Long Exposures and my keys

So last night after work, I decided that I would do a little drive about and take some long exposures of different places in town. I was a little lonely so I invited Roy the only other person that I know who would be awake at 1 o’clock in the morning. I only grabbed a few shots of different places because it was quite cold out with the wind and I also find that when you are taking really brightly coloured flashes and firing them off 20 to 30 times each per exposure that it is best to not stay in one spot for to long. It helps one avoid the security guard and police harassment that comes from night photography :) So Roy and I decided that Coffee was in order so off to the house of Keegans we went. When we arrived and I proceeded to look the keys in the car. I do this often but I always have a spare key in my camera Bag to let me in when I do. Well this time the spare key wasn’t in my bag and I had no means to get in Donna (who is a part time car thief in addition to being the best waitress) even came out and try her hand at getting in. I wasn’t to concerned because I have a spare set of keys at home (or so I thought) So Anne Marie was nice and gave me a quick lift home so I could grab the keys But I discovered that I didn’t have the spare set either they were awol so I grabbed a close hanger and came back to the car and played with it for a while till I got it open. Silly me.

Singing in the rain :)

So it would be raining out and I walked to work in it. All I have to say is I love the rain. It is always so fresh and clean out when it is raining. The air smells so crisp and clear if that makes any sense. I love to walk in the rain and get soaking wet, and not be able to see out of my glasses and have my hair-dripping wet. It is good times indeed. I always feel 10 times better when I go for a walk in the rain, Most people have better days when it is sunny out But not me, no sir, I am always in a better mood when I am out in the rain. Maybe I am destined to live on the coast and wander about in the rain all the time :) I have to be carefull though for if i am not carfull I will get all Fred Astair and start dancing around like a fool. (Speaking of Fred Astair I saw that there a Fred Astair school of dance near my work Neat eh) One other thing that contributed to my fantastic mood today is Listening to the few songs that I have from a band called Camera Obscura. I had the pleasure of listening to this on my wet and wondrous walk to work. I know very little about this band but they truly kick ass from what I have heard of them anyway. As near as I can tell they are a Scottish band that has a few releases on The Madrid and Merge (Man I love Merge records they put out so much cool shit) record labels If I were to have a band they would sound much like this I am sure. I may get a cd sometime and give ‘em a good listen. I have decided that I will get a Vespa when we go to Vancouver. I have totally always wanted a Vespa and I will get one when we move to Van. They never made sense in Alberta because it is winter 13 months a year and they are probably not the best transport for 40 below weather. I will paint it crazy colours and cover it in crazy stickers and I will call it Crazy Alice. It will be a crazy 2 stroke that uses mixed gas and I will drive all over Vancouver taking crazy photos of all kind’s of crazy things. It will be Yup you guessed it CRAZY :) Why would you get a Vespa you ask? Well I can think of a number of good reasons. It is uber easy to park because I can park it is these tight spots that a car (no matter how small) just wont fit. Another reason is BC Ferries. To take a car from the mainland to lets say Victoria is like 35 dollars were as a Vespa would be 18 dollars Way cheaper! Not to mention that it is way cool to drive a Vespa. Vespas owners are almost as crazy as Volkswagen owners complete with vintage clubs and crazy parts stores that are all over the place. I should be at home. It has been decided :) I will own one. It is crazy busy her tonight because all that bad weather that Environment Canada said was going to happen when we were in Vancouver but failed to materialize has now finally hit with a vengeance. There is heavy winds and rain and storms etc in BC and well that reeks havoc so it is pretty busy tonight. That is all good I suppose it is a job but it is too busy to get into anything other then blogging and even then it is a pain to do that. Oh well what can you do when you are getting paid 15.74 an hour to blog :)

We are back :)

