Convocation and Valedictorian Speech

After 2 very stressful (but in hindsight very quick) years, I graduated from the BCIT Accounting Diploma Program. Both sets of parents came out for the ceremony along with my lovely Kathryn, which really reinforced what a special event it was for me. I have several years of part-time schooling to go before I complete my degree and then my designation, but this certainly marked the cut-off point where I quit worrying about returning to VFX and officially began my new career.

The ceremony was in a church near the BCIT campus which comfortably sat the board and top instructors from several programs along with 230-ish graduates and 1200-ish guests, so that seemed like a good excuse to try out New Professional George and deliver the Valedictorian address. A few years ago I would have hidden in the back, but now I am quite comfortable talking infront of large groups of people, so long as I have time to prepare.

Since BCIT was very clever and recorded the whole ceremony, I have easy access to my speech, and to save anyone else from having to sift through 2+ hours of people in funny hats receiving awards, I have edited out just my speech below:

Whales of 2014

Over the holidays, Geordie taught me how to edit video in Premiere. So I took all my 2014 whale and wildlife footage that I took while working and made a highlight video.  2013's highlight video is here. Geordie did the steadying and fancy stuff as that was beyond me but I am pretty pleased at the result. 

It was really hard knowing what to put in, what to take out and accepting that what looked fantastic was sometimes too shakey to actually look any good. I shot over 10 gigs of video this season alone so this is only a snapshot. It may change the way I video wildlife now that I am thinking more in terms of what it will be like on 'the big screen'.  I'll probably try to shoot more steady stuff. We shall see...

The footage was shot between April and October of 2014.  It features an amazing encounter with a humpback and her calf, bouncy Southern Resident Orca, active Bigg's Orca and the lovely seals, birds and sea lions that also make their home in the Southern Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands.  I am hoping that I get better at wildlife videography every year.

New Years Visitors and the Polar Bear Swim

 We had some great visitors to begin the new year with my cousin Sarah and her husband Aric passing through Vancouver just in time to start the year out by leaping into the sea. We hadn't seen these two since their wedding, so it was really nice to have a full afternoon to catch up and have a proper visit.

 On our way to the water we had the fun of seeing the hovercraft parked on the beach. We always enjoy seeing this thing in the area, so naturally the one time it was open to visitors we were too busy and cold to wait in line for a proper look.

Rounding out our day, here's our GoPro camera footage which Kathryn shot as we charged into the water. Since its in a dive housing, the audio is pretty terrible, so don't crank up your computer volume to try and hear our mutterings and curses, but its as close as you can get to being there without actually having been there.
For those of you that are impatient, things actually get moving around the 1 minute mark.

Killer Whale Highlights of 2013.

Over the winter Geordie put together a lovely highlight reel from the footage I took over April through to October of my days on the water.  Working at Wild Whales Vancouver I got lots of opportunity to show off these animals and take their pictures.  Not only killer whales (both Bigg's and Southern Residents) but also humpback and minkes whales, harbour seals, steller and california sea lions. I need to work on my bald eagle footage.  Geordie really liked the jumps that I was lucky enough to get, especially as I don't see that kind of activity every day.  They are a bit statisticaly overrepresented in the video.

I hope to take lots more footage of orcas and all the animals out there.  I already have started on a collection for 2014 showcase.

Siwash Rock Underwater Time Lapse

So after alot of testing, retesting, buying the right equipment, re-testing and fails Geordie and I did it!  We have an underwater time lapse!  It worked out incredibly well especially for a first time outing where we really didn't what to expect. There were so many variables that could screw it up.  Large waves, odd tides - though we checked the weather and tide tables.  Also people horsing around with it or even stealing it. Geordie hid it but it was visible from a very public path.  It is obvious in the video where we set it down.  It is facing Stanley Park's Siwash Rock on the mussel beds.  We had to be careful minimizing our ecosystem impact gingerly climbing over the little shells to set it down and then pick it up.

Here are two stills taken from the timelapse.  We caught in several places schools of small fish.  I don't know what kind.  I was really hoping to get a crab or starfish crawling over it but no luck.  This area is usually crawling with starfish but something is killing them off and this spot was completely bereft of them.

