Chapter 2013 is nearly done

It seems every time this year the same sentiments echoes throughout the bustling malls and office halls; "Where did the year go?", "How can it already be Christmas? I'm not ready!", "Do you have/make New Years Resolutions?". Well, another year has run its course and another is waiting at the starting gate.

And I guess these are the last few random images I can say I took in 2013.

an uptown highrise finally completed

colourful corner

a great old bungalow on a quiet street

spying through gnarly limbs

this little guy was still hanging in there as of December 1st

back lit boy

second major dump of December

dormant Magnolia buds

whimsical local bicycle rack

a friend's twelve week old Portuguese Water Dog 'Mishka' (Little Bear)

May 2014 be filled with health, happiness, love and laughter, for each and every one of us.

It's time for splashy, vibrant colours to step aside for more subtle monochrome ones

I can't believe how quickly this year seems to have flown by! How can we already be in November. I haven't seen much of anything since June. Summer - as hot as it was - seems to have vanish in a blink. Fall is full on us now and dare I say it, thoughts of snow are on more of our minds as the days on the calendar tick by.

I captured a few dying splashes of colour before the November spectrum of grey takes over the world's colour palette until some time next year - excluding the stringing of Christmas lights to ward off the grey for a little while.

Wanting it to happen or not, the beautiful colours of summer and fall have been replaced with - depending on your perspective - a long stint in a world devoid of much colour. Don't get me wrong, as much as I love the vibrant colours the rest of the year, a season seen - or in my case 'shot' - in near-monochrome tones has a beauty unto itself. A peacefulness, like a long slumber.

I'm looking forward to capturing the world in black and white and grey.

one of the local feral cats chillin' on the back fence

an adorable and much loved vintage hand made children's toy recently named Galaxy

a final splash of colour before winter's blanket silences it

another year's tangle of shed leaves

what I mistook as clusters of blackbirds at first turned out to be tufts of desperate leaves

strength in numbers?

last of the summer blossoms

grey begins to dominate the backdrop

bone thin against the elements

and lastly, as we say good-bye to another season - and soon another year - may we never forget the sacrifices made by so many in hopes of making our world a place of peace.
How many more will have to fall before that happens?

Cobwebs, Spiders and Fog

To my delight, my camera, once again, seems to be coming an extension of my right arm. And just when I thought that there was nothing left for me to shoot going to and from work, something presses against my peripheral vision and; what was old, is new again.

Now, be warned that a couple of these *might* be a little shudder worthy.

Trust me. I was shuddering the morning I thought I might locate the little creator that kept attaching his/her webs to the car's side mirror.

*gulp*

To my queasy discovery, there were too many of these industrious creatures to count - and they were all suspended DIRECTLY over my head. 

Once my shuddering, wibbling and wobbling and dancing about like I had sand in my pants, was over I raced upstairs, got a different lens for my camera and came back down to shoot a couple of the bigger suckers!

So, You . Have . Been . Warned

there's a fresh one there every time we go out to the car

first suspect

just to be creepier, a closer shot

second suspect, actually caught in the act of spinning yet another web overhead

Okay, you can stop wincing and/or cringing, that's it for the creepy crawlies!

more macro experimenting | more confusion and frustration | back to the drawing board

a darker, foggier and different angle of abbey road?

an alley on the way to work. In fog like this I expect a banshee to come screeching out at me

parking lot lights looking more like hovering spaceships

It felt like Christmas for a second!

And on that note, I am outta here

And the randomness is over until another post. Thanks for stopping by.