So we have returned from the sunny and beautiful west coast and those that read Miranda’s journal know that we have drastically moved up the plan to move out there sooner. (as if one didn’t see that coming) A year and a half it seems so far away really but when we are busy here it will not seem so long, I hope. I think that I got some super sweet shots from our travels and I think that I may get a chance to look at them some time, after I finish all the photos that I have on the proverbial plate I will get to tear into the many Gigs that I shot out on the coast. I think there is some neat stuff to be had here but the difficulty of running around and talking photos in a scheduled time is that I may not be in the right place at the right time for a fantastic photo. It seemed that every place that I went to I was wishing it were a different time of day. I would be some where in the morning and I would wish it was dusk It would be dusk and I would want it to be night, so on and so forth. Not to mention that I didn’t even begin to think about getting any where near to scratching the surface of the photos that I can take out there. Everywhere you turn there is a fantastic photo just waiting to be captured and I simply cannot wait till I am there to get it all. It would take me years to begin to capture the sights and sounds that are in Vancouver and area and I am so excited and can’t wait to begin whittling away at it. All in good time I suppose.

On a more current note I have a wedding and an engagement session this weekend so I will be busy for the better part of the weekend doing photos and what not. I think that Sunday night if the weather cooperates I will go out and take some 6-hour exposures of the sky or what not. It will be fun but I need to do it soon because in a few months the sun is not very far from the horizon and there is a lighter part of the sky all night long, Winter is the best I guess but who the hell wants to stand out in 20 below weather for hours on end? Not me and certainly not my camera. So this is the best time I think. The nights are warm and the sky is still dark we will see if it is clear I will give it a try.

The Pixies Rocked!!!!

UN-FUCKING BELIEVABLE!!!

But I am an old man that is tired and needs to go to bed.

We have Arrived

So we have arrived in the beautiful Vancouver and I am writing this blog post from various wifi that can be found in the local area of Darren’s home. We arrived much later than originally anticipated because of the weather. Not the weather issues that we normally face on our ventures out to the coast. No no The Rogers Pass? Fantastic! The big fucking mountain that is always hell when we drive though even in the summer? Wondrous! The coqahalla (sp?) Outstanding! In fact the entire trek though BC was wonderful and warm with no ice or other bad driving things. No sir the delay this trip was in < Sarcasm > sunny Alberta where winter has been gone for weeks < / Sarcasm > there was freezing rain from Ardrie in to Calgary which took us about an hour the get though. It was crazy there was cars in the ditch every where and police and fire trucks littered about the area. We drove though Calgary and the streets were suprizingly good, so we foolishly thought that maybe we had been though the worst of it and that we should have no worries continue on west. We drove out of town maybe 2 kms and there is littered vehicles all over the road again and it was icy. We crawled to the top of a hill and were stopped by a fire truck and what looked like an accident scene. The Fireman informed us that it would be brutally stupid to continue so we got a hotel and spent the nigh in Calgary. We got to Van late had dinner with Darren at this neat Greek place and well here I am stealing wifi to post this

The Best Discovey EVER

So I did end yup getting out of work early and I decided that I would wonder about and take some pictures so after a quick stop at home I was off. Now I made a discovery today that makes me wonder why I didn’t think of it earlier. A discovery so profound that I am left speechless, but first some background….
When I am wondering out and about taking photos I am hassled by all kinds of people from security guards that are power tripping, to homeless people that are angry that I have a nice camera, to people who yell at me because they think that I am taking a photo of them. (it is rarley true). But by far the the biggest pain when I am wondering out and about is having to deal with the talkative people! The talkative person feels they should tell me what I should and should not take pictures of. “hey you should totally take a picture of my ass!!” or Hey buddy take a picture of this (Insert random dumb and probably sexually lude item here) Or my favorite to date is “hey I will let you take pictures of me and him naked” Now in all these instances with the exception of the last my gut response is to fire back some witty comment about they should either pick up a camera, or shut the fuck up. However, instead I give a fake little laugh and some sort of polite comment that doesn’t offend. So with that background out of the way we can move on to the discovery made today. That discovery was Headphones! We bought a Discman recently and I have been listening to it in my travels and today was the first out and about photo extravaganza that I have had with the pleasure of headphones. It is great I walked out the door and down the street and immediately there was two home less guys that were tiring to get me to trade my camera for a shoe and get them whiskey I heard every word they said but I didn’t have to acknowledge them in any way cause I had headphones on. I don’t have them turned up so loud that I cant hear the world around me but the homeless guy/talkative guy/security guard doesn’t know that they see head phones and my indifference is explained.. Later I was taking photos of this car

