Today was an adventurous day, combined with sleeping in till 10:30, lazying around in bed till 12:00 and then finally getting up to get some food. I know what you’re thinking, I am a modern day Indiana Jones! But wait, there is more to the story.

That afternoon a fellow camper staffer, otherwise known as Tyler Cassidy, went out on a photo adventure. It soon turned out to be a trip to Salt Spring Island, just across the channel from the camp. The island is known to many as the land of the hippie, basically because every house you see will have a sign out front that says, “Pottery for Sale”.

Since this was such an impromptu adventure we never had time to explore much of the island so we stuck to the ferry terminal for a couple of hours. The shore was filled with some amazing natural formations, beautiful flowers and great vistas.

Sorry to all that were trying to get onto the blog these past couple of weeks. For some reason I had an error on the MySQL database which took down the blog the day before I headed off to Colombia and didn’t have the time to fix it. But onwards we go.

I recently just got back from my trip to Bogota, Colombia. Luckily I was able to edit a lot of the images while I was in Colombia, so I have been able to post some images from my trip. My favorite section by far is “Colombian Joy”. The children’s face completely broke my heart, in a good way. I cannot wait to go back to this amazing country. The people, atmosphere and culture are absolutely fascinating.

Time to get to bed.

Since I aquired a Canon G9 back in November it has allowed me on a consistent basis to take pictures where I usually wouldn’t take my 30D or 5D. Recently this happened on a trip to Mt. Washington for the day.

I realized that I couldn’t afford to lug around a giant camera, I opted for the pocketable G9. Tossing it in my front coat pocket and hitting the slopes. It proved to be an amazing resource for capturing the beautiful views a top the Mt. Washington ski hill. To my surprise the G9 held up quite well to the cold air. The LCD responded very quickly in the minus 10C conditions. My only complaint…small buttons. Even when using biking gloves it was hard to select the proper button. Though this is a minor detail, it can get very frustrating when attempting to capture a skier/snowboarder going past and all you’re doing is fiddling trying to find the proper buttons.

Shooting with AV and On Camera Flash: A great trick I realized with the G9 when shoot in AV mode with the on-camera flash was to bring the exposure down -2 stops. I find the G9 often will want to overexpose certain areas of the image and with the flash it just looks awful. So if you want aperture control but still want to use the flash, use this trick, it will help create much smooth images when using the flash.

Just this past weekend I had the privilege of heading over to Vancouver with the students for the renowned Missions Fest. A place where hundreds of missions organization get together and pitch their unique ideas at you and it’s an amazing place to get reacquainted with old connections.  

After being there for a full two days, I now realize that I have met and greet thousands of people, and talked so many different organizations about what they do. Some very interesting prospects have come up for myself in the realm of photography through going to this festival. But I won’t go into that at this time. 

If you ever get the chance, I would suggest heading over to this conference to see what people are doing around the world. 

Over the past couple of months there have been talks as to what country I will be going to for my trip with Kaleo. About two months ago it was decided that I would go to Columbia, more specifically the Bogota area. I will be heading out there in mid-March with a team of 9 to help teach camp leaders from around the area how to do things differently in their camping experiences. 

The main purposes for my trip is document what goes on, on these trips. How will I do this? With my camera of course! I will be heading down with all of my equipment, including my G9. For this type of assignment I am really excited to finally get in some real travel time with the equipment and the ability to capture a different culture. 

The pre-trip planning has already started and that basically includes learning Spanish, understanding Columbian culture and history and prepping for all the teaching workshops. We will be down in Columbia for roughly a week, if not just over a week, so we will have a chance to do a bit of the touristy thing. Maybe I’ll find something really nifty down there!  

It’s already 1/2 over. My Christmas vacation is now down to one more week. It has been a really good rest so far, basically doing nothing for the past week except picking up some new computer equipment. Ever since my WD Passport HD died I haven’t had a bootable backup of my MacBook Pro system for about 3 months, so I picked up an IOMEGA eGo HD. I have to admit, this is an amazingly well built portable hard-drive. Built in some solid metal construction with extra cushioning on the inside for drop resistance.

