Today we went off to Harrison lake for the heck of it! they have sandcastles and really cool back roads.

So last night we fired on over to the North Shore for some beers, grub, and communal web surfing. We scoured each other’s face book for photos of us when we were younger and we all laughed at how silly we looked! This photo is from the Seabus Terminal on our way home.

Anyway we are off to shoot a wedding.

Yup there was a fire a bit ago on the North Shore.

Just rolled in from the Frog where we had beers with the North Shore Crew! I snagged this photo on the way there.

There was a tonne of people cheering for the flames in the bar and this one lone loud guy that insisted on making as much noise as possible when the other team (I really don’t know who was playing because I care as much about hockey as i do about Paris Hiltons bra size which for the record is not at all) scored which I think was a lot. I half expected to discover his beaten corpse sprawled across the bathroom floor so I reframed from using the washroom. :)

This was shot from the backseat of Coaxial’s moving Delica.  I love being in a car (or in this case crazy a Japanese import) and taking photos of things as they go by. You get this shot from a car photo today in honor of the possible last day of the versa.  We took the versa in today to have the door handle fixed and they weren’t sure if it would be done by the turn it back over to Nissan day. So it is possible that this was the last little trip with the Versa. I hope not though because the car we got while it is in the shop is the most getto thing I have driven in a long time, and that is saying a bit because I have driven some really crappy cars.

Ani Difranco was bloody awesome last night. Sadly you get no photos or anything because they were searching bags and the door and I was in no mood to smuggle in a camera, but suffice to say she was awesome as expected.

It is simply a vacuum cleaner. I thought I would post this particular photo because I was listening to The Frames on my drive back from the north shore this morning! What do the two have to do with each other? Well you see The Frames is the band that Glen Hansard (of the movie Once fame) is in. This got me randomly thinking about vacuum cleaners do to the prevalence of them in the movie, and then I thought, you know what photo I should post? That vacuum cleaner one that I took the other day! So here you are! This was taken on my unsuccessful walk to find a camera strap that doesn’t say CANON DIGITAL in bright red letters.

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/1250 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.18.2008
So some may be asking what you were doing on the north shore this morning? Well I was talking with a man about a new door handle for the Versa. Because we are trading it up at the end of the month I finally got off my fat ass and started dealing with the hobo ravaged door. So perhaps I will have a shiny new handle for the few days before it is no longer our car. I liked the versa but boy you certainly could tell it was a cheap car. 1.5ish years and it is starting to rattle and fall apart. The gear shift looks like it has been vigorously shifted for 20 years, when it is really one and a half. The back has rattled since we got it, and the doors whistle and hiss. The Xterra feels like it is a really solid auto. I also find it awesome that when you type in terra using the T9word on my cell phone you get versa as the first option, and then when you press 0 you get terra!

Seriously My face book account has been 75%-80% inaccessible over the last two weeks. Its funny cause everyone else’s is working awesome! I would love to know who it is that i pissed of to have my account tossed onto the development server or where ever it has gone :)

Well if you are a Jerk like me YOU POST IT ON THE INTERNET!!!

Click here to hear the hilarity that is the weasel.

Last night both Miranda and I were totally bagged so we went to bed early. (early in our house in sometime before midnight but sometime after 11:30) This turning in early meant that I was awake this morning at 5:30am I stayed in bed however thinking of all the cool places that we will go when we get back from Cuba. I then rolled out of bed early for the Camera Show & Swap in Burnaby. It was, as expected, a bunch of tables filled mostly with random cold war copies of good cameras. I did however find myself something that I have been looking for for a while now. A Medium Format SLR in the style of regular 35mm SLR’s. The most well known example of this would be the Mamiya 7, but they are sought after and a bit pricey for me and my habit! I instead found the next best thing Communist Germany had to offer. The Pentacon six TL.

Its your run of the mill focal plane shutter camera with either a waist finder or a pentaprism. Comes with a 80mm (50mm equivalent in 35mm format) Carl Zeiss Lens and boasts shutter speed ranging from 1/1000 to 1 Sec & Bulb. It shoots 6X6 and is stamped MADE IN GERMANY (EAST) on all the parts which all equals good times. I have loaded a roll of colour 400 in it and depending on what we are up to today I will try and shoot it off. I doubt that there will be any time to post results on the blog before we leave but I will try!

