January 20, 2010
Up and Away
As most of you are doubtless already aware, we're off to Kenya/Tanzania on safari for most of January/February with a short stopover in Amsterdam on the way back. We'll be back with a heap of new pictures and stories at that time and hope you all have a great time while we're away :)
January 18, 2010
The Noses of BC: An Art Retrospective
Kathryn has a long standing tradition of putting up with my nonsense, and part of that tradition involves letting me take pictures of her patting the noses of anything vaguely nose-pattable that we come across in our travels. Here's a selection of my favorites since we moved to BC. First off we have a statue of some otters in Victoria with eminently pattable noses.
There's a coffee shop in downtown Vancouver not far from the library which inexplicably has a giant statue of a cow in front of it. This creates a prime opportunity for nonsensical nose patting.
And rounding out the set, this native spirit carving resides at the back of the art gallery and was crying out for some attention this summer.
There's a giraffe sanctuary and possibly a tame rhino coming up in Africa, so look forward to more nose stroking in the coming months :)
There's a coffee shop in downtown Vancouver not far from the library which inexplicably has a giant statue of a cow in front of it. This creates a prime opportunity for nonsensical nose patting.
And rounding out the set, this native spirit carving resides at the back of the art gallery and was crying out for some attention this summer.
There's a giraffe sanctuary and possibly a tame rhino coming up in Africa, so look forward to more nose stroking in the coming months :)
January 15, 2010
West Coast Adventures
Its not 100% finalized, but here's the 'best of' footage from our adventures in BC, Washington and Oregon this October. There will be minor tweaks for the DVD, but with all the Africa footage we have coming up in March this has to be put up now or it will be forgotten until 2011 ;)
Many of the places shown here have been featured in earlier posts so there's lots more information in the archive for anyone inclined to poke around a bit.
Many of the places shown here have been featured in earlier posts so there's lots more information in the archive for anyone inclined to poke around a bit.
January 8, 2010
Victoria Wax Museum
There's a branch of Madame Tussads wax museum in downtown Victoria and since I'd never been to the one in London, Kathryn agreed to have a look around it with me. And nothing says dead-eyed zombie stares like the Royal Family.
Of course you can't have the kings of earth without representation of the king of heaven, so there was a neat display of the last supper with a light traveling through the scene while a voice-over talked about each apostle.
And like any respectable wax museum they had the obligatory hall of horrors with people being impaled and burned at the stake. I forget if the George Bush dummy was in that section or the Hall of Presidents....
Of course you can't have the kings of earth without representation of the king of heaven, so there was a neat display of the last supper with a light traveling through the scene while a voice-over talked about each apostle.
And like any respectable wax museum they had the obligatory hall of horrors with people being impaled and burned at the stake. I forget if the George Bush dummy was in that section or the Hall of Presidents....
January 5, 2010
Miniature World
Our whirlwind tour of Victoria in 2009 tried to take in the majority of the museums and cultural collections of the city. One such place which had been described to me by a co-worker as "the best place in the world" was 'Miniature World', a small museum connected to the Empress Hotel.
The small size of these photos doesn't really to justice to the scale of some of the displays, the train photograph below is only a snippet of a diorama showing Canada from coast to coast with a train running the length of it every few minutes along with lights for day/night and detail crammed into every inch.
The displays ran the gamut throughout history from World War 2, to the Middle Ages to an entry display of a space station which was gorgeous but sadly too dark to photograph well enough to share online.
I found that the macro mode of my camera helped capture these miniatures with a sense of scale and depth which I very much enjoyed experimenting with but which may not come across as well in such small pictures.
The small size of these photos doesn't really to justice to the scale of some of the displays, the train photograph below is only a snippet of a diorama showing Canada from coast to coast with a train running the length of it every few minutes along with lights for day/night and detail crammed into every inch.
The displays ran the gamut throughout history from World War 2, to the Middle Ages to an entry display of a space station which was gorgeous but sadly too dark to photograph well enough to share online.
I found that the macro mode of my camera helped capture these miniatures with a sense of scale and depth which I very much enjoyed experimenting with but which may not come across as well in such small pictures.
January 1, 2010
Happy New Year!
We spent our New Years Eve with a group of good friends from Kathryn's capoeira group and hosted by the couple that run her academy, shown below in a battle of epic proportion.
After several hours of eating, drinking and making merry, we set out as a group to enjoy the crowds gathered on Granville Street and to generally be loud and obnoxious in public along with the rest of the downtown populace.
And on the afternoon of the 1st, as if proving that the weather out here is nicer than we're used to, it was the 90th Annual Polar Bear Swim in which hundreds of people lined up and hurled themselves into the waters of English Bay for a swim. This would likely be an unpopular notion in The Forks back home.
After several hours of eating, drinking and making merry, we set out as a group to enjoy the crowds gathered on Granville Street and to generally be loud and obnoxious in public along with the rest of the downtown populace.
And on the afternoon of the 1st, as if proving that the weather out here is nicer than we're used to, it was the 90th Annual Polar Bear Swim in which hundreds of people lined up and hurled themselves into the waters of English Bay for a swim. This would likely be an unpopular notion in The Forks back home.
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