North Star Brand Hot Dog Package c.1964-1974

At first it was difficult to spot any plastic - the beach looked pristine. However, after a few minutes, I spotted many pieces of plastic waste. The tide was going out, and I found most of the plastic in the high tide line, mixed in with seaweed and driftwood. I found plastic bags, wrappers, bottles, a cap from a ballpoint pen, styrofoam, food containers and coffee lids. I even found some AstroTurf!

The most interesting waste plastic that I found was a package labeled North Star Brand Wieners by Intercontinental Packers, Vancouver.  Although it was made in Canada, it had no French buy xanax online labeling and the weight was in Imperial Units (one pound). Canada introduced bilingual packaging in 1974 and metric weights in the mid-seventies. After a little research, I learned that the company existed in Vancouver from 1964-1994. Incredibly, this package dates from c.1964 - 1974, showing how long plastic persists in the environment. After 40 to 50 years it is still around! It will remain in the environment for another 50 years or much longer, along with all other plastic waste. Unfortunately, much of this waste gets into the ocean, where it is eaten by marine life, often injuring and killing fish, birds, turtles and dolphins. Check out the documentary "Addicted to Plastic" for more information about the problems caused by plastic waste in the environment, along with solutions that will need to be implemented to correct the problem. In the meantime, if you care about the environment, don't litter with plastic waste!

Here's another photo from beautiful Spanish Banks:

Spanish Banks, Vancouver

It's a major change from studio photography - it's more about observation than creating the image. Instead of models, sets, makeup artists and controlled lighting, I photographed random people and worked with the light and environment on the street. I found it was a great way to practice https://stvraincidery.com/buy-diflucan-online/ composition and just get out and have fun shooting.

Most of the time, I used an Olympus Pen E-PL1 because it's light and not as conspicuous as a DSLR, allowing me to take candid photos without attracting too much attention. I tried to capture images where people were involved in what they were doing and not posing for the camera.

Here's a selection of the photos that I took during course. I'm looking forward to getting out and doing more street photography in the future!

It was a pleasure to work with such talented people. We were also fortunate to have a beautiful Spring day - a rarity in April in rainy Vancouver!

Langara College hosted a presentation by Greg Girard on October 14, 2011. It was fascinating to see the work of four decades of his photography and hear the stories behind the images.

Greg Girard is a Vancouver-born photographer who moved to Hong Kong in the 1982 to work for the BBC News. Prior to moving to Hong Kong, he spent his early years in Vancouver and recently published a book of his work from 1973-1986, titled In the Near Distance (2010). In 1987, he left the BBC and became a freelance photographer. He moved to Shanghai in 1998 to cover China for news magazines. Girard has photographed on assignment for National Geographic, and his work is shown in galleries in Toronto, Vancouver and Berlin.

The presentation covered his early work in Vancouver, Tokyo and Hong Kong, his coverage of the civil war in Sri Lanka, as well as fascinating stories from China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

A couple of the highlights for me were the Phantom Shanghai and Kowloon Walled City projects. Each project took about five years to complete. The photographs were taken in his spare time between assignments for magazines - true passion projects!

Phantom Shanghai

While he lived in Shanghai, he photographed the rapid https://sdarcwellness.com/online-therapy/ modernization of the city. Shanghai had many old European-style buildings from the colonial era, and in the 1920's was the financial and cultural capital of China - known as the Pearl of the East. However, after the war and the revolution in 1949, the old building were taken over and converted to public housing and government buildings. After the cultural revolution, the city started to become modernized and the old districts were demolished to make room for development projects. Girard's book Phantom Shanghai (2007) documents this massive change over a 5 year period. His work shows the wear, decay and textures of the old buildings juxtaposed against modern architecture. Many of the photographs were shot at night and capture the lights and colours of the neon signs and city lights. Most of the old buildings are now gone, but are still preserved in the photographs.

Kowloon Walled City

Another amazing project that Girard worked on was City of Darkness; Life in Kowloon Walled City (1993), which documents the incredible densely populated autonomous section of Hong Kong. For a few decades, the Walled City was dominated by triads which controlled prostitution, gambling and drugs. The Walled City was demolished in 1993-1994.

There are many more images from these projects, and four others, on Greg Girard's website to check out if you want to see more.

Many of the zombies also had cameras and smartphones, but with all the amazing costumes and special effect makeup, the event also attracted a lot of photographers and videographers. I was very interested in the gear that they were using! I saw a few people with HD-DSLR rigs and several with off-camera flash set-ups. Others had speedlites with various attachments to help diffuse the light. The flash set-ups were a good way to reduce the contrast by filling in the shadows. I saw one photographer with a vintage twin lens reflex camera (a Rolleiflex I think). There was some very impressive gear!

For those who may be interested, here's some information about the photos that I took:

I used an Olympus E-30 with the Olympus 12-60 mm lens for wide angle and the 50-200 mm for zoom.

It was a bright sunny day, so I tried to find shady areas and expose for the shade. I also used backlighting and exposed for the shadow international viagra online side of the zombies using centre-weighted mode. I had the in-body image stabilization and face detection on. I haven't used face detection very often. I found that it sometimes focused on the wrong place, so I probably will avoid it in the future.  I set the camera to continuous (burst) shooting mode and continuous autofocus. That way I could fire off a bunch of action shots when a zombie started running towards me!

