I came off the red-eye this morning from Vancouver to Toronto and went straight to work (for the fourth time this year–oof), and wondered if my day at the office would seem to go on forever. Then I remembered today I was to have a leisurely lunch with JMV, who I met in Vancouver in 2005 and happened to be here while I was there this week. We somehow managed to get together today in Toronto.

I was fooling around with the two photos I took of him and moved them around in Photoshop when I stopped at this. I quite like it. I didn’t set it up like a diptych, but it turned out that way.

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Tonight was one of the funniest Vandigicam outings I’ve ever been on. I came up with this idea just before the weekend, something silly that served as a break from any sort of “serious” photography: a Photo Scavenger Hunt that I modified for the group.

A bunch of us met at Havana on Commercial Drive, and I mashed us together in a booth and declared us one group instead of competing ones. By the time we had drinks and nosh and chatted it was already nearly time for the scheduled rendez-vous at Rime, and thankfully Jason had the foresight to send us in that direction to see if there was anyone waiting for us. There we found Lynn and as the light was starting to fade, we headed over to a wall mural to take our silly photos. The pic above was the first one, and as Cliff says (click on the photo for Flickr comments), “It only went downhill from here. Packing a phonebooth, Kiddie gelato scoops, car cramming and familiar strangers. ”

Ah, it’s good to be back Vandigicamming again. Everyone’s such a good sport!

One of the reasons why I chose Commercial Drive is because it’s sort of an “anything goes” kind of neighbourhood. I figured it was the least likely place to encounter anyone telling us to point the cameras the other way, and we’d find some eclectic backgrounds to shoot in. I came up with a list of 10 photo tasks that wouldn’t get us into trouble, fairly innocuous things such as squeezing into a phone booth. What we found was that even while we were stuffing ourselves into the booth, passersby didn’t even bat an eyelash at us! Like it was the most commonplace sight in the world to see people pack into a small space like sardines and take photos of themselves. We couldn’t stop laughing, which may have sent the locals scurrying away.

I blame the full moon for all this tomfoolery.

As Cliff mentioned, we did make a gelato stop before I got us to cram ourselves into the smallest car of our group (Janos’ Ford Escort) for a self-portrait. A random person in the neighbourhood where he parked asked us if we wanted our picture taken, and it turned out Janos recognised her from his days at the University of Victoria! So, not exactly a random stranger.

Did I mention there was a full moon?

It was Janos’ first Vandigicam meetup (what a first impression! “These people are MAD!”) and only Lynn’s second, so it was an interesting group dynamic. I love it when people are this game!

The others have yet to post their photos online. Until then, this is what I’ve got uploaded: vandigicam_tomfoolery

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Tonight was my first Vandigicam event since Code Blue a year ago. Vandigicam’s grown a lot since last summer, and I knew maybe half of the bunch who turned up at the Inukshuk at English Bay, but everyone was very friendly and a good sport about having their photo taken. Me, I’m still a bit squirmy about being on the receiving side of the lens, but Mark made me laugh and put me at ease. See, I even like this photo!

The crowd piled into La Bodega afterwards and I stayed late chatting with Bill, Jason, and Matt until we were subtly nudged out the door. It’s good to be back with the Vandigicam crew!

Portrait Throwdown III thread and photos.

[Update: Sunday, Sep 3 -- put together a photoset for the Portrait Throwdown. A work in progress.]

[Update: Wednesday, Sep 6 -- the podcast for the event is up at audihertz.com!]

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I’m quite fond of this picture, but I don’t think many people have seen it. I took it last June on a photowalk around Jericho Beach in Vancouver for the Intertidal Arts Project, created to make “ocean floor art” to be washed away after the lowest tide of the year at 1:30pm.

Apparently there were a bunch of us there, but we were all spread out along the beach and didn’t run into each other. Except I did find Cliff, and Rachael magically emerged from the ocean, sans cell phone (retrieved later by another beachcomber!).

It was a gorgeous day at the beach. We even got caught by the tide!

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They recently did a second Portrait Throwdown, and this is one of my favourites, by Rachael.

The Toronto Flickr group is meeting next week for a photowalk followed by a gathering in the Green Room, but I’d give a big toe to be back in Vancouver with the Vandigicammers. They’re a smaller, more close-knit group, but very inclusive and friendly and a total riot! I miss them! *sniff*

If you’re in the Vancouver area and would like to join in their, ah, antics, check out the group in Flickr: http://flickr.com/groups/vandigicam/

Alternatively, check out their webpage: http://vandigicam.com/

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Brilliant!

This one’s doctored by Filmgoerjuan. See here for comparison to the original movie poster.

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I’m VERKLEMPT — how could I not be after seeing this???