I love the rainbow and the gods rays refracting through the water.  The light highlights the mussels and kelp in a glorious way. I hope you enjoyed these photos and timelapse.  Geordie and I are brainstorming ideas where to set it down so if you have your own thought of a good underwater spot please let us know.  It just has to be accessible by foot and relatively easy to hide.

Orcas in Vancouver

On June 14 I didn't have to go far to find orcas.  Transients came into English Bay and then proceeded under Lions Gate Bridge and continued past Stanley Park into Burrard Inlet.  They turned around at the Main Street Docks just East of Canada Place before heading back out the way they came before crossing English Bay towards Spanish Banks and Point Grey.  It looked like they were doing some hunting under the bridge and at Spanish Banks too.  On the hydrophone we were able to pick up some vocalizations which was a nice surprise.  Here is one of them against the back drop of West Vancouver.

 

I shot some video which made it on the CBC National News.  The clip below is much better than their raw, unstabalized, it airs in onr hour cut.  Geordie edited it very nicely.  I hope by the end of the fall we can put another clip together.  If you are interested in whale watching I work at Wild Whales in Vancouver and there are lots of trips going out.

 

As always with embedded video, if you have trouble playing it, just right click and choose "Watch on Vimeo HD" to let it open in another tab. I find our various flash/ad blockers sometimes stop video from playing otherwise. -G

Ecuadorian Rainforest

This post has come unforgivably late.  Over a year ago Geordie and I took a plane to Coca, a motorboat down the Napo River, a half hour hike through the jungle and then a dug out canoe through waterways unknown to our wood and thatch hut at La Selva in the Amazon Rainforest. 

Beyond the BC interior it is one of the most exotic and remote places we have ever been.  There was no electricity at night. Everything was built from native materials.  And the wildlife..... nighthawks, hoatzin, frogs and Orapendula birds nesting all around us along with anacondas and howler monkeys, bats, capucins, while owls, tarantulas, agoutis and whip scorpions came out in some of the blackest nights that we have ever experienced. 

Scuba at Warbonnet

One day during the August long weekend Geordie and I did our first Vancouver Island Scuba Trip.  To be specific, a fairly North Vancouver Island trip.  We got up early in the chilly and foggy August morning to drive to Port McNeill.  We joined 2 snorkelers and our 2 dive buddies at Fun Sun Divers. The skies cleared half way through our 2nd dive.
I'm still a nervous diver but I think that is partly due to so many layers that I get constricted and lose mobility so I end up fighting myself.  Also with all the layers I need more weights than I can comfortably carry to begin with.  Layers are necessary as I get cold easily. The 2nd dive I got rid of some layers keeping just regular clothes and my 200g weight mountain gear and had a much better, more relaxed and longer dive despite the same amount of weight.  I need more dive experience to get the balance right as well as more comfortable being so far down (only 47 feet max depth but still....)

The picture below is at Warbonnet which was a great spot full of basket sea stars, fish and chitons that look like oily rainbows. 

Cypress Mountain Time-Lapse

When I to do this again next year, I'll let the camera start earlier and run later as you can clearly see I missed the sunrise and sunset, but I still count it as a successful test that returned some fun results.

This is just the raw footage out of the camera as well, without any fancy stabilization, colour correction or other fancy tricks.

Galapagos Highlight Reel

 Our trip to Ecuador highlight reels will comprise of two videos. The second will feature the Amazon Rain forest. The first is completed and posted here (and on Vimeo) and is all about the Galapagos Islands. It shows some of the unique and rare flora and fauna that is native to the archipelago. Most of the species and landscapes shown have already been featured in other posts. So if there is something that catches your eye check there for more information.

Music: The Porcupine Tree "The Colour of Air"

Galapagos Sea Lion Highlight Reel

The power of cute compels you! It will be very hard not to say 'Awwww' as you watch the highlight reel focusing on the Galapagos Sea Lion. We ended up with so much great footage of them that we felt they deserved their own video. The individuals in the video are from several islands. There are male beach masters, sub adults, females with nursing pups and even a 3 day old pup that still has the umbilical cord.