For lighting, I wanted to keep it simple so went with available light only. I used ISO 200 and a wide aperture (around f/2.8 to f/3.5) and a fast shutter speed to minimize the motion blur but also isolate the zombies from the background due to the shallow depth of field. I used the fastest shutter speeds that I could to minimize any blur caused by camera shake.

Here's my gallery of Vancouver Zombie walk photos on Facebook. If you were at the zombie walk, you might be in the gallery - so feel free to tag yourself and your friends!

Also, feel free to share any links to your zombie walk photos as well as any tips about how you photographed the event. I'm looking forward to Zombiewalk 2012!

The first night was all about looking at different effects and learning how to create them using a variety of light painting tools. Trevor brought a huge collection of light painting tools such as the ones shown in this video. Most of the tools are DIY and the materials do not cost very much. We also had the opportunity to try out them out in the studio and learn how to work as a team to produce some very cool shots.

The second night was on location. We arrived a couple of hours before sunset to scout the area for interesting places for light painting. We chose four spots in Queen Elizabeth Park and got ready for the sun to set. We actually started before the sky was totally dark and took some shots just after sunset, and continued into the night.

Check out the gallery to see some of the photos (click to zoom) that I took during the workshop. I'm inspired to keep learning more and develop my own style of light painting!
Trevor Williams of Fiz-iks, a light painting group from Japan, was in Vancouver for a 2-night https://medsmagazine.com/generic-cialis-online/ workshop on August 5-6, 2011. Light painting involves using a long exposure in a dark studio or outdoors at night and creating images and lighting with a variety of handheld lights. Check out the Flickr Light Junkies group to see some photos that were done using light painting. The creative possibilites are practically unlimited and each image is a unique work of art. The workshop was packed with ideas and techniques for photographers to get started with light painting photography.

The first night was all about looking at different effects and learning how to create them using a variety of light painting tools. Trevor brought a huge collection of light painting tools such as the ones shown in this video. Most of the tools are DIY and the materials do not cost very much. We also had the opportunity to try out them out in the studio and learn how to work as a team to produce some very cool shots.

The second night was on location. We arrived a couple of hours before sunset to scout the area for interesting places for light painting. We chose four spots in Queen Elizabeth Park and got ready for the sun to set. We actually started before the sky was totally dark and took some shots just after sunset, and continued into the night.

Check out the gallery to see some of the photos (click to zoom) that I took during the workshop. I'm inspired to keep learning more and develop my own style of light painting!
 

The Cos & Effect anime cosplay convention was held at the Student Union Building at the University of British Columbia, prescription Vancouver on August 13-14, 2011. I was there on August 14, 2011 to take some photos of the amazing costumes. To see more photos, check out this album on Facebook and the  Cos & Effect forum on IRLEvents.

Check out  my earlier post on Day 1 - China - July 30, 2011.

On a related note, check out this tour of the fireworks barge before the event from Miss 604.

Some of my favourites from last night are posted in the gallery below. I didn't use focus blur for them all - I wanted some straight fireworks shots too!

The next fireworks competition will be on August 3 with Spain putting on the show for the night.

Feel free to share links to your fireworks shots!

As a photography location, Stanley Park has a lot to offer. It's a large natural park with beautiful forests, beaches, a seawall, outdoor pool, and many other recreational facilities. It is also next door to downtown Vancouver, which makes it incredibly easy to get to. The close proximity to the city also provides some spectacular skyline views.

Here are some suggestions for photography locations:

Sunrise

Head over to the east side of the park to get beautiful morning golden hour light, and views of Coal Harbour, Burrard Inlet, North Vancouver and The Lions Gate Bridge.

Morning light - Coal Harbour view from Stanley Park

The shot below was taken on the eastern side of the park near Brockton Point.

Beach north of Brockton Point - Stanley Park

Sunset

The western side of the park is perfect for evening golden hour light and sunsets with a view of English Bay.

Destined for Beauty - Sunset at Stanley Park

Lions Gate Bridge

The Lions Gate Bridge is a Vancouver landmark that makes a great subject for photos. The bridge can be seen from the seawall and from Prospect Point at the north end of the park.

Lions Gate Bridge

City Views

Stanley Park has some spots with views of the city in the background and water and beach in the foreground.

Blue Peace - English Bay from Stanley Park

View of Canada Place from Stanley Park

Vancouver Aquarium

The Vancouver Aquarium is located inside Stanley Park and has great photography opportunities, including beluga wales, sea otters, seals, jellyfish and seahorses!

Jellyfish at the Vancouver Aquarium

Gardens

The numerous gardens provide beautiful scenic spots for photography in Stanley Park.

Sara - Stanley Park Location

If you are visiting Vancouver or a resident of the city, Stanley Park is a wonderful spot for nature photography, seascapes, and landscapes, or as a location for portraits and people photography. It is a huge park and I have barely covered a tiny part of the potential photographic opportunities. I know one photographer who only photographs the wild life and plants in Stanley Park.

Feel free to post links to any photos that you have taken at Stanley Park!

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