Summer Hiatus Might be Over

I seem to have been on a summer hiatus of sorts. It was a beautiful hot summer. I just wasn't feeling it photographically. But now that the cooler air and changing hues are upon us, I feel the tug of my camera strap, and have been seeing things through a lens again. It's good to be back at it. I've accumulated a few random images over the last few weeks or so that I want to upload here (in no particular order).

morning java  (wonder if I'll be told to remove this image by Starbucks lawyers)

Just last week New Westminster suffered a sad loss down on historic Columbia Street. The corner block that held such stores as Copp's Shoes and Moody Beads was destroyed in an early morning fire. All that remains is a leveled block of rubble, crime task force vehicles and curious on-lookers.

what's left of a corner of history

NWPD squad car parked below the Front Street Parkade

On Thanks Giving I took myself over to Queen's Park to see if there were any trees changing colour. I didn't see any but did find other things to shoot, some at the end of their lifespan.

not a building, just a frame and window panes

To my delight, we have left the godawful sweltering heat of summer behind us and are entering the age of fog! My favourite weather condition, second only to thunder storms. A few of the following 'fog' images make me realize just how dark it is when I walk to work at four o'clock in the morning!!

first time for me - a full moon in fog (poor quality image but so cool to see!)

beautifully empty main streets at this hour!

every day on my way to work, I pass this creepy little old man sitting on the bus bench.
 He eats bubble gum, blows bubbles and cracks his wad of gum so loud that it echos off the buildings. I can smell that familiar bubble gum smell from fifteen feet away. He creeps me out!

the block up to work's front door

Took a few shots around the apartment - even made a few attempts at mastering my new macro lens - I'm still working on that. And I thought I'd throw in a couple of pictures of my two cats, the camera shy Dakota and the 'famous' Pixel (the internet is fueled by cats, dontcha know?)

macro practice

dakota

pixel

A normally boring, run of the mill walk home (for the umpteenth time) that I normally day dream through, can become an adventure when you really start looking at the things around you instead of looking through them. I looked 'at' instead of 'through' this one walk home.

art installation behind the New West Public Library

the neighbourhood is gearing up for my favourite holiday

sun catcher

Hopefully I won't take another three months to post.  Thanks for spending some time looking through this collection of randomness.

If Once You have slept on an Island

If Once You have Slept on an Island

If once you have slept on an island
You'll never be quite the same;
You may look as you looked the day before
And go by the same old name,
You may bustle about in street and shop
You may sit at home and sew,
But you'll see blue water and wheeling gulls
Wherever your feet may go.
You may chat with neighbours of this and that
And close to your fire keep,
But you'll hear ship whistle and lighthouse bell
And tides beat through your sleep.
Oh! You won't know why and you can't say how
Such a change upon you came,
But once you have slept on an island,
You'll never be quite the same.

Rachel Lyman-Field 1894-1942

~ ~ ~

A few decades ago, a friend sent Lyman-Field's poem to me when we spent eleven beautiful days on Grand Manan in New Brunswick. It seemed appropriate to reference it here again after spending two relaxing nights on Quadra Island in British Columbia.

~ ~ ~

Our weekend started out at the crack-of-early by heading down to the ferry terminal in Tsawwassen. There was a tiny hiccup in our ferry selection but we rolled with it and enjoyed the scenery.

BC Ferries - Came to be in 1960 to provide a similar service to that by CPRail. BC Ferries has become the largest passenger ferry line in North America and the second largest in the world, boasting a fleet of 36 vessels with a total passenger and crew capacity of over 27,000 serving 49 locations on the BC coast.

In fiscal 2011, BC Ferries reported a loss of $16.5 million due to dropping ridership, with vehicle traffic dropping by 3.5 percent and foot passenger traffic dropping 2.8 percent. Increased fares were to blame for the drop in ridership and warnings came that there would likely be cutbacks in the service on a number of its routes in order to reduce costs.

On August 26, 2012, BC Ferries announced that it will be cutting 98 round trips on its major routes starting in the fall and winter of that year as part of a four year plan to save $1 million on these routes. Service cuts have included the elimination of supplementary sailings on the Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen route, 18 round trips on the Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay route and the largest number of cuts to round trips on the Duke Point to Tsawwassen route by 48 sailings with still more plans to look for savings on the smaller, "unprofitable" routes in the future.

On November 20, 2012, BC Ferry Services Inc., was listed as the 90th most profitable company in BC with a net income of $3,781,000 for 2011 and $3,422,000 for 2010.

Gorgeous sunny morning sailing out of Tsawwassen.

Spirit of Victoria.

Crossing to Victoria.

Wind swept coast.