in a random parking lot. There were some guys admiring a new car that one of them had recently purchased. It was a crappy Malabo or some other American over priced mid life crisis car that is really expensive, but has the character of a rock. So I am happily taking pictures of this car

and the guy hollers over to me that I should take a photo of his car. Instead of hollering back that “I wouldn’t waste film on a crappy car”, or “why it’s a stupid car” I just ignored them, I didn’t even acknowledge they had said a word. They aren’t offended because I just didn’t hear them not I heard them I am going to reply with a dumb ass remark or I heard them and choose to ignore them I simply didn’t hear. Not to mention that when you are taking photos of random things bit listening to music everything is profound. It is all perfect and you can see things that you might otherwise miss.

Getting Ready

So here I am at work again waiting for them to send me home early, but I have a sneaky suspicion that it is not going to happen any time soon. I am getting prepared to go to Vancouver in the upcoming week; I am so stoked about going, In fact I am getting prepared and starting to book out my week while I am there. I think that I am going to have to drive most of the night to maximize our time in Vancouver. I figure if we leave the city at 4:30ish and drive till about 3 or 4 in the morning, have a nap and then start driving in the morning as early as possible like 7 or 8 am we should make it in to Vancouver for noonish. That should work in theory it is only about 1250 km’s :) But we all know how theory works. I mean the constant stops for fuel are going to take forever. It isn’t that our car (the Beetle) is bad on fuel; in fact we are getting close to 30mpg last we checked (a far cry from the golf) it however has the smallest gas tank ever but in a car. Lawnmowers, and motorbikes have bigger tanks it has a 30-litre tank! 30! That is slightly more then a couple of jerry cans In fact the 10 litre can that I am going to fill and put in the boot will be 1/3 of our tank. To make matters worse we cant run the car dry for the last time that happened it was two weeks of hell tiring to get the car to run right. So we have to fill up when it is getting anywhere close to low so we in reality have a 20-litre tank. So suffice it to say that we will be stopping often for gas.
I am very excited about working with some models while I am out that way as well. I am currently working to book at least two models in Vancouver and hope to hook up with some in Victoria as well. I am also working to get makeup & hair artists to assist as well. It all could turn out to be a scheduling nightmare but we will see. I am also totally excited about going out to Botanical Beach. I remember the last time that we were there it was cool indeed. When we walked to the beach the last time there was a thick fog that was rolling in of the ocean and the view that you get when you walk in to the area was a perfect picture that I am hoping will be there again. Not to mention that I am going to fill my laptop with macros of sea creatures in the tide pools and all the other cool things in the area. I have to remember to find the tide info for the area because I also remember the last time that we went we had to do a whack of wading in the ocean because we weren’t paying attention to the tides. I remember that I say this one place where there was nothing but a perfectly flat spot that had small tide pools in it and a 30 to 50 foot wall. It was loads of fun climbing about there. Well any way I am going to shut up and do something else. I am not sure what maybe read some indecline.

Divison And Wellesley

So It is a cover that I am proud of.

I mean it for real this time I am actually proud to say that I have the cover of See Magazine this week. We just got back from Division and Wellesley Cd Release party and you all suck because I didn’t see you there :) It was a good show with great opening Acts The Fembots from Toronto and Sekiden from Australia. Good show and I think that I got some fab shots

More to come...

