March, 2005
The first of what might be a monthly photo blog
I put my preorder in for a D2x a few days
after it was
announced (around September) and it finally arrived March 1st.
Congratulations, I'm now digital. Like a parent suddenly handed
their first child, it's taken me a few days to get my head wrapped
around what to do with this thing. After the loss of my carbon
fiber (manfroto 440 with an Arcatech head) tripod in September, I was
having a hard time taking photos and getting this new (larger, noisier,
button encrusted camera) I wasn't exactly jumping to take photos.
I brought my camera in to work and Jermey actually took the first
picture I think is even worth posting. (Please kill me for the
first photo being of Mark.) The first actual photos (since
deleted) were of the wall and couch at home - and they were incorrectly
exposed. This camera is going to take some getting used to.
Jin's
Birthday (March 4th)
My camera's real first outing was at a party for Jin's Birthday.
(March 5th if you are playing the home version).
Still
not sure what to do with this thing,
David took the only photo
worth keeping. I'm starting to figure a few things out.
First, I am not a photo preservationist. Every photo taken by the
camera is not precious and beyond deleting obvious crap (out of focus
or misfired), I don't see a reason to keep photos of stuff I don't
think is worth showing people. I'm sure someone is going to die
and the only picture I had of them was less than perfect and got
deleted, but if I died, I wouldn't want less than good photos of me
surfacing in some sort of road side memorial.
The second issue I really haven't dealt with is people. I've had
a few bad experiences with people. Jermey really doesn't like
having his photo taken - he will often get out of the scene (stopping
what he is doing and conversations to do so.) I get it. Try
not to take photos of Jer and definitely don't show them to him.
Mike has a similar view point but is less energetic about avoiding the
camera (and discovering his picture was taken seems to be less of a
downer for him). Sean has asked that photos be removed from the
web site. I get that too (especially Sean since he can't rely on
the "John Doe" effect to shield him from google).
One of those problem
photos - It's a loved photo by this group, but
I can hardy imagine Mike was thrilled with me at the time.
(Manning Park, Circa August 1997)
The other side of the coin exists too. David (ongoing experiment
in social engineering) doesn't seem to mind being photographed.
Mark asks for it (hence the Shrine to Mark as Web site). Eric
will actively pose for the camera. Other people have expressed
nearly no opinion, or given reasonable limits (don't take pictures of
me without my clothes on for instance).
The other end of the
scale - a posed, welcome photo
(Sakurajima, Circa
April 2004)
This problem was reasonably easy to avoid with the film camera.
Because of the expense (I figured it was roughly 40 cents a shot) and
the specialization (I almost always had 50 or 100 speed Velvia loaded),
the camera stopped coming to parties and social gatherings.
Generally I took people shots when we were out doing things (camping,
hiking) and it was all good.
What I like - people
ignored me and had fun
(Pender Island, Circa May
2003)
There was a time when I shot mostly print film (the APS era), filled a
few photo albums a year and brought my camera to parties. The
photo albums didn't have nearly the same kind of distribution as the
internet, but that's both a feature and a liability. I'm going to
have to have a discussion with my friends and see if I can come to some
new understanding.
Going
for a cycle (March 5th)
So here is the next problem. When I shot only film, the barrier
to entry for a picture to make it onto the website was steep. I
had to finish the roll (generally I shot at least a roll a week) and
then get it developed (approximately the same frequency) scanned (less
frequent - in the summer I often fell far behind and in the winter I
caught up), cleaned, processed and then put up. Because of the
barrier to entry, I generally only put up web sites for substantial
trips (half a dozen good photos meaning at least a roll shot) so I
stopped shooting the smaller events in my life.
Enter digital. Now I can take my monster camera (I need a new
bag) anywhere, shoot anything and then have them on my website the same
day. Cool. But where? For minor trips and events, I
decided to create this month by month photo blog. So it's
Saturday the 5th and Eric wanted to go for a bike ride. Humor
ensues.
The first
challenge was David. David's back tire
had developed a flat and he needed a new tube and tire (how desperately
didn't become apparent until later). He filled his leaking tire
and told us to meet him at MEC (it sure is nice to have that in walking
distance of your house). Eric and I both arrived at MEC but no
David. His tire was too flat - he wound up taking the bus with
his bike the dozen blocks from here to there. No problems.
Buy a tire and tube, install it in the parking lot (classy, I know) and
we are off.
The theory was to get some
TransCanada trail in.
We took Ontario to the sea wall to Adanac (This city has a lot of bike
routes) and as we started to climb the hills in East Van (just past
Commercial Drive), Eric fell behind. Turns out he had broken his
chain. Doh. Given the tools in our collective bike bags, we
couldn't see how to fix his chain so we were a bit stuck.
Thankfully
Commercial and the Bike Doctor
on
Commercial really isn't the
far away. Getting the chain fixed was neither instant nor
permanent - Eric wouldn't be able to ride hard so a longer or steeper
bike ride was out. Given the falling light we headed back down
town to China town and eventually over to Crab park and downtown proper.
I actually quite like biking down town. The cars are going
at a reasonable pace and with the views are second to none.
