Yet another random post

Yes, another random post…

-Had the 1st studio session for my Practical Lighting course. All I have to say is that lighting a teapot and getting the right light reflections is a major pain in the ass. So much so we gave up and shot something entirely different.

-I’m getting more and more excited about the Olympics. Looks like I’m going to 2 events, possibly 3. Can’t wait. I haven’t been to downtown in a while, hoping to head over there this weekend and soak in some pre-Olympics spirits.

-I’m still thinking about the awesome pow I shredded last weekend. Due a few things I can no longer go on a weekend trip. I am, however, planning for a day trip this Sun. A few destinations in mind and will have to decide soon enough. I’m hoping for some good snow and of course good weather.

-Finally finished processing all the pictures from the photoshoot 2 weekends ago (well almost 3). My workflow is getting pretty messed up. Can you believe I have 1.8 GB worth pictures from a single shoot? And only 77 pictures in total. In 2009 I had a total of 42.38 GB worth of pictures. So far this year I already have 7.48 GB. I’m 100% sure I will beat last year’s number. Thank god HD’s are cheap nowadays or I’ll seriously go bankrupt.

-Speaking of bankrupt. I’m glad I have some self control or I’d be spending way too much money on ski gear and camera gear. Instead of drooling over DSLR’s and second guessing if I should buy or not, I’ve decided to open up a dedicated savings account called “Camera Fund.” Until I reach my goal I won’t bother getting a new camera body. According to my calculation I won’t reach the goal until late August of next year. Hopefully whichever new full frame camera that comes out in the future won’t cost more than my goal amount. Fingers crossed.

Quick update

Gee I haven’t posted in a while now. Oops. I guess life is keeping me busy so didn’t find much time to blog. This will be one of those random posts, basically typing stuff as I go…

-This past weekend was VOC’s annual trip called Intro to Backcountry. Like last year I was one of the trip instructors and helped leading bunch newbies, most of them had never skied in the backcountry before. We decided to go to Fat Dog Creek in Manning Park, where previous Intro to Backcountry was held 2 years ago. Back then I was one of the newbies. Funny how things change. The skiing in was quite uneventful, however when we got to camp Martin dislocated his knee while shovelling snow. Apparently it was an old problem. Sunday  morning after breakfast we spent quite a bit of time rigging up a sleigh using existing gear and tools we had. A team of 3 and Martin left camp 2 hours before the rest of us. Some of us, myself included, went skiing. Iit was probably one of the best snow I’ve seen so far this season. It was sensational! I was gigging like a little school girl the entire time. It was wicked! Anyway we left the camp around 2 pm and within 10 mins we reached the rescue team. Knowing there was quite a bit of flat sections on the logging road we split up the group, half stayed behind to help out, and half skied ahead to call for help. We skied down in about 1.5 hours, got to Manning Park resort, and called RCMP/SAR for help. The rescue team about 5.5km from the parking lot when SAR reached them. They were fine but were obviously tired after towing the sleigh the entire way. My car load arrived back in Vancouver around 10:30 pm while the “rescue” team didn’t get back to Vancouver until 3:30 AM. Ouch!

Snowy tent on Sunday morning

My skis, pole, and shovel

Andy in front of the slope we are about to rip.

Semi-rigged up sleigh

-How about those Canucks eh? I didn’t watch the game on Sat (obviously) but it was awesome hearing that they came back from a 3-0 deficit and scored 5 unanswered goals to win the game. Take that Toronto! I’m very excited to see what GM Mike Gillis will do before the NHL trading deadline. I think our top 2 lines are pretty solid. Hopefully Gillis will trade for a 3rd line centre so we will have a solid checking line and perhaps adding another depth defenseman. I mean, you could always have more defense, especially when in the playoffs.

