The Best of 2011 Part III

October began with me scoring front row tickets to a Vancouver Canucks pre-season game against the Edmonton Oilers and the pictures that resulted led to (in terms of numbers) my most popular blog yet. According to my tracking software, I received 1500+ page views - and that was just within the first 2hrs of posting!

TIME magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2011 was The Protester and October marked the beginning of the Vancouver "Occupy" movement. Given the events that followed the Canucks loss in Game 7, I'm sure the officer below had a busy year when it came to crowd control...

Week 42 brought with it a trip to the Westham Island pumpkin farm.

The result of my pumpkin carving certainly isn't up there in terms of great pictures from 2011 but as creative endeavors go I had to include it because I'm still proud of what I came up with!

Week 43 brought with it a trip to the PNE's "Fright Nights" exhibition. I had a frustrating night as far as picture taking went and mostly failed to meet my high expectations (if only I'd brought a small tripod!) but this one turned out great and wins the award for "Most Macabre Shot of the Year"!

One of my regrets of 2011 was not taking my camera everywhere I went. There were so many missed shots. However, in November while on my way to a meeting across town I did have the foresight to pack my gear and ended up with some nice images in and around historic Gastown. This one turned out to be my favourite...

Despite the freezing cold temperatures of Week 45, I wrapped up and had one last foray into long exposure night photography downtown. This image from the corner of Burrard and Nelson ended up being my personal favourite.

With the Fall there often comes some stunning sunsets and armed with what turned out to be one of my best performing lenses of the year, the Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 wide angle zoom (had to get some geek material in here!) Week 46 ended up being hugely successful.

Inukshuks and Canadian Geese - talk about being a true Canadian eh?!

As 2011 came to a close, terrible weather and massive work commitments curtailed my photo-taking adventures to a large extent. Testing out a lens I picked up dirt cheap from a pawn shop I was happy with how this one at Vanier Park from Week 48 turned out...

And in another test (the newly acquired Tamron 90mm Macro lens), this one turned out okay considering the low light.

Sticking with lovable pets, Max, the Powell River Goldendoodle made a return and won the award in the 2011 "Awww!" category!

Perhaps its fitting that I close this retrospective photo blog look back through 2011 with this image...

All in all, 2011 was a big, crazy, unwieldy year in many ways. A lot of transition for me personally and professionally. Through the tougher times, along with my awesome circle of close friends (you know who you are!) my trusty Canon 60D and this blog helped me stay creatively inspired.

Though the sun has set on this particular journey, others await! There may be fewer photo blog posts to come in 2012 but I'll still be out there doing my thing - Stretching the muscles of my creative side is hugely important to my physical, mental and emotional health.

Thank you for letting me share my pictures with you over the last 12 months, for giving me hugely appreciated feedback and for continuing to encourage my endeavors. Stay tuned for what's to come next and as always...

Until next time folks!

2011 WEEK 45: Cold November Night

EEK I've gotten behind... Work commitments not to mention a run of cold, wet and windy Vancouver weather has made it tough to get pictures the last week. But I finally found a spare hour (as well as a hat, scarf and gloves!) to get out and snap some new tasty long exposure night shots for you to all feast your eyes upon!

This is the apartment building around the corner from where I live at Davie & Jervis - the building got a facelift this summer which until I took this picture, I discovered included colored illumination on some of the balconies.

Half a block down the street is St. Paul's Anglican Church. There were some beautifully haunting choral chants floating out as I took this picture.

No, the architects in Vancouver have not been at the rum (well, maybe...!) the buildings curving into the frame on each side are as a result of the super wide end of my Sigma 10-20mm lens. There is software out there that corrects the "fisheye" effect but a) I don't have it and b) I kinda like the warped perspective! This next one put a really nice curve to the church doors - I like the fairytale/Hobbiton nature of this one.

Cold empty streets... Well, almost... Spot the girl texting? The streak of light is a passing car.

While I was taking this one (shoulder-checking for approaching motorists with road or photographer rage) a guy walked past then halted at the curb to ask, "What are you doing?" He asked it as though I was murdering someone's pet in the middle of the street. I looked from the camera and no doubt sounded a little confused and maybe even defensive when I replied, "Um... Taking a picture..." then as if to clarify, "It's a long exposure..." He scowled then went on his way. Weird.

You may have noticed by now that as well as photos of birds, I seem drawn to fire escapes... This apartment building (once a hotel) has some awesome fire escapes!

Taken in Nelson Park, these next two are of what I think must be the least fun playground in the world.

I mean look at that thing?! How is that supposed to be fun for a kid? It's pretentious. It's uncool. It's completely impractical. It doesn't even have a proper slide for God's sake!

Perhaps the "ghosts" I caught in this one the lost souls of playgrounds past...

Thankfully, though I got a few odd looks ("Why is he taking a picture at night with no flash?") nobody passing by was as disgruntled as my previous encounter.

Its hard to tell if this is a brown paper bag (nope) or a large leaf (yup!) but I still like this one.

This looks lik something out of Tron.

Something new... and something old...

I did a fair amount of post-processing on the above image, tweaking exposure, colour temperature, contrast and definition but I like the way it turned out. Long exposure photography sure yields surprising results sometimes. Through the lens when I took the picture, all I could see was the door and the light above it - After a 2 second exposure its amazing how much detail was able to be captured.

The Hyrdo building in all its night time long exposure glory!

This was my last picture of the night. Mostly because I was freezing my ass off but also because snowflakes were beginning to drift down from that cloud overhead.

I have to say I'm really enjoying the long exposure adventures. Especially when combined with a super-wide angle lens. All of these pictures were captured with a shutter speed of between 1 and 2 seconds. Hope you enjoyed them!

Until next time...