However it is 3 in the morn & I work tomorrow so good night

Photos From Juno Fest

So I have finished the Photos from Juno Fest and they have been fired off to Eli and indecline Photo Gallery
I have also are you ready for it enrolled in an introductory photography class, I am going to learn how to operate my camera and what not. OI am not kidding. You see the last year of college particularly the last semester and I need to bring my gpa up to get back in to the program and I can do so with just a few classes that I can get an A+ in I can bring my GPA up and go back to school :) Not to mention that I will have a whole lotta access to a darkroom that I can experiment with to my hearts content. Very excited about it actually. I will be going every Thursday for the evening to Grant Mac City centre in the Evening and Learning about cameras and other things I think that this wont be a waste of time on my part because the darkroom is a great deal of the course something that I know less about being a digital guy. I mean I did work in a pro lab doing E6 and I have been developing my own black and white film for over a year but the actual making a print with an enlarger and what not is something that I haven’t done much of.

I am so stoked about going to Vancouver, I have it all worked out with work and as does Miranda and We are getting ready to fire of to the wondrous and rainy coast. I am hooking up with models while we are there and trying to plan that all out. In fact I have started Starting to plan our Vancouver trip. Friday night after our respective jobs we are going to hop in to our preloaded car… opps I forgot the sarcasm tags < sarcasm > We are going to get into our preloaded car because we are so good at planning that everything will be in order and loaded in/on the car< /sarcasm > and we are going to fire off towards Van and get as far as we can before it gets to late and we are to tired to drive anymore. So with lots of coffee and a lot of Pixies I should be able to go a long way :). It will be like the old days when I would drive incredible distances, living on nothing but coffee and cigarettes and Listening to the Pixies. I had two tapes that I had gotten in a round about way from Darren that had one album per-side. I had four albums more or less that would get played in a steady rotation while I drove from place to place. That was it I mean I may have had a Violent Femmes tape and maybe some Pouges. But they never got put in to the car stereo not that I can remember. It was the radio or the Pixies and well anyone that has driven around Alberta or BC much (especially the northern parts of both) knows that the Pixies were played a great deal. In fact the first road trip that I every drove was when John. Mike and I went to High River for some music fest, we took my car and well it being my car means my music, John recently divulged to me that the trip had actually tainted the pixies for him forever. :) We are actually going to buy some sort of MP3 Cd player for the trip whether that be a disk-man that plays Cd’s or a new deck we will have the ability to have unlimited music at our fingertips. So I am going to make a disk of Frank Blank and the Catholics, The breeders, The Amps, and of course the Pixies. However some of these are difficult to find in there complete form. So if anyone wanted to help out with this endeavor Cough, cough Darren cough cough you could fire me an email or a comment and I can give you FTP access to my server and I can let you know what I am missing. Cough, cough Darren Cough cough, Saturday is more driving because I am sure that I am out of practice for long road trips. If all goes well we should be in Van in the afternoon.
Sunday we are going to see the Dalia Lama, we have tickets and everything I think that we are high up and a long ways away but we will see. Sunday night we are firing off to the Island to visit mike and Julie. I hope to hit Botany Bay and other places that are a ways down from Victoria. We will hang on the island till Thursday morning and catch the ferry back to the mainland for THE PIXIES did I mention that we are going to van to see THE PIXIES and that THE PIXIES are doing a tour and that I am actually going to see THE PIXIES live!!! Then that weekend we are going to hang in van till we have to leave. I am still filling in the blanks as it were.
But I am work and I will be getting ready tp head home so I will ebd this here