-Did a quick photoshoot with Mike and Amy the other weekend when I was stuck in town. We didn’t really discuss much prior to the photoshoot. The original idea was to do an outdoor portrait session, but the weather sucked so we ended up shooting in Mike’s living room. I wasn’t perfectly happy with the light setup so I think there definitely could be some improvements for the next photoshoot. But hey we could only get better with practice right? I still haven’t finished going through all the pictures yet but here are a few:

Mike’s roommate Caleb was around while we were shooting…

-I can’t wait for the Olympics! Hopefully Cypress will see some snow before the games start. The whole moving snow business is getting quite ridiculous. I’m actually really mad about the whole ordeal… having to use trucks and helicopters to bring in snow. Yup very environmental friendly. I haven’t really checked out downtown core but am very excited about checking out some of the free events during the Olympics. Oh not to mention going to mens curling as well as semi-final mens hockey! Yes my tickets are for the Canada semi-final game! (They will qualify, I’m sure of it!). Can’t wait!

Another new beginning

Tonight was the start of my Practical Lighting photography course at Langara College. As its name suggests, the course is all about lighting. Tonight we quickly went over how to set up studio lights and how to calculate light ratios. I’m quite excited about this particular course, considering I want to get into portrait/fashion photography and lighting is a key factor in getting good photos. I can’t wait to find out what kind of improvements I’ll see in my photos. With 7 or 8 shooting sessions I sure will get my hands nice and dirty… and that’s a good thing!

This weekend is VOC’s annual tele school where bunch of us head up to the resort and learn telemark techniques with advanced telers. I’m hoping the snow condition will be OK up in Seymour but for whatever reason I really doubt that is going to happen. Perhaps a bit of dance to the snow god will bring us small amount of snow in the next few days? I can only hope…

Not your typical dance party

This past Friday a dance party was held at the Vancouver Anza Club. None of the typical downtown Vancouver club scene music was played. Nope, there was no hip-hop, no top 30 hits technos, or those absolutely horrible raps. After all, this event was organized by DJ Oker and crew, well known for their good taste of music and their unique styles. We jived to Afro-American tunes all night long, from soulful house to jazzy pop to funky disco, and various oldie remixes. Before the event Oker asked me if I could be the event photographer. I didn’t have any plans for Friday and since I was picking up the girlfriend from the airport on Sat, it meant I had to stay in town. So no outdoor trips for me. It also meant I was able to stay up as late as I could.

Anyway, it was sort of my first “paid” photography gig since I didn’t have to pay for the $10 cover. It was pretty neat dancing all night long while holding my big ass camera and flash on one hand and trying not to get them knocked by others on the dance floor. In a way, challenging environment to take pictures. The event was a blast with the place packed to the capacity. I didn’t end up getting home until 3 AM. A good night with lots good pictures.

Crazy weekend

This weekend things just kind of happened on their own without any planning, it was pretty neat.

Since I was waking up early Sat morning for the annual VOC Winter Longhike I didn’t really have any plans for Friday night other than finishing packing. That quickly changed after receiving a last minute email from my friend Matt about celebrating his and 3 of his physio class friends’ birthdays at Lola’s. Haven’t been to Lola’s and without any plans I decided I’d go for an hour or so before retiring to bed. As it turned out it was free beer night between 9-10 pm so we all had quite a few beers. Matt also had quite a few shots from other ppl including me and Evan. Being tricky bastards, just before leaving for the night Evan and I asked for 2 shot glasses, filled one with beer and one with water and get them to Matt. At first Matt thought the beer shot was tequila so he asked for a piece of lime. As he finished the shot he immediately gave Evan the finger. He was just as impressed with my shot of water. It was stupid fun.

Sat and Sun was spent at Falls Lake teaching newbies how to build snowcaves or equivalent winter shelters. The approach to Falls Lake was somewhat unsatisfying. Just about you break into a nice sweat you’ve reached the final destination already. The weather didn’t cooperate and it rained off and on. Lots ppl got quite wet from the rain as well as from crawling around on the snow while digging snow caves. Being somewhat of a seasoned veteran I stayed pretty dry except my outer Gore-tex layer. Evan, Helen, and I ended up building a quinzee because there wasn’t enough snow on the slope to build a proper snowcave.

Piling snow for the quinzee

Igloo building

Hobbit hole digging

Sat night was spent eating, socializing with friends, drinking mulled wine, and of course lots off-key singings. Too bad the weather was not all that great so a lot of people decided to retire to their caves early.

