed to get photos of two previous eclipses. Despite the early start, I couldn't resist getting up for another photo, especially after having photographed the moonrise a few hours earlier. I got everything ready the night before and set the alarm for 5:30 am. I hauled myself out about 5:45 am and saw that it was still clear, the moon now only a thin crescent. I got dressed and set up the tripod and camera on the balcony by a little before 6 am, only to see that clouds had drifted in over the last 15 minutes. I took as many pictures as I could, shivering away on our frost-covered balcony, and within another 10 minutes there was no moon to be seen at all, with barely 20 minutes to go until totality. I was lucky to get what I did, and glad that I got up to see it. I could say that there's always next year but that's not true: the next total lunar eclipse isn't until 2014!

Lunar eclipse

Day 262: Full(ish) moon rising

Tomorrow morning is the full moon closest to the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. That's still nearly two weeks away, and the next new moon will fall just after it. Even more exciting is that there will be a total lunar eclipse. What could be a cooler photo to get today than the nearly-full moon rising over the city? A couple of years ago I'd sized up a full-moon-rise shot over Mt Seymour, capturing it nicely from Trimble Park. This time I thought I would try and have my cake and eat by watching the moon rise over the city and Mt Seymour. Well, I misjudged it and the moon rose over the city well enough, but missed the summit of Mt Seymour by some way. I was clearly too far east, and I should have stayed up near UBC. Oh well - there's always next year :-)

City moonrise

Day 261: Weinachtsmarkt

Last year Maria went to the German Christmas market and enjoyed it, so I decided to go with her this year. Once inside, we avoided the nauseating smell of the melted cheese and wandered round the stalls, admiring all manner of intricate traditional German Christmas ornaments and gifts. In the centre was a small bandstand with a choir and band, loudly belting out a variety of seasonal songs. The PA system had some bad resonances and quite a few of the stallholders were less then impressed at being located so close. As the evening drew to a close, the choir and musicians moved on to the carousel, and spent a few minutes playing and singing while the carousel turned. One trumpeter sat high on his trusty steed while two trombone players took a bench seat, for all the world looking like a pair of musical book-ends. Time to get a long-exposure photo :-)

Musical merry-go-round

Day 260: Signs of things ahead

It's Maria's birthday, and I found nothing inspirational on campus other than these bright orange construction signs. I like orange. Later I foolishly left the camera at home when I went to meet her for dinner, only to find I had a little spare time to take some nice evening shots of the SkyTrain and/or downtown Vancouver. I took a couple with my mobile phone, but they're, uh, not that good. On the other hand, the desserts we bought from Fratelli's were superb (best eclair ever, apparently), and the meal at the Carthage Cafe was pretty damn good too.

Signs of things ahead

Day 259: Drizzly days

This is what you get when you leave it until late in the day to wander out in the drizzle to find something to photograph. Mind you, I've been intrigued by this concrete wood pile next to the Belkin Art Gallery on the UBC campus ever since I first saw it. On the whole I'm happy to add it to the pile, as it were.

Concrete wood pile

Day 258: Seagull security

Never thought I'd see a seagull on a bike... ;-)

I noticed this advert for the UBC Bike Kitchen a few weeks ago and added it to my list of things to photograph, waiting for an uninspired sunny day or a desperate rainy day to add it to the collection. I had just bought my afternoon coffee and walked out of the Student Union building, looked up and saw this. I carefully put down my coffee, pulled out the camera and reeled off a few shots (in a manner of speaking...). It's funny that the seagull was quite spooked by my presence, even though it was 20 feet up in the air above me, and almost took off in the time I spent pointing the camera in its direction. Not much of a security system, then, really.

Seagull Cycle Security Service

Day 257: Like a bump on a log

Last weekend I saw someone's photos of snowy owls and I couldn't wait for the working week to finish so I could go and see them again myself. They last made an appearance in 2005/2006 at which time we had our little point-and-shoot camera. We have no photos from that time as we imagined that all we'd see were a couple of distant white dots (much like our bald eagle spotting in Maryland). We were wrong, and we were treated to the sight of the owls very close to the dyke. When I went down there today, it was the same deal: a couple of snowy owls sitting on a log, barely 10 m from a crowd of gawking photographers (I swear some of those lenses were long enough to poke the poor birds from that distance... ;-) I counted another half-a-dozen owls out on the marshes, and I was disappointed to see yet more people out there lugging their huge lenses and tripods around to get a close-up shot of one of the owls. I have no doubt that they would have got as close (or closer) had they stayed up on the dyke. A couple of times I saw owls take flight - a big no-no when doing any form of wildlife watching. If they react to you by moving further away, you're too close.

I kept to the dyke and snapped away with our tiny 55-200 mm lens. Compared with much of the weaponry I saw out there today, our camera still felt like a little point-and-shoot. I came home with over 100 photos of the owls, which spent the entire time sat there like two white bumps on a log. Seriously, the only movement I saw was them swivelling their heads to look around. But at the end of the day, that's a good thing.

Snowy owl

Day 256: Green spots

Maria saw this house the other day and told me about it, thinking it would make a good subject. After we'd decided against going looking for the snowy owls, I gladly took advantage of it and wandered down the street to get a few shots. I didn't know what to expect but it really looks like the house has caught some sort of disease :-) I call it Christmas Light disease, and many houses around here catch it about this time of year, some of which seem to suffer quite badly... ;-)

Christmas Light disease

Day 255: One more

...and I'll "leaf" this subject alone. Ha ha ha. I like this photo for two reasons: the lovely contrasting yellow and green, and the sunlight shining through the green side of the leaf, highlighting all its delicate structure.

Leaf lines

Day 254: Blue

I've been trying quite hard to find a "blue" photo that I'm happy with. The hard part has been finding a way to make the colour the primary focus of the picture. In the end I've just given on trying to get good blue sky photos and I've cheated to get this one. I knew from previous photos that setting the white balance to "auto" would get the lights from buildings about right while making the sky very blue. This evening I wandered over by the Koerner Library at dusk to capture the library in the so-called "blue hour". The clouds were making nice patterns in the sky and at first I experimented with just capturing those, though none really worked. In the end I went for this slightly-leaning-back-due-to-perspective photo. I had a deliberately askew one that I quite liked, but on the whole I prefer this one. The colours have been tweaked a little to boost the saturation, but not by much. Most cameras have settings that would result in more saturated colours than this. Finally I can move on to "indigo". :-)

I like the design of this building - the roof is based on an open hardback book, with the central atrium acting as the spine of the book. I think it works perfectly. The twin rows of lights at ground level are associated with bike racks, a little emptier at this time of year.

Koerner Library at dusk