Today we were left with time to kill after breakfast, so we felt it best to go and test drive an Xterra. You see we have coveted the Xterra for about four or five years now, and we have been planning to buy one for about as long. All this tentative planning was of course contingent on the test drive! We tried to test drive one once when we lived in E-town, but the sales guy thought we were far too hooligany to be trusted with a new vehicle. He gave us guff and was generally really unhelpful, so we told him as much and left. Today we rectified all that with our trip to the auto mall. I kind of thought that they were going to have some stupid automatic that wasn’t an off road for us to test drive but we walked in asked and sure enough they had exactly what we wanted, an Off Road standard, sitting there waiting for us to test drive. Next we thought for sure the guy was going to come with us on the drive but after taking my Drivers license and a phone number he handed us the keys and sent us on our merry way. Alone. So where does one take a brand new Xterra Off Road while on the north shore, with no dealer riding shotgun!? Well under the Lions gate bridge of course!!

It was brilliant to tool about the ruts and mud holes with. Driving though puddles that would have permanently swallowed the versa whole (we were there two days earlier so when I say swallow I am not really exaggerating) didn’t even get the rims wet on the Xterra. Huge holes and hills were no problem for it. I played in four low for a while and I am sure there would be little that this couldn’t climb through or over in four low. The stock articulation on this thing is insane. 4X4ing never shows well in photos but you can at least see that there are four tires on the ground even with crazy bumps and hills. The visibility in this thing is insane!! While it is an SUV it is only 8 inches wider than the versa and a few longer. So after chatting it up with the sales guy at the dealership we bought it. (ours will be yellow) We will take possession on June 1st hopefully to be followed by a trip to the mud pits of stave lake or something!

We are off to the tomahawk for breakfast! So here is a parting gift! Random wall in a random parking lot that happens to also have a bird reserve or something under a billboard! Again from the I was searching for a camera strap that doesn’t say CANON DIGITAL in bright red letters walk.

I am off to the Frog for a beer and a Veggie Burger (with bacon) so you get a photo of a car that I took today while looking for a camera strap that doesn’t say CANON DIGITAL in big red letters.

Yuppers getting ready to go rock out with the yet to be named band, so I thought I would post something from the weekend!

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/2000 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.12.2008

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.8 Shutter: 1/2000 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.11.2008
Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.8 Shutter: 1/2000 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.11.2008

So as I said before we declared yesterday a scoot day, and boy we did scoot!
We headed to Iona to watch planes and eat lunch,

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 5.6 Shutter: 1/500 Lens Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM @ 16mm ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.12.2008

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/3200 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.12.2008

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 4.5 Shutter: 1/400 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.12.2008

Then off to Stevenson we went!

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/160 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 800 Date Taken: April.12.2008

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/50 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 400 Date Taken: April.12.2008

Next we scooted over to Finn’s Slough.

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/3200 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.12.2008
Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 2.8 Shutter: 1/800 Lens Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM @ 16mm ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.12.2008

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 8.0 Shutter: 1/200 Lens Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM @ 16mm ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.12.2008

Second to last we came home and had Mexican at the new place in Gastown.

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/80 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.12.2008
Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/100 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 400 Date Taken: April.12.2008

then off to tanya’s party! It was a super full day!
Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.4Shutter: 1/160 Lens: Canon EF 24mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.12.2008

So you get a photo that I took yesterday of a motorbike! I know it doesn’t really make sense but it is not really supposed to

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/400 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.11.2008
Anyway I am really loving this new lens. It is a little difficult to use however because the 1.2 means that you need to be very particular about what you are focusing on, and once you have focus you can move much:) But the bokeh is so nice!

Today I had some errands to run so I felt it best to take the new 50mm 1.2 with me!

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/400 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.11.2008

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II Aperture: 1.2 Shutter: 1/100 Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L ISO: 50 Date Taken: April.11.2008

Yuppers this was taken on one of the snow days that we had this spring! there isn’t any snow in this photo but trust me there is tonnes of it (for Vancouver) on the ground. This will somday be the latest addition to the Fairmont Waterfront.

Even though it can be seen in abundance in the cold waters of Burrard inlet throughout the summer months the Cruiseshipitus Oceananus, is a rare sight in the winter months. It can be said that their return from their long southern migration to the northern waters is a sign of spring and all its glorious wonders!

It funny but due to my own pure laziness our house had been a disaster this last few weeks! Here

Proof!