A whale we saw with her cub in Witless Bay

Today we got up and went out for a little trip to a park, where we walked through some woods and down to the coast.  There were ruins at the bottom of an old, old town that apparently got washed away in some great storm.  There were foundations left for an awful lot of buildings, and they tended to be very small (think around 10′ x 8′ for an entire house).  Generally all that was left was basically a rectangular frame of stone, but in some cases there would be a little bit of a chimney left over.

A puffin in flight

After that, we went out on a boat to see the whales and puffins on Witless Bay.  They took us out into the bay towards the puffin sanctuary island, and as we made our way towards it we could see flocks of puffins flying in towards it on their way back from the fishing grounds.  Apparently they fly miles every day just to go fishing, and then they all come back to the islands where they nest.  I took the 400mm f/5.6 out on the boat, so I had plenty of reach on them, and managed to get some closeups of the puffins in flight (and I assure you, tracking a fast-moving bird with a 400mm lens on a crop body while standing on a rocking boat is no walk in the park, especially when you’re trying to maintain focus on them).

Puffin portrait

Along the way to the island, we came across a mother whale and her cub.  First we saw the mother’s spray, and then her and the baby both popped up.  They dove a couple of times for food, each time staying down for around ten minutes before coming back up again.  The captain managed to get the boat pretty close to them, and then they both came up to check us out a little, getting awfully close.  When they went down for the last time, I was finally able to get the tail close-up that you see at the top of the page.  Unfortunately, they managed to get just close enough that the 400 was actually a little too long, and I had to go with a pretty extremely close view of the tale.  Nonetheless, I like it.  It’s nice to be able to see the detail in the barnacles on her tail.

Puffins playing king of the ledge

Once we pulled up alongside their island, the puffins were just everywhere.  They had their nests there, all awfully close together, and we got to see them jostling about with each other, and all their other interactions.  Apparently the brighter outer parts of their bills are only for courting, and they actually shed them after mating season.  Then they head off to travel for something like six months, and then come back to the same place every year to meet up with the same mate as always.

A proud looking puffin

After seeing the puffins and whatnot, they took us back, and I got to look through the gift shop, which proved interesting.  Apparently Newfoundland was once a pseudo-country on its own, and they had some old Newfoundland coins for sale.  And, of course, there were all manner of puffin memorabilia to be had, ranging from stuffed puffins to puffin salt shakers to puffin door stops.  After all was said and done, we came back to the room, had another dinner of lentil and rice tacos (this time microwaved, but still good), and I got to the business of processing photographs and making a blog entry.

Swaying grain

Today was basically the last day. We’ll be here most of tomorrow, but I’ll be spending most of it sleeping to combat jet lag, which makes this the last blog post, after pretty much the last day. Another not-doing-much day, mostly. Got up, ate breakfast, went bicycling. Ate lunch, rested some, went running and subsequently shadow boxing. Rested a little while longer, went back to Sammy J. Peppers for dinner with our hosts. I ate the same thing as last time, but this time I found it a little more bearable. Admittedly, my eyes still watered and my nose still ran like crazy, but at least there was no shock about it this time. After that, we went out to the dyke, and I made some landscapes. The landscapes will need some more post processing when I get home (ran into a little too much dynamic range out there), so for now all I have is a sort of semi-abstract of some swaying grain. And that’s it. Next time I post, I’ll be in America again.

Anyways, we were there for an awfully long time, met their daughter and her husband, as well as another old friend of the grandparents, had dinner, let them convince me to eat a couple of peanut butter chocolate squares, and finally came home. That’s the entire day. Now we’re just winding down the Canada trip: tomorrow I’ll be running and biking and shadow boxing again, and then I’m not sure what I’m gonna do. I guess there’s really nothing more to tell.

