November 2016
And almost every day was raining
Vancouver Train Expo
My Dad
likes model trains and even collects a very little. He
collects O gage from pre war Germany - wind up trains. Even
though you see very little of that kind of thing in Canada, we
have still been to a few places checking out trains. This is my
first time to the Vancouver Train Expo and Nara came along too.
Most of the exhibits were clubs with large sectional
displays. Each display would have 10+ (and sometimes 40+
sections where each section was connect to the next but might be
independently built a different person. These displays are
assembled and model trains make a circuit around the outside
passing worlds small and detailed.
What really attracted my attention was the guy making super
realistic trees. I think trees normally come out of a
package, but this guy builds them all by hand and makes small
scenes inside what would normally be a concrete forming tube.
Rainy Days
Rain, Rain Go Away! In November you can expect it to rain at least
twice in a week - once for three days and the second time for four
days. Somehow this year was even rainier - almost every day
had rain for the whole month. Outdoor activities were
miserable and any break in the clouds was taken advantage of.
Super Moon!
The moon's orbit is complicated. I
knew it had roughly a five year cycle where it goes above and
below the ecliptic which causes the moon to be eclipsed by the
sun. Apparently there is a longer cycle where the moon gets
closer and further and some random weekend in November it is
closer than it has been in more than 70 years and it appears some
10% bigger than usual. Being Vancouver, it was mostly likely
to be overcast and raining on any given night in November, but
suprisingly, it was just mostly overcast on Saturday night.
I had this image in my mind of a big moon
next to a recognizable landmark in the city. There are a few
problems with this. The moon rises in the sky so the later
in the evening you go, the higher the moon is in the sky so the
more "up" the shot is going to be. An ideal shot is taken
from far away (like kilometers) so that the landmark is reasonably
sized compared to the moon.
Surprise number two is just how bright the
moon is. In the photo, you want to see the face of the moon,
not some super bright white orb. The face of the moon turned
out to be 5 stops (32 times!) brighter than the well lit building
fronts. Really, the only option is to shoot at sunset where
the buildings are lit by a fading sun to balance the
exposure. Or shoot silhoutte. Needless to say, I
learned a lot but didn't get a great image.
East Side Culture Crawl
I've been going to the East Side Culture
Crawl for about 10 years now. In the past when I went, I saw
beautiful things other than the artwork but, didn't bring my
camera. Cameras on phones being what it is now, bringing a
camera isn't that insulting. Many artists have "tag us"
signs listing preferred tags to use for social media.
On my third day on the crawl (with the kids this time), an artist
suggested the kids try and collect business cards. The cards
are often beautiful, or at least colorful, but I'm not sure that
kids running around collecting cards really adds to the experience
of being on the crawl. I wonder about my photography - is
taking the odd picture helping or hindering my and other people's
experience? I'm leaning toward helping me because the
photographic eye/brain is different than the consumer brain (not
that I buy much on the crawl). That said, artists don't open
their studios the try and widen the experiences of the humanity in
Vancouver - they are trying to sell their art. I think I'm
okay.
Jerhico Looking For Bunnies
Realizing I had take
almost no pictures of my kids this month, I tried to take some
photos. Claira likes bunnies so I thought going to Jerhico
would be fun because there are bunnies (pet store releases) in the
bushes. Amazingly, it wasn't raining. We got into the
car and in the 20 minutes it took to drive over, it was
raining. We did see some bunnies (hiding from the rain) but
the kids obviously weren't having fun. A few photos and we
were back in the car.
Tags: Eastside Culture Crawl(6), train(4), model(4), paint brush(2), art(2), art crawl(2)
People: Claira(3), Nara(3), Helen(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Blogs for 2023 to 2005 > November 2016
Last Modified Saturday, January 21st, 2023 at 23:57:50 Edit
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