Car day

Today Miranda and I got out of bed at 10ish and all I can say is that man I was fucking sore. I haven’t bee this sore and tired when I woke up since the day that Mike and I decided that it would be fun to clean the inside of a warehouse. (See Job, Tired, and Dirty - July 09, 2003) I mean you would think that I was in an totally hardcore pit of some sort but know I was protected form such by a neat wall, and a security guard that took his job way to serious. (he had on these crazy black leather gloves and he looks the type that was not only rejected from the police but the army, respectable rent a cop companies, and well any other job then a reds bouncer. ) So I was totally sore and it was sort of humbling in a way, I am so taking up jogging this week. So we got our asses out bed and rolled our way to Keegans where we had a really awful breakfast, and I mean awful by Keegans standard so you know it is bad. However on the way to the illustrious Keegans we sort of lost the use of the clutch cable in our car. No biggie we were able to drive to Keegans and have the awful breakfast and then drive home but it sorta involved a lot of power shifting and a lot more grinding of gears as I fought to stick it in to gears with out the aid of a clutch. And home we did get with out major incident. So we put the golf together and out we went to get a new clutch cable. So there is this guy that works at the part source on Calgary Trail that has the sweetest MII golf that I have had the pleasure of seeing, and while we were phoning about to find a cable on a Saturday we ended up talking to him and he told us about the little shop in the west end that has VW parts and is open on Saturday. So we fire on over to the west end and there nestled in this small industrial strip mall is this shop. We walk in and there is honest to god stuff piled everywhere. There was what looked like a path from the door to the counter and we followed it in wards. I wasn’t sure if I should leave a trail to follow back or not some how I thought that I would be ok. There was almost as far as we could see in any direction parts and what have you stacked on shelves that were vastly over there intended capacity and the floor space in between each shelf was filled with stacked boxes and other various parts. If you have seen the movie Conspiracy Theory this place made Mel Gibson’s characters apartment look like it was completely bare. The coolest part about it all was that the guy was able to find stuff in this. It took a few minutes but the guy came back with a cable and wing nut. The whole experience was slightly surreal the best part was when Miranda called to see if he had the part he replies “yes of course I do” in a why are you asking such a silly question sorta manner. So we installed it in and now we can drive with the aid of a clutch again. w00t!

So to elaborate on last night a little we went to the shows at Red (did I mention that I hate that place) and Eli gave me access to the back stage area and I was able to get some of the best band shots to date. I am working thought them as we speak. But man it was so cool to be in the front of everything and getting the shots that I did. For example when the Wednesday Night Heroes came on the crowd went nuts and the band went nuts and here I am in-between the throng of it all. The singer of the Wednesday Night Heroes was flying over my head in hard core stage dives and what have you. All of which was way cooler cause I was right there in the think of it. It was good times I tell you :) But ya I am spending more time typing and less working on photos so I sign off now.

Juno show at Reds

Tonight Miranda, Roy Rat and I went to one of the Juno fest shows at Reds. (man I hate that place) It was a blackdot production of 5 awesome bands
The Mark Birtles Project, Our Mercury, The Operators, the Wednesday Night Heroes, Mad Bomber Society
It was wild because the stage was set up with a bunch of solid barricades around it, so there is a area about 5 feet wide between the stage and the crowd. Major shouts out to Eli (the man who put the shit together) because he gave me access in side the stage area, which means I got to be in that crowd free area between the stage and the crowd and up close to the bands. So I got to run around in the middle of that area take pictures to my hearts content, and that I did almost 350 shots in fact. I was always running out of space on my cards so I had to whittle though them through out the night. I even had a run in with the people who were in charge of the media registration and what have you at the event, but after much clarification of I was doing this for Eli and then more clarification on who Eli was, they eventually left me be.
Anyway I am so incredibley tired but I am going to post at least one or two shots of the show tonight for you viewing pleasure

New look

So Instead of posting an entry of any sort I felt that my time was best served in redesigning the entire site, and making a portfolio that actually works with real photos in it and what not. That being done I am left with no choice but to post an entry or two.
So I am going to start with some new photos.

These are from last Fridays critical mass that was in honor of Tooker Gomberg. I expected a lot more people there but the weather wasn’t the greatest so I am sure that accounted for the lower turnout.

I was actually with out bike for this particular event because I haven’t tuned it up and my brakes keep sticking.

Anyway I hope all like the new look.