After I showered and everything, we went out to see our hosts’ daughter’s new house (they were just moving in today).  We gave them a copy of the baby photograph, too, and there were more tears.  I’m gonna have to photograph one of them in the frame before I go, as it does look mighty impressive.  The image was just perfect for black and white, and it came out beautifully as a 12×18.  We left there, and went to have dinner with my grandparents’ Indian friends.  They didn’t cook tonight, or take us to an Indian place, but they still managed to get us somewhere with food that was mighty hot.  We went to a Sammy J. Peppers, which seemed like a pretty normal restaurant, but it turned out hot stuff was their thing.  I got a supposedly mild rice and chicken bowl, and just about died making my way through it (with a few tears, and much grimacing).

We went and stayed at their place for a while, and then made our way home.  We’re going back tomorrow, and I’ll get to meet their daughter and her husband (technically, we’ve met before, but I believe I was about three at the time).  Altogether, not a very full day, but that’s alright.  I feel like I’m pretty much through all the exciting stuff for the trip, and now it’s time to just relax and sleep a lot.  I know I’ll be doing plenty of the latter tomorrow morning, anyways.

A fun, albeit un-identified, little bird

Woohoo, I’m on a roll with the titles! Or not. Anyways, we got up and went back to the Reifel bird sanctuary today, which turned out much differently from yesterday. The bigger birds weren’t generally out today, so I spent a lot more time paying closer attention to the smaller birds that flitted around, and generally made themselves mighty difficult to photograph. First thing on the way in, we saw lots of these little guys. Also, as a sidenote, the Flickr plugin I just installed is acting up, so if you want to see bigger images, you’re gonna have to click through for now, I’m afraid.  [Edit - got it fixed]

A hummingbird, sticking its tongue out

Anyways, these guys were really irritating. They never stayed put for long, and when they were close, they’d usually get so close that I couldn’t focus on them. And did I mention that there was nothing overcast about today? Full bright sun, and the birds kept to the shade, so my flash was getting quite a workout today. Anyways, I finally managed to secure a decent shot of one, and then a hummingbird came along. It moved around much too quickly to get an in flight shot, but I did manage to get sort of a neat one of him sticking his tongue out.

On the way down the path, I saw another bird I’ve never seen before, up in a tree, and managed to get one shot off before he flew away.

Another as-of-yet unidentified bird

We went up to an observation tower after that, and there wasn’t really much worth seeing. On the way down, though, one of the ubiquitous ducklings was just being amazingly adorable, looking like it was trying to build a nest or something, and I just had to take a couple frames. Here’s one of them.

A duckling, settling into its nest

Moving on, there was some variety of little bird hiding in some reeds that I decided to take a shot at. He never came out of the reeds, but I managed to focus through them (hooray for manual focus) for some sort of decent shots.

Another unidentified bird, hiding in some reeds

Unfortunately, the eagles never availed themselves close enough to get a shot, so we closed out the day with a sort of odd, sleek-looking bird. I’m gonna have to get around asking someone to ID this thing for me eventually, as this is probably my favorite shot of the day.

Not sure exactly what this is: looks an awful lot like a blue jay

After that, the day was pretty uneventful. Returned the lens, went to Swiss Chalet for lunch with our hosts. Ran into horrible traffic coming back to Tsawwassen: I think it took us about two and a half hours to make a twenty minute trip. Then it was just dinner, TV, and making a blog post. Not really sure what’s going to happen tomorrow, other than some bicycle riding, so I guess I’ll just end the post.

Also, I do believe I’m starting to like this whole blogging thing. I may just have to keep up the Canadia Blog after the Canadia trip. I’ll just have to make a decent theme for it…

As soon as we got in, we found this guy, my new friend the bald eagle, way up on top of a tree. He was way up there: even with the 400mm lens, that image is cropped in significantly. This meant not only that he ended up small in the frame, but that the angle was less than advantageous. It was really one of those situations where a 600 f/4 and teleconverters would come in handy, but I guess it worked out well enough: certainly better than it would have with my 70-200 f/4. I snapped away with him sitting up and moving his head around for a couple minutes, and then he got up and flew away.