Last Saturday the people in Vandigicam threw a farewell party for Laura, the lady who started the group back in March. She’s seen Vandigicam grow and flourish, and in a day or so she’ll be returning to her home in Atlanta — earlier than planned. I really wished I could’ve been there to take part in the surprise bash, but it looks like they moved the mountain partway to Mohammed because Mohammed couldn’t get to the mountain.

I went to New York over the weekend and phoned them briefly when I was sitting on a Central Park bench Saturday evening. I think they knew how much I wanted to be there, and that there was no reason more compelling than why I could not.

Long live photography!

Did I mention I was verklempt? What a stellar bunch of people! *sniff*

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We were very protective of “our” bench during HSBC Celebration of Light. This was before the China’s fireworks, on Aug 3. Two days later, I was booking a flight to New York because they found a tumour in David’s left lung.

Life changed literally overnight for David and me.

Here’s a timeline:

Aug 5 (Fri) – after feeling ill for weeks, David finally goes to the ER, they X-ray him, find tumour, he calls me in Vancouver and I book a flight
Aug 6 (Sat) – fly from SeaTac to JFK, go straight to hospital, they can’t find any doctors to biopsy him
Aug 9 (Tue) – biopsy, preliminary report is lymphoma
Aug 12 (Fri) – biopsy results in diagnosis of small cell lung cancer, for which the survival rate is a shocking 20%
Aug 16 (Tue) – meet with oncologist, he books David a bed at Mercy Hospital for immediate treatment
Aug 17 (Wed) – David gets tested for evidence of spreading and his first bout of chemotherapy
Aug 18 (Thu) – reports show there is no spreading into bones or brain
Aug 19 (Fri) – David is released to continue his treatment as an outpatient, official diagnosis is limited-stage small cell lung cancer.

August 25: David’s first day of radiology

This group photo makes me smile every time I look at it. It’s also a “pre-diagnosis” photo. I’m trying not to think of time in terms of ‘pre-diagnosis’ or ‘post-diagnosis’, but it’s how my brain keeps track of things involuntarily these days. I know each day forward is positive and over time the diagnosis date will slowly become less significant to us.

Here’s to taking more photos, and celebrating the good times in our lives.

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In the span of one day I’ve uploaded one more photo of Van Dusen Gardens.

Now that’s progress.

Actually, I did a whole lot of other necessary things wedding-related so Flickr was relegated to the backburner. Makes me wonder how I managed to hold a full-time job, take university courses, and occasionally take part in extra-curricular activities in previous years. Actually, all I have to do is read the archives in this very blog — those entries were all textual grumblings. Let’s not go back there.

Here we have a hypersaturated photo of lily pads in the pond near the entrance to Van Dusen Gardens. I took the saturation as far as it would go on the slider, something I’ve not done before because it usually blows out all the details in the photo. For some reason beyond my neophyte understanding of Photoshop it brought out the glints of sunlight, making it look fairytale-ish. All that’s missing is the frog.

UPDATE: OK, finished uploading the rest of the garden photos. You can find them here:

Vandigicam at Van Dusen Gardens

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Rachael‘s birthday was on Tuesday, so in the afternoon we (being Rachael, Pidge, Richard, and I) went for a photowalk through Chinatown, shooting with the theme of RED.

Hendrik, who was in Edinburgh that day, also participated in the red-themed photowalk, taking some amazing shots around the city. Seeing his Edinburgh photos brought back memories, I tell you. Edinburgh was my home for 18 months before moving on to Glasgow, where the people are more ‘shoot-from-the-hip’, if you get my drift.

Seeing Red in Edinburgh – Hendrik
Seeing Red – Rachael
Red Tuesday – Richard
Goddess Spiral’s Birthday – Pidge
Rachael’s Red Series* – me

Later that day, two groups of us dined at Sala Thai: Rachael’s birthday gathering, and a group of six I organised for one of those rare let’s-catch-up-over-nosh sessions. Something we hadn’t done since December, when David was visiting and I wanted them to meet him. It was funny because when Rachael’s friends sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her, we turned into a little cheering section at our end of the restaurant.

I wanted Rachael and Vicky to meet, because they’ll both be photographers at my Vancouver wedding reception. All I have to do is get Ben to meet both of them. Which reminds me: now’s about the time I should start a wedding website, with all the details as they unfold.

*argh, I discovered too late that I uploaded the wrong photos to Flickr… I’d recently downloaded iPhoto 5.0.3 and it had a problem with photo rotation. So I downloaded the fixed update, 5.0.4, but when I re-imported the photos this of course deleted my Photoshop corrections like cropping and colour correction. Grrrr…. if I’d noticed earlier, I would’ve deleted them, re-modified, then re-uploaded. Alas.

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