Lindeman
Lake
(March 6th)
My
Building
(March 12th)
As you probably know, it's my
fault the Vancouver real
estate scene
peaked last April - I purchased a small part (3%) of a
hole in
Vancouver. Being as it's a block from my house it's pretty
easy to go
over and see the progress. Now that I've upgraded to the miracle
that
is digital technology, I can do it fairly cheap. The have cleared
away
the old buildings and parking lot and have done the first stage of
retaining wall.
These buildings can get built awfully fast, or very,
very slow (don't talk to me about the parking lot at work). They
started sales on my building in April and sold most of what they were
going to sell (65%?) in the first month. Seven months later (and
not many sales longer) they finally tore down. My theory is that
they are waiting for the construction crews to finish Concord Pacific's
latest projects and flood the market with labour.
As I understand it, if they don't get cheap labour, the cost comes out
of the fit and finish of the building and suites. We will see how
things work out.
Now that Eric "I biked across Japan" Jones is back in
Vancouver we seem
to be doing a lot more biking. Todays adventure included parts of
East
Vancouver (I met up in Trout Lake) and a trip out to Ioco Spit.
Mark
was added to today's mix and he bravely played the role of "control
group" for how effective pedal clips are. I believe the next trip
will include a stop at MEC for Mark.
The
actual ride out to Sea
Island (the airport) isn't
bad. We took the Cypress bike route down to the Arthur Lang
bridge (which had pretty good margins for Bikies) and once on he island
we took the quite road out to the bridge. From the turn off to
the end of the spit it's about 9km of almost dead flat road - very rare
in Vancouver.
At the end of the spit you are surrounded on 3 and
half sides by Ocean. There are views of UBC and the airport and
the big concrete blocks involved in dumping Vancouvers treated
sewage. Cool. Cold actually - the wind picked up and the
sun was getting lower and lower.
The bike back was kind of sad. David experienced Homeostasis
shutdown - even though he was pedaling, the couldn't keep himself warm,
and as he got colder, he could perform less work, which meant less
heat, which meant less work, which .... He took the bus
home. Eric and I froze all the way back to Fairview.
Hanami
in QE Park
(March 13th)
Sean had the best idea ever - Hanami! Most of us have been to
Japan and in Japan they have a festival called Hanami - basically
cherry blossom watching. To make it more fun, you bring a blue
tarp, lunch, drinks and sit out and watch the cherry blossoms.
This festival isn't yet big here, but I really should be.
Sean did most of
the heavy
lifting on
this one - he dropped by Ichibankan and purchased a number of Bento
boxes including Vegetarian boxes for Eric and I. Once at the park
we spread out the tarp and started eating.
Yeah,
GPS (March 20th)
My MC-35 arrived and I picked up a Garmin Gecko from MEC.
My camera can now record GPS data with each photo I take.
It was rainy
weekend so I spent most of the weekend in
writing code (sad I know). I wrote a cool new bit of search so
you can find
pictures
of people on my web site. It's funny how much you can enjoy
collecting, sorting, editing things.
Gabi's
Back! (March 24th)
Gabi and Eric got engaged a few months ago and living on different
continents was probably putting a kink in things. Gabi decided to
get on a plane and see how many people would come out to say hi.
To increase the challenge level, she decided to join
us at 6:10am the day before a long weekend. Needless to say, Mark
was there in Spirit. After perhaps the best airport pick-up
timing ever, we had breakfast in fairview before we all ran away to our
respective jobs and Gabi and Eric got a little "quality time" together.
A
Weekend on the Island (March 25th)
Turns out it's been pretty much forever since I've been home to visit
the folks. (Ok - it was Christmas, but who's counting).
Being Easter, it seemed like the right time to come home. The
weekend was supposed to be solid rain, but Friday turned out to be
quite nice. My mom suggested I check out the
Horticulture Centre of the Pacific
not that far from their house.
Unlike
Butchart
Gardens, they have a pretty large collection of endemic
gardens. They also have a selection of more foreign plants...
And a slowly emerging Japanese garden. Cool.
In the afternoon, we decided to visit
Hatley Castle. It
also has extensive gardens including a Japanese theme, but the gardens
are much older.
Unlike the Horticulture Centre of the Pacific, Hatley Castle's gardens
were once fantastic, fell into disrepair and are coming back.
Hatley's Gardens have signifigant statues, structures and trees in
them, but the grounds still have ways to develop.
Being young and male, one of my favorite parts of a
garden is the water features. There were two that I really like -
the boar scaring device (a common Japanese element) and a good sized
water wheel. The best part of water wheels is the moss that grows
on them and this wheel seems to be just starting out.
We were lucky to be there during a blossom period so the obligatory
blossom snaps came out:
On Saturday, we decided to take a run up to Whippletree Junction
to look at some furniture stores. (See house citation
above). Although it was pouring on the way up, it was quite nice
when we came back through GoldStream so we stopped in for a brief walk.
After a trip back from the Island, I discovered that David hates me -
or at least wants to kill me. He invited us all over chocolate
waffles and they were so rich I honestly feared for my life. The
shaved chocolate on top was my fault so perhaps it wasn't all David to
blame.
Tags: flower(11), garden(11), Do Not Tag(8), Queen Elizabeth Park(5), cherry blossoms(4), biking(4)
People: Eric(9), David(8), Mark(4), Jeremy(2), Sean(2), Jin(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Blogs for 2024 to 2005 > March, 2005
Last Modified Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 01:00:52 Edit
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