The Galapagos Sea Lion does not leave the archipelago. They have no predators there which makes them fearless. It is possible to get very close to them but by law you must stay 2 metres away. 

Song is 'A Well Deserved Break' by Morcheeba.

Telegraph Cove Highlight Reel

We've finished the basic cut of our Telegraph Cove highlights and rather than sit on it and noodle stabilization for another month or two I thought I'd get it uploaded and see how everyone likes it.

A few quick notes about it. The intro staccato shots were meant to be part of a more lengthy and fluid time lapse, but our trailcam was an unruly machine and this was the best we got out of it. We've since upgraded the firmware and its working properly, but if anyone is interested in getting one themselves, drop me a line and I'll help you avoid some of pitfalls we found with the damn things.

Also some of our shots are still a little shakier than I'd like, but given they were mostly shot through long telephoto lenses with shakey hands from the pitching deck of a boat and looking into ever-changing water, I will call any result a success :P

The 120-foot Slip n' Slide

Back in the 60s a toy company made a sheet of plastic that you could connect to a hose and let kids slide on in the backyard. And this summer a friend of ours laid out 120 feet of plastic sheeting covered in liquid soap and seawater to create the best damn slip n' slide ever.

Setup along the seawall on one of the Celebration of Lights fireworks nights, the slip n' slide drew quite a bit of attention but Denny is a pretty groovy guy and made it open to all comers, so there were all sorts of kids and passersby hurling themselves down it along with us.
It also seemed like the ideal moment to get some extra mileage out of my waterproof/crashproof/idiotproof pocket camera so we have a little montage of some of the highlights below. (or watch it in 720p here)

Rumor has it that the slide will get extended by another 60 feet (as you can see in the video, most people still had a bit more momentum at the end than expected) for a reappearance in late August.

Pride Parade Timelapse

This summer once again provided its week of parades and fireworks to celebrate gay pride and explosions. We've covered this in previous years, so for a change this year we set up our new time-lapse trailcam at the side of the parade route and let it take a picture every 30-60 seconds for 5 hours or so. The results are below and set to suitably cheesy techno music. If you don't like the size of the available preview (or if the embedded video gives you trouble), you can see it in glorious 720p here.

These sorts of trailcams are designed and intended mostly for hunters and 99.9% of the sample pictures I could see from them when we were casing them out on the internet were either 10-point bucks or turkeys. So I think its pretty great to put them to the test in a display of urban love and acceptance :P

We'll be shooting quite a selection of time-lapses in the coming weeks, so hopefully everyone following along at home can enjoy them too and won't be too sick of them by the time we're done :)

Denman Street Summer Time Lapse

Last summer when Kathryn was out in the field I left my camera running on an intervalometer for 24 hours so that the camera took a picture every minute from midnight on July 13th to midnight on July 14th.

That time lapse is embedded below, or you can check out a higher quality version of it here.

Its a fairly unremarkable day on Denman street as seen from our bedroom window, but I think even mundane time lapses are pretty incredible things. Even though we didn't have the striking clouds I would have liked that day, watching the shadows of the buildings and the window washing crew across the street is still pretty cool. I'm hoping to do a lot more of these this summer so stay posted if you like this sort of stuff as well.

Sweetwaters

This is our last video post from Africa so for those of you reliving your trip from home, thanks for being there and making the tour everything it was. The DVDs will hopefully be done by early to mid September and mailed out shortly thereafter. If you have already sent me your address then kick back and relax, if you have not gotten around to sending me a mailing address, please do so in the next week or so.

Sweetwaters was the last stop in our tour for many of our group, so I figured it was a good choice to end our recapped journey with as well. It was a very nice mellow place where there were almost as many animals coming to the waterhole infront of our tents as there were to be seen on game drives.

Music: "Now We Are Free" by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard

Speaking of tents, the picture below shows the safari version of 'roughing it' with Kathryn tucked infront of our tent. The waterhole is directly infront of our tent and was almost constantly packed with giraffes, waterhogs, impala and lots of storks and ibises as well as night visits from buffalo and rhinos.
This is the interior of our tent, complete with separate bathroom with toilet and shower to further illustrate that a 'tent' can mean very different things in different places. We slept very peacefully here except on a few points in one or two nights when the shrieks of tree hyraxes jolted us awake, they have a very weird call that we were totally unprepared for.

