It's been awhile since I last blogged, so I thought I'd get 2011 started with some colourful photos from Illuminate Yaletown. It was raining on Friday night, making photos a little difficult while holding my umbrella & monopod, but once you're into it then you stop worrying about your gear.

I've put a few favourites below, and I've got a few more on the Flickr set.

Here is the main website for more information about the event.

Great installations by all the artists involved!

When I first heard about the Orbis Pull for Sight, the novelty factor of people pulling an airplane was quick to catch my attention! However, after reading more about the their organization - flying all over the developing world to assist blind and visually impaired children - that was really the impressive part! Perhaps it's just my own bias as a photographer, but I consider vision to be the most important of the senses and it's hard to imagine living life without it. I really admire the medical volunteers who help these kids!

No weddings today, so I had a chance to go check out the Showdown in Downtown where Steve Nash and celebrity friends were playing soccer at David Lam Park in Yaletown in his fundraiser benefitting children's charities on 3 continents.

There was a lot of publicity for this month's critical mass, and the street closures, combined with the opening of the World Police & Firefighters Games, made for a very busy traffic day! It's still pretty hot and muggy out there, so I just grabbed a few shots at the tail end of the ride.

Who ya gonna call? Yes, Ghostbusters was on the menu at the 2nd annual outdoor movie night in Yaletown. We didn't get a chance to do the whole popcorn and picnic blanket thing, just a quick photo visit. Next year!

I believe the official screen size was listed as 40x20 feet and the image quality seemed quite good for such a BIG screen. The audio also sounded good, much better than other outdoor movie events I've been to.

I didn't really intend to cover the Vancouver Marathon, but it's hard to ignore a few thousand people running through the neighbourhood!

I'm always looking for an excuse to go for a photo walk, and last Sunday's Santa Clause Parade provided a good opportunity ... even the weather was in a good mood.

Side-note: I'm a little late to the "can-wagon", but I just wanted to say "great job!" to Chris+Lynn for their "Cans for Comments" idea. It's a great reminder to get out and support your community. For the Yaletown area, two organizations that could use your help are A Loving Spoonful and Yaletown House.

Getting back to the walk, we were pretty busy in the morning, so we only caught the tail-end of the annual parade. Most of the crowds were gone by that time, but that actually proved an advantage in being able to get around and check things out!

This reindeer was a little tangled up, but nonetheless happy ...




A brave knight and his trusty steed ...


This mirror ball was reflecting the neon sign above


Waiting for Mom


Posing for pictures


Santa welcomes you!


Little known fact ... elves enjoy hitting the slopes when not making toys.


A snap from our gingerbread couple engagement photo session ... looking forward to the wedding! ;>


Tim Horton's tries to outdo the starbuck's "Venti" [this is also how much coffee i have in the morning.]


Food donation boxes well stocked! ... something about those crooked smiles doesn't seem quite right though ...


The Contemplative Mannequin ...


St. Paul's annual "Lights of Hope" display


Part of St. Paul's light display


A wall outside "The Electra" (the old BC Hydro Electric building that was converted to condominiums)


Walking off into the sunset ...

Vancouver Photo Workshops brought Joe McNally back to town again this year. I still didn't have a chance to attend the full 5-day workshop, but managed to check out tonight's mini-workshop hosted at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. It was a good evening, split between a presentation of Joe's work (similiar to his book "The Moment it Clicks", which he also signed copies of later) and a lighting demonstration (one setup using Elinchrom strobes and one setup using Nikon SB-800's and a couple of SB-900's I think). There maybe wasn't a lot of new information for the Vancouver Strobist crowd (although apparently there was an informal meet-up that would have been amazingly cool to attend, argh!), but it was nevertheless fun to watch Joe build up his CLS setup one flash at a time, while maintaining his sense of humour and audience banter. He answered several audience questions, but I didn't get the chance to ask him about the D3x that was announced yesterday (he mentioned he was one of the chosen few to test out the prototypes of the original D3).

Joe posts about his trip to Vancouver on his blog here.

Here are a few snaps from the event (apologies in advance for the high-ISO noisiness - it was dark in there!):

One of the many magazine covers by Joe.



Joe waits in the wings for his introduction ...


Marc Koegel from VPW introduces Joe.


Joe introduces his work.


Joe adds a lot of humour to his talk, which is really great.




Everyone had their pens out, though some were chewing instead of writing. :)


Joe mounts a small softbox (Lastolite EzyBox) to the SB-900.


Joe checks out the view from Hanah's (the model) position. Assisting this evening were Syx, Tim and Pooya.


Wow, we were so hungy after skipping dinner earlier to make it on time, we had to drop by Vera's for a late night burger ... still the best in town!

My grandmother, who passed away earlier this year, was heavily involved in Legion and Remembrance Day activities. So even though it was pretty rainy out there today -- not easy to take photos one handed while holding an umbrella(!) -- getting out there is my way of remembering and paying tribute to her.

I think I am a silent ninja when taking photos, but obviously not as incognito as I was hoping. However, I like the way it's only the one soldier looking over, kind of makes the photo.

Sure, we would've liked to have seen the Mariachi Vargas (apparently the best in all of Mexico) and the Tequila tasting sounded fun ... but there's only so much time! We were happy to get the chance to check out the Mexican dancing and a sampling of the food.

Living downtown, we get our share of strange things happening on our doorstep. Especially parades, we get a lot of those ... the Grey cup parade, the Vancouver Naked Bike parade, and yesterday ... it was the Vancouver segment of the Nike Human Race 10K. OK, it wasn't a parade per se, but there were a lot of orange shirts running down nelson, then Cambie ... on their way to a music stage setup in the giant parking lot across from Stadium Skytrain.

More details and some video here ...
http://inside.nike.com/blogs/humanrace-en_CA/2008/09/01/930-pdt-running-vangroovie-style

So I was passing by the downtown library ... when I saw ropes dangling down and people looking up. I had no idea what it was at first, but it's times like these I'm glad to have the camera handy. Two women in were perched near the top - dressed like colourful parrots or something - seemingly getting ready to rapel down the face of the building. It turned out to be more like an aerial dance, with the performers pushing away from the wall, spinning upside down and doing various maneuvers in tandem. It was pretty mesmerizing, but drawing curiously little attention from passerby. There were no signs or anything announcing or explaining the performance, so it felt almost like an impromptu stunt rather than performance art. I didn't know how long it would last, so I made full use of my D200's 5fps for the first time in a long while!

There was some accompanying music and I found out from the "DJ" that the event was called "Cumulus" and was put on the by the Aeriosa Dance Society. The description from their site reads:

"Cumulus explores the territory of daydreams -- humans evoking cloud-forms migrating across the sky, celestial creatures morphing on the wings of the wind."

It lists the performers as Alisoun Payne & Julia Taffe (also the choreographer). Anyways, just a random bit of coolness to the daily walk.