Despite the - what I can only describe as greedy incompetence from the top - BC Ferries' 'front-line' staff and crews are managing quiet efficiently to provide amazing service to the general public - at least that is all we experienced on our weekend trip to Discovery Passage and Quadra Island.

~ ~ ~

Quadra Island - was named in 1903 after the Spanish navigator Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra who explored and settled the Vancouver Island area in the late 18th century. The Southern Kwakiutl (part of the larger Kwakwaka'wakw ethnic grouping) migrated into the northern Georgia Strait from Queen Charlotte Strait over two centuries ago, enslaving, displacing and absorbing the Comox and Pentlatch Peoples who formerly lived there.

Quadra island is a short ten minute ferry ride from Duke Point in Campbell River on Vancouver Island. Quadra is the hub of the Discovery Islands. Has a close-knit community of about 2,700 full-time residents. Three main communities make up Quadra; Cape Mudge to the south, home of the indigenous We-Wai-Kai band of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation, Quathiaski Cove,  considered the 'commercial hub' of the island and where we stopped for our supplies for our weekend, and Heriot Bay is at the north end.

Our weekend stay was at the south end of the island at Cape Mudge in a charming little cottage at the Tsa-Kwa-Luten Resort and Lodge (#1 Lighthouse Rd).

Wood carvings spotted in Campbell River while we waited for the next ferry to Quadra.

The 'great room' (lobby) of the Tsa-Kwa-Luten Lodge & Resort.

The lush view out the kitchen windows in our cottage.

Sitting room of our cottage complete w/fireplace.

Twilight view of Campbell River from our cottage.

Moon over Discovery Passage from just outside our front door.

Mysterious Cruise ship coming up the Passage under a full moon.

We speculated that the ship was possibly heading up to Alaska. It floated by so silently.

Morning rush hour up the Passage.

Main dining lounge at Tsa-Kwa-Luten. Delicious meals and charming staff.

Driftwood on the rocky beach across from our cottage.

Single striped stone - said to be good luck.

Beach stones draped in 'terry cloth' seaweed (that's what we named it for the weekend).

Our little cottage nestled in the trees.

Heading along Cape Mudge Rd to try and find petroglyphs.

There were supposedly petroglyphs on this but we didn't find them.

But there were H.R.R Giger-like corpses among the rocks.

And an unnerving number of caterpillars EVERYWHERE.

~ ~ ~

Totem Poles, derived from the Ojibwe word odoodem [oˈtuːtɛm], "his kinship group" are normally carved from western red cedars which decay eventually in the rainforest environment of the Northwest Coast so, few examples of poles carved before 1900 exist.

Beliefs about maintaining the totem pole vary, but generally it is believed that the deterioration of the pole is representative of natural processes of decay and death that occur with all living things, and attempts to prevent this are seen as somehow denying or ignoring the nature of the world.

Retired Totem Pole.

Dust to dust.

Quadra Island Cemetery.

Robin's egg by a local monument.

United Church built in 1931. Still in use today.

~ ~ ~

The Arbutus, with its smooth reddish-brown bark is one of the most beautiful trees on the planet - imho. Arbutus can be found in a narrow band along the south coast of British Columbia, generally found on exposed rocky bluffs within eight kilometres of the ocean. It is found in locations that lack moisture like the rocky bluffs or in rapidly drained soils. The Arbutus does not like shade so will take hold in clearings or on the bluffs along side Garry Oak or Douglas Fir and several herbs and grasses.

Its flower has a strong honey smell and very attractive to bees (just another reason to love this tree!). Fruit eating birds like the Waxwing and Robin are frequent nibblers. It is the only native broadleaf tree in Canada.

Spectacular Arbutus at Duke Point ferry terminal.

Waiting to board.

Aboard and waiting to sail.

Kayaking along the shore.

Hitching a ride in the middle of nowhere.

Ominous backdrop over Tsawwassen.

This was a short two night stay on just one of the many Gulf Islands. There was much more to explore so I think there may be another trip to Quadra in our future. Or maybe Salt Spring? Gabriola? Mayne? Saturna? What about Cape Scott on Vancouver Island? Or maybe we should head way up to the Haida Gwaii?