Ndutu

Ndutu was our first major stop on the trip and made a huge impression on Kathryn in particular. The wildebeest migration was in full swing and the first few babies were just starting to be born. Top that off with huge herds of zebras and gazelles with hyenas and lions chasing everything and you have a pretty potent situation. Music: "Death is the Road to Awe" by Clint Mansell

This is our little cabin at the lodge which was quite different from other lodges in that there was no perimeter fence or ditch or anything keeping other animals out. Earlier in the year this cabin and several others before it were out of use while a pride of lions took a fancy to using our porch for shade for several days. Our tour operator Bob said that he's seen elephants sticking their heads into the dining area and there were zebras, cape buffalo and giraffes wandering around nearby.
At the end of every day we'd relax by the fire, watch the passing animals and feed popcorn to fiscals and weavers. There are several slow-motion shots of this in the video above but I thought this picture also nicely captures the feeling of the campfire area and also shows the longer row of cabins in the background helping give a better idea how the whole spot fits together.

Samburu

Samburu was wonderfully unlike many of the other places we went as it was nearly all desert with a thin river running through in. There were a great deal of unique animals here such as painted dogs, beisa oryx, gerenuk, grevy's zebras and many more. We also had an unforgettable encounter with a family of elephants crossing the river; although there are crocodiles in the water, they have nothing to fear from them.

Music: "Discworld Theme" by Keith Hopwood & Phil Bush

The lodgings at Samburu were very nice little cabins. You can see me resting on the front porch of ours below and during the day young vervet monkeys would delight in climbing the spindly tree on the rigth and then either dropping down to the ground or running around on our roof.

This panorama (click it to enlarge) is the front view off of our patio. It both contrasts the dryness of the mountains beyond with the greenery flourishing along its banks. These picture should also help illustrate the incredible flooding that can happen in this area; a few weeks after we had left the river flooded so badly that people were having to take shelter on the roofs of the cabins to avoid the rising water and crocodiles. The lodge itself apparently sustained quite a bit of damage which is certainly a shame as it was a lovely place and everyone working there was so friendly.

Lakes Naivasha and Nakuru

We visited two lakes in Kenya in the space of a few days. We would have very much liked more time at both, but that was the case with everywhere we went. The highlights of Lake Naivasha was a boat ride where we could watch hippos swimming and see lots of birds. Lake Nakuru offered flamingos and white rhinos as well as our only striped hyena sighting.

Music: "Crossing the Bridge" by Jerry Goldsmith.

Lake Naivasha had stunning grounds that we were able to explore during the day provided we were alert for any irate Cape Buffalo. After dinner we had a guard escort us all back to our rooms to be sure we weren't attacked by startled grazing hippos; this was our only time in life we have been able to say we tipped our hippo guard. We also had some lovely encounters with grazing giraffes and duelling waterbuck on the grounds.
Our room at Lake Nakuru was perched on a little hill wher we could overlook the area and wander around. There were several bird feeders on the grounds and one of the highlights was the nest of a paradise flycatcher we could see through the branches. There were displays of local dancing in the evening and we enjoyed the pool during the hottest parts of the day.

Ngorongoro Conservation Area

We've touched on the Ngorongoro Crater in the past and although we only had a few hours in it, there was a huge range of wildlife to see in there along with some unforgettable encounters that we've highlighted in particular.

Music: "Crossing the Bridge" by James Newton Howard

The lodge we stayed at Ngorongoro was very nice, but being nestled in the forest and on the edge of a gorge, it was impossible to get good exterior pictures, so you'll all have to make do with a few interiors. The bar area below was host to a group of acrobats and dancers that evening which were quite impressive and the view from the deck out over the crater was a joy.
The rooms were quite nice and cozy. I had my birthday at this particular lodge and it was also the birthday of our friend Roger, so there was a fun evening of drinks and merriment.