Two days into 2010 I took a trip into the Fraser Valley. I don't like to do a lot of driving but decided to take advantage of a minor spot of good weather to visit a place I'd read about in the news. Nicomen Island is a flat piece of farmland bounded on two sides by the Fraser River and by a tributary called Nicomen Slough. For some reason, it is a chosen spot by both Bald Eagles and Trumpeter Swans Cygnus buccinator to overwinter. Apparently, there were some recent killings of the swans ("Swans shot at Nicomen Slough") so I decided to check it out before they moved on (trumpeter swans are a protected species and no hunting of them is permitted).

This was probably the only decent shot I took "out of the box" per se with my large format setup after a long drive out to seemingly the edge of civilization to meet the waking of dawn.

Now that I live on The Drive and am a laid back East Vancouverite I have no excuse but to go to any festival that shuts down Commercial Drive. I've done the Car Free Festival three years in a row now and while they change it up a bit and have been spreading it out to other neighbourhoods in Vancouver I stick with the original location. After all, it's in my new hood.

Yesterday it was cold, wet and not getting any better when we arrived at Hornby. We had a lodge to warm up and needed to get dry. Not a good start to the day. But this morning: beautiful sunshine and the