We went on through the park, and ran into some assorted small birds, and also some bigger ones, namely the great blue heron and sand hill cranes. I got some decent shots of those, but they’re not terribly exotic, so I decided not to bother processing any for now. There is one of a smallish bird that I wasn’t able to identify below. Once again, it would have been nice to have a 600 f/4, as that one’s cropped significantly, but once again, it still worked out pretty well. Especially considering how light the 400/5.6 is. It’s sort of sad, I’ve been doing pretty much everything with my own lights lately, and I’d all but forgotten how to make the most of the camera’s built-in meter and on-camera flash. I’m happy to say, though, that I’m getting used to it again, and with some good tripod technique, I’ve been getting some results almost as good as what I get with totally controlled lighting and still subjects (did I mention that I cropped all the bird shots in this post?)

So we left there, with plans to go back tomorrow morning. After that, we picked up some big prints of our hosts’ new granddaughter that I made from Costco, got a frame, and surprised them with it when we got home. They seemed mighty pleased, and I even got a “You’re making me cry,” with a big smile, of course. Then I went for a run, came back, did some shadow boxing, dinnered, and set up a still life of my new old camera, with the nice old-looking hardwood floor in the room I’m staying in (that’s the photograph below). After that, I just watched some TV, put some batteries on the charger, and settled in to write a blog post. I guess that’s the end for now, hopefully there’ll be some great new bird photos tomorrow.

It is of note, though, that it turns out the new camera is not, in fact, a Brownie. It’s just a Kodak Six-20 fold-out camera: near as I can tell, there’s not much in the way of distinguishing nomenclature between all the different cameras that apparently bear the name. The Brownie, however, is sort of a dumbed down version, with a fixed aperture and only two shutter speed options. I got a piece of audio cable from Future Store, and spent a while today trying to shoehorn a Pocket Wizard into the flash system of the camera. I was getting a little frustrated with the “hot shoe,” when I gave one side of it a little tug, and lo and behold, it popped up. Turns out it wasn’t a hot shoe after all, but some variety of viewfinder holder. I guess you can get a looking-glass sort of thing to drop in there and complement the (rather shoddy) waist-level “viewfinder” the camera comes with. But of course, that was decades ago, so I’m not gonna bother trying to find one. Rather, I get to deal with finding film, which I’ll apparently have to buy online, because no one carries 620 roll film anymore.
I know it doesn’t sound like much, but all this camera business was pretty much the focus of my day. I’ll go ahead and leave the rest of the boring details out, but suffice it to say that there’s nothing more to tell about today. No photographs either, because I didn’t really make any. Tomorrow, though, we pick up that 400mm lens in the morning, so there’ll hopefully be some wonderful bird shots adorning tomorrow’s post. Hopefully.

Beach on Vancouver Island

Alright, I really think I’m starting to get better at this whole title thing. Not too much to write about today, I suppose. We got up, and I went and worked out some. It was a sort of interesting experience, because I walked in and was shocked to find that the largest dumbbell they had was only marked “50″, but it was still really big. So I thought “Well, that’s an awfully large fifty pounder,” and went to lift it, not expecting a whole lot of resistance. This is when I remembered that Canadians measure things in kilograms. Seriously, weight manufacturers, would it be that terribly difficult to put units of measure on your dumbbells? So, I spent the rest of my time there having fun trying to figure out how much weight to use for my various exercises…in kilograms. On the bright side, they had a preacher curl machine, and preacher curls are my favorite. Turns out I’m good for ten reps with, if I recall correctly, about 60 or 70 kilograms. After that we all headed down to the nearby beach, and I actually think I got a decent landscape shot of it.

