November 2019
More Photos at Night than Day
Lumiere 2019
Last year was my
first experience with
Lumiere (I saw it walking home from work) and the kids
really loved it! What isn't to love - outdoors at night,
interactive art and fire - what's not to like! This year I
knew to look out for the festival and we planned a Saturday night
visit.
At the Art Gallery plaza they had two huge mobile vehicles that
were probably built for burning man. The turtle was moving a
little and had a DJ mixing on top. Of course the fire burned
with the beats.
The plaza had a few more pieces
showing. A giant tricycle with a family sized couch one
story up in air looked like the ultimate "get around the campsite"
vehicle. A light sculture danced to it's own light.
An artist had set up a plastic bubble on a light stand and was
doing performance inside. After his show, the kids lined up
to do performances in his little stage. Nara was keen to
take a turn - Claira didn't want a go.
This year had less fire. Lsat year
there was a flower setup on the corner. This year there were
flowers as well, but users could adjust the colour (rather than
light them on fire). The kids had a surprising amount of fun
making their favorite color flowers.
This year they had 4 locations. We have drive by some of the
others, but haven't figured out how to get them all in one
weekend. Maybe next year we will!
Victoria for a Weekend
November 11th is a holiday
here. We decided to go to Victoria for the weekend.
There are so many great attractions around Victoria but this trip we
decided to visit Goldstream Park because it was salmon spawning
season. We have been closer to Christmas and New Years but by
then almost all the salmon are rotting.
Eastside Culture Crawl
The East Side Culture Crawl is an
event I look forward to all year long. Hundreds of studios
are open for four days on the Eastside of Vancouver. Every
year, artists show new work, new artists arrive and sometimes
whole new buildings show up on the tour. This year I started
with 1000 Parker place - an easy bus ride from work.
I struggle with what kinds of photos to
take each year. I'm not there to take photos of the art, but
there are plenty of people who do and many artists have put up
signs encouraging the practice and how they like their work tagged
and linked. It's very easy to fall into the "collecting"
mentality and start to zone out on what you are actually looking
at. Many artists now have their brushes kindly presented
The more I visit, the more details I
learn. At 1000 Parker Place, each of the studios is a unique
layout based on how building was subdivide from the original
furnature factory. Few units have running water, but
apparently original paned windows are also a luxury that some
people really look for. Some studios were originally setup
for half a dozen artists and over time they are being joined or
split to accommodate more people or a more successful
artist. The evolution is subtle, but impressive.
The Arc is live work building where each person gets a unit
roughly based on the kind of work they do - welders might get
darker units, but painters get more light.
When I go to the Eastside Culture Crawl, I
normally use a 50mm because of the low light, but this year I
switched it up a bit. I thought I would bring my wide angle
and try to show some spaces, even if it includes some
pieces. I took a photo of Arnt Arntzen's workshop because
it's both amazing and pretty much famous.
I revisited the same workshop with my 35mm (again low light) and
found details I hadn't seen even though I have visted this studio
at least half a dozen times.
They Foyer to the Maker Space has been evolving every year so I
also took a picture. This space would be hard to capture
with a 50mm.
On Friday night I spent some time in the Strathcona neighborhood
at night. It's a shame it's such a rough neighborhood
because the buildings and art is amazing. With a super wide
lens, it's easier to take night photos because the long shutter
times are less noticable in wide images.
I like to take the kids at least one of the days we go
crawl. This time we saw a demo on photo transfers (I'm not
sure the kids get how they can use this skill) and we visited a
studio that had a kids bench for doing block stamps onto nice
cards.
Every year I get inspired by things I have seen.
Reifel Bird Sanctuary
What's not to like about feeding the
ducks? We had a few hours in the afternoon and it was a nice
day so why not go out and feed the ducks? The kids were keen
to go so we hopped in the car! We got two bags of bird feed
for each kid and very quickly we were surrounded by new friends.
The kids understand that there are other species than Mallards and
we started a list of the species we had seen. The American
Coots are the easiest - they get out of the water with the
Mallards but they don't look anything like them. Then the
kids found the American Widgeon (distinctive call) and the pin
tailes (distinct colour). It took them a while to find the
American Shoveler was actually a different species and then just
seeing the Hooded Merganser with the rest of the birds finished
out list.
The sun sets early in November so we left just as the
Sanctuary was closing.
Tags: Eastside Culture Crawl(10), Lumiere Vancouver(9), art crawl(9), Reifel Bird Sanctuary(7), night(3), lights(3)
People: Claira(5), Nara(5), Janet(1), Lloyd(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Blogs for 2024 to 2005 > November 2019
Last Modified Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 at 00:06:02 Edit
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