bird feeder in the afternoon sun

Strobist info: 580 EX II at 1/1 105mm with full CTO via Pocket wizard, CR. Drop down the ambient to bring some color back in the sky. Setup shot.

Here we had the chance to go to White Rock, BC. What you see in the distance is a peninsula of which the south side (left side in the photograph – I am facing West, obviously to those of you who know which way the Earth is turning) belongs to the USA. Look it up on the map. It’s weird. You can only access that part of the USA via water or on land only from Canada. Amazing place. I wonder how it is to have to cross the border on a daily basis, or get the boat out daily to go to your own country.

I shot a few more pictures there which I will add them to other sections of the website. Here goes Day 140 – White Rock, BC.

White Rock

electricity

little hands, big hands...

Strobist info: 580 EX II CR via on camera 580 EX II. Tweaks in Lightroom.

portrait by the tree

One of the things that this cart reminds me of, is a similar cart my grandparents had in Iasi, Romania, where people had to buy propane by the tank to run their stoves. The rest of the house was heated with wood, but the cooking was done with propane. (I think it was propane; I know it was dangerous and we couldn’t play around those tanks). My grandfather had a hard time in his life. After having fought in WWII and living under Communism, life didn’t offer him many possibilities back in Romania. I remember to this day stories he told us about his combat experience, about growing up under an oppressive regime, about moving from the country to a city, stories about my parents.

One thing I remember was from back when he did not have a place to live. I don’t remember all the details, where my grandparents were living and how he came to accomplish this, but he told me he once saw a bird with a straw in its beak. He realized that she was going to build a home for herself and he said “I’m going to do the same.” So he started building a house. It was amazing to see old photographs of the house and the area in the times when it was built. There wasn’t even a road back there, only empty fields and dirt. When I grew up, there was on one side the Botanical Gardens which is basically an amazingly beautiful park and on the other side a full size soccer field for practice, where he had made a gate in the fence and my brothers and I could go and play soccer and run in the sprinklers or run with the dogs. The first house he built, was sort of temporary and was made of some special kind of home made bricks. They lived there for quite some time until they had finished the other house. This other house was the one where the cooking was now done using propane. What a big change from using wood in a stove. The propane came in tanks that were brought by a truck down the road, outside a small shack that served as a convenience store. Some people would line up there and wait for the truck to come. There was this sort of word of mouth announcement that the truck had come and the rest of the people could send someone (kids or grandkids) with a cart and some money to exchange the tanks. I don’t even remember how often this was. It might have been every two weeks, every week, I don’t know. I do remember that we used to carry each other in this two wheeled cart and run in the street with it. It was a fun toy. We fell a lot since it was not meant to carry people, but that didn’t stop us from playing with it. We didn’t have helmets and there wasn’t any big “warning!” sign on it to “keep away from children”.

Then at some point some neighbors had gas pipes installed and there was no more need for them to go exchange tanks. Technology was advancing.

tank cart

feeding the kids

Note: this post is on the same note as the UFO post some time ago. Take it with a grain of salt.

before bed time

Strobist info: 580 EX II into softbox and 580 EX II clamped (w/ Justin Clamp) onto chair with a few gels of some sorts of blue) via Pocket Wizards. BTW, my iPhone application that triggers flashes via Pocket Wizards is almost done. I’ll be doing some tests and I hope you’ll be able to play around with it soon. More to come.

a little bike ride

Major (obvious) tweaks in Lr.

a bit of moon