We packed up and left right after that, and got back to the ferry terminal in time to make the 3:15 ferry back to Tsawwassen. The trick to riding the ferry is that they fill up quickly, and you have to be there a good two hours early if you want to get your car on. Last time sort of sucked, because the Horse Shoe Bay ferry terminal is really sparse, dank, and just generally unpleasant. The one we went to today, though, was really nice. Everyone parked outdoors while waiting for the ferry to arrive, and there was a nice little restaurant on the premises, and even a craft fair set up in tents on the grass. So we killed time there, until it was finally time to get onto the ferry. We had lunch on the boat, and then I got a Time magazine and read it the rest of the way to Tsawwassen (about a two hour trip). Closer to our destination, we even saw a bunch of Orcas breaching and jumping out of the water. Also, while buying the Time, I had the might interesting experience of having someone tell me “Your change is $3.50,” and then handing me a bunch of coins. Gotta love Canada.

When we got back, we just came back to the house we’ve been staying in. I went for a run, did some shadow boxing, and then came back and had dinner and chatted some, while most of the family watched Canadian Idol (as if the American one wasn’t enough). Other than that, not much to the day. Tomorrow we’re going to go see some more family friends, and check out some birding places. And hopefully get some film for that crazy old camera.

Yesterday wasn’t too eventful, as it was mostly spent in travel. We got up a little late, and met more hosts’ neighbors’ children. I also got a graduation present from my grapndaparents’ old neighbors, which was awesome. It’s an old Kodak Browny, a foldout camera. Takes 620 roll film (hooray for medium format), and it’s thoroughly manual, in every way. There’s also apparently some odd type of flash contacts on top, so my next project will be to get some 620 film, and see if I can get this thing synced to a Pocket Wizard.

After that, we left and met with my stepdad’s mother, who just happens to live nearby, and then drove up to Whistler. Didn’t do very much that night, just checked into the hotel (for the record, the Tantalus resort is pretty nice) and went out to dinner. This morning, though, I got up early and ran (turns out running in hilly areas is awful to my shins: going downhill puts way too much pressure on them), and then my grandpa and I went on a zipline tour.

The ziplining was mighty impressive. Up above there is my awful attempt at a self-portrait while flying along on a zipline, and Grandpa also zipping along. They took us a little ways up into the mountain, and then down along a bunch of ziplines, over rivers and trees and such. A little scary, but certainly lots of fun. There’s a couple more images from the trip down below.

After that was finished, we met back up with Grandma and Aunt Rhonda, and went up to the top of Blackcomb on a chairlift. We saw a bear on the way up: that’s the first image below. Once we got up, there were lots of landscapes to be made, which I hopefully did at least a decent job at. There’s one down below the bear, that I had lots of fun making: just about fell through some snow, and had a great time trying to keep my tripod steadied. And it was cold. Very, very cold. It was a pretty great relief to make it back to the bottom.

When we finished with the mountain business, we came back down to Horseshoe Bay, and took a ferry over to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Had a nice long ride on the ferry, and got to catch up with some photographs. Then we ate at Swiss Chalet, and finally made it back to the lodge. We’re staying in a cabin-type place now, that’s pretty nice. They’ve got a gym, too, with free weights. First time I’ll get to use those since I’ve been here. And I reckon that about finishes it. Tomorrow I’ll have to post all this, plus another entry for the day.

Anyways, after we got up, we went to Stanley Park, a really massive park in Vancouver. That up there is my Aunt Rhonda, posing on a great big fallen log (they had a big hurricane come through in ’06, did a lot of damage to the forest there). Then there’s a couple of ducks, a big one and a little one, that we found by the Beaver Pond. Also, a nice little shot of the Beaver Pond, and its assorted flora.

After that we headed on up to Grouse Mountain, which, amazingly enough, still had snow on it. Saw a birds of prey show, that’s the first photograph below. Then my grandpa took the camera for a moment and photographed me in…a snow bank! It’s all warm up there, but it was so thick that there’s still some left in places. There were also some (contained) bears, which I added with a nice Colbert-ish twist. And, the obligatory mountain view. I’ll just go ahead and finish there, because it’s late now. Turns out trying to sort through and process photographs and write a lengthy blog entry all in one sitting is just a little too much…