Another piece of my arsenal is the Logitech MX Revolution, possibly the best mouse on the market. This sucker (that is a technical term) is so comfortable to handle it’s like there isn’t even a mouse in your hand. If you are looking for a great mouse, head to Costco right now and pick up the Logitech MX Revolution, it’s cheap at $79.99 compared to other stores at $129.99.

In other news, I did get my 30D back. Purolator had for some reason completely messed up my order. Getting the address correct but shipping it to the complete wrong location, without requiring a signature or ID. In contrast, when I picked it up from the depot they asked for photo ID. Which shocked me since they didn’t even ask when they delivered it in the past trips…After all this, I am not happy with Purolator.

Now to get on with my holidays.

Merry Christmas!

Well with the recent holiday season approaching it means that my holiday break is coming up, oh wait, it’s here now! That’s right, I am on my Christmas Break and am on vacation now. So you probably won’t see very much happening here, or maybe you will, since I have lots of time to spare to blog about things.

To tide some of you over, here are some pics from the Airplane taken with my trusty G9…

Last night we had the privilege of being in attendance for the Ladysmith annual Light-Up ceremonies. This specific event brings in thousands upon thousands of people from Victora, Nanaimo, Duncan, etc. The streets are lined for kilometers along a specific street where the parade goes through.

At the end of the parade, the people are then moved down to the end of the street to watch an amazing fireworks show. This year, it was amazingly well put together. It went on for a good 15 minutes, and many “ooo’s” and “aaahhh’s” from the crowd. It was great fun to shoot fireworks once again with a camera that worked, without having errors.

Just over a year ago, I spent a day on a beach on the south eastern tip of Vancouver Island called Mystic Beach. There I was able to capture an amazing shot that I still love to this day.

Well, this week I was able to travel back to that beach with the Kaleo guys. This time the beach looked much different then the usual. Since the large swells that have happened recently the beach was no longer a beautiful sandy beach, but rather it was filled with rocks and logs. Putting all that aside, there was still a beautiful display of magic in the form of a sunset that evening. With a student posing peacefully in the foreground and the wonderful colors behind, it made for the perfect shot.

It all started just over one week ago. I was walking down the hallway of Pacific Woods Lodge when the ever wise Jim Badke (also known as JimBad) grabbed my attention. We sat down in the library to chat for a bit. It was at that time that Jim spilled the beans, the Kaleo leadership team wanted me to be the male Kaleo intern for the next 16 months at Camp Qwanoes. He gave me a timeframe for which to get back to him, 2 weeks - it seemed like a long ways off and turned into feeling like it was the next day.

After asking lots of question, listening to lots of people, thinking even more the listening, and pondering some more. I came to the conclusion, I would accept the position as the male Kaleo intern for the 2007/2008 Kaleo year. Crazy eh?!? (I can’t believe I just wrote "eh" on my blog)

If you’re wondering what Kaleo is, it’s an 8 month youth leadership program put on by Briercrest College. And it’s a complete honour to be asked to be apart of the leadership team for this coming year.

So what will I be doing? Basically I am to be the big bro to all the Kaleo guys. Going on crazy adventures with them and just walking alongside them as they go through this amazing program. I am amazingly excited to see what this year has in store for us all!

So, there’s a quick little update on the happens over the next 16 months. I will be living at Camp Qwanoes on Vancouver Island going on some wild adventures! Who wouldn’t want to do that?

Well it is official, I am heading back to Qwanoes for another summer as their photographer. Soon I will be whisped away from the freezing cold that is Alberta and into the liquid sunshine that is Vancouver Island.

I will basically be doing the same work that I did last summer but with one small advantage, I know what I’m doing and what to expect. I am super excited about this and am counting down the days till I head out.

Oh and did I mention that I got my 30D back from the Canon Repair facility in Calgary. It seems the shutter was basically busted and some other mechanism as well. So it now work great like it did on day one. My only beef, they left a large piece of dust on my sensor…oh well, can’t complain to much I guess.

Cheers!