Off-key singing

Collapsing our quinzee, it actually took about 5 mins of hard stumping and jumping to punch a hole in the roof

Snowcaves are great sound barriers and block lights very well. So it wasn’t a complete surprise to find Evan, Helen, and I sleeping in until close to 11 AM on Sunday. We were basically the last group to get up and leave the campsite. The skiing out only took about 20 minutes so we arrived back in town quite early. Greta, Evan’s girlfriend, was nice enough to invite Christian, Helen, and I over their place for dinner. After dinner we then played Settler which I somehow managed to win. It was pretty rad.

Tonight isn’t exactly a “weekend” night but Vlad decided to gather a few of us for dinner before he leaves for that shitty town in the east called Toronto. We ended up at Nuba, a Lebanese restaurant. The food was pretty good but the portions were extremely tiny. During dinner Evan and I both joked that we should go to MacDonald’s afterward. Maybe the two of us are just always hungry, who knows.

So yeah, that was my “crazy” weekend. This week will go by pretty fast. I’m starting a photography course this Thurs at Langara College. I’m very excited about it. There are already lots events planned for this upcoming weekend. Should be a good one!

Quick update

Not having nearly as much sleep as I’d like this week. Somehow I seem to end up staying past 1 AM every single night every single night, it’s gonna change tonight…I hope.

Monday night was spent at my friend Pascal’s house playing some board games. Pascal is currently doing his masters in Halifax, so we haven’t hung out in close to a year. We ended up chatting till 12 AM before Evan and I decided that we needed to leave because we had to work the next morning.

Mike, my roommate, decided to hold a board game night on Wed, so more board games were played last night. I was borrowing a co-worker’s Canon 5D so I was playing around with all my lenses, taking as many pictures as possible. It’s one sweet camera consider it was released over 4 years ago.

Surprisingly tonight was spent playing more board games as Vlad was over. We played 4 games of Carcassonne. I lost pretty bad the first two but ended up winning the last game. Not a bad way to finish the night.

It’s the annual VOC winter longhike this weekend. I’ll be teaching newbies on how to build a snowcave, an essential skill to have in the backcountry during the winter. Having missed the last previous 2 winter longhikes I’m quite looking forward to the event. Should be lots fun.

Year in Review – Photo Style

2009 was a big year for me in terms of photography. I learned a lot of things and saw my skill improve tremendously. Gear wise, I went from having the 18-55 IS kit lens and the 50 F1.8 “Nifity Fifty” to getting 3 different lenses and selling the kit lens. I also purchased my first tripod, a 2nd flash, as well as off-camera flash and lighting equipment. I ventured from landscapes to portraits and found myself enjoying working and shooting with people in creating beautiful pictures. I’m excited to what 2010 has to offer. I still have lots stuff to learn and plenty of areas to improve on.

Here are 12 favourite pictures from 2009.

January

Topless skiing at Cypress

February

Traverse across hidden crevasses during Garibaldi Neve traverse

March

Jenna at a late March skiing trip

April

Climbing Mt. Arrowsmith

May

The spooning train.
I didn’t take too many pictures because of my back…

June
A tough split between these two

Steps

At Black Tusk summit. Yes that’s snow you’re seeing on the ground.

July

Beautiful Vancouver

August

Loxy

September

RM

October

Buck Buck

November

Movember shaving time

December

Saira

Random post

Looks like I haven’t posted in a while now, oops. This is one of those random posts again.

-Having not taken enough vacations during the year I ended up with something like 25 vacation days. Since we could only carry 15 vacation days forward each year, I was forced to use up the extras. The last two weeks I’ve been “on vacation” by sitting at home and sleeping in every day. I know I know, it’s a tough life. This would kind of explain the lack of blog posts.
-Christmas was good. I went back to White Rock and the family had spent a lot of time together. My brother got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas as a present to the family and we spent quite a bit of time playing the different games such as Wii Sports and Guitar Hero.
-I got a few nice dress shirts and a sweater as Christmas gift, adding them to my ever increasing wardrobe. Didn’t get any camera gear, unfortunately.
-Only managed to get 1 day of skiing the entire break. It was a wicked day though with lots quad burning actions. I’m currently stuck on 7 days of skiing so far this season. Somewhat of a disappointing number. Gotta improve on that.
-On a related note, I haven’t been taking many pictures. Counting only the “keeper” pictures from 2009 I ended up with 42.34GB worth of pictures. In case you’re wondering I only switched to shooting in RAW format in May. RAW files are about 14MB each while JPEG pictures are about 3-4 MB each. I’m sure this number will only increase in 2010. Looks like I’ll need a new HD in the very near future.
-Remember my little blurb in this post about dancing with a girl at the Movember party? Well it appears that the two of us have been itemized. The two of us went to Save-On-Foods one night last week for some last minute dinner grocery shopping. The only person working at the deli looked at us and asked me this following question:
“Are you guys a couple?”
“Ummm I think so, but let me check with her just to confirm.”
While laughing she answered “Yes.”
Both of us thought that was the weirdest question to ask.

Because I’m a lazy ass

I’m posting a picture instead of writing an actual blog post. Hope everyone had an excellent Christmas and is enjoy the time off. Will write a real post later.

Vancouver Photo Marathon – recap

This past Saturday was the first annual 12×12 Vancouver Photo Marathon. This type of photo marathon has been around for a while now but somehow it has never been organized in Vancouver until now. Thanks to the event organizers such as Morten Rand-Hendriksen, John Biehler, Benjamin Luk, and few other such event became a reality on Saturday. The idea seems simple at first, each participate takes 12 shots with 12 different themes in 12 hours but when you examine deeper it’s a lot more challenging. First participants must use a film camera. The 12 themes are drawn at random at top of each hour. Finally the themes must be taken in order. Since I didn’t have anything planned for this past weekend I decided to try out the marathon and I’m glad I did. The marathon was challenging both mentally and physically. I borrowed my mom’s Canon SLR for this event. Not having used this particular camera before it made the picture taking process a little bit more difficult. It’s certainly different taking pictures with a film camera since there’s no LCD at the back to review the image and no histogram to look at. You only get one shot and one shot only. If you screw up, too bad.

8 AM Sat morning

Drawing for a theme (Loud was drawn)

As mentioned, the 12 themes were drawn at top the hour. Apparently there were a total of 76 themes in the little secret box. The 12 (well more like 11) that got drawn were:

8am: My Entry Number (mine was 30)
9am: High Hope
10am: Nosy
11am: Blank
12pm: Loud
1pm: Wild Goose Chase
2pm: Wild Things
3pm: Tie
4pm: Perform
5pm: Flash
6pm: Nickel & Dime
7pm: Panhandle

John & Ben, two geeks hard at work

For me the most challenging one was “Wild Goose Chase.” My idea was to have a parking enforcing officer giving out a ticket while the owner of the car chaseing after the officer. Unfortunately that idea didn’t come forth so I ended up with a picture that I wasn’t too proud of. When the theme “Loud” was drawn picture of a climber screaming while trying to reach the next hand hold came into my mind. Too bad this was winter so nobody was climbing outside. I thought about setting up the shot in a climbing gym but there was not enough time to find friends to set up such shot. The 2nd idea was having girls wearing high heels walking in a furniture store and take a picture of the high heels and tile floor. Once again I couldn’t find anything.

The toughest part, I found, was the need to shoot the themes in order. Throughout the day I often walked around having to shoot 2 themes. Often I would walk by something that was perfect for the previous theme but I already took the required picture. Or finding something great for the 2nd theme but couldn’t take the picture because I was missing my 1st scene.

Overall the marathon was a huge success. The event was sold out with 60 eager photographers participating. I had a lot of fun and it was great meeting some fellow photographers and talk about photography. I can’t wait to see my pictures (still getting developed). It was a really neat idea and I can’t wait to participate in next year’s marathon! Kudos to the organizers and good luck to the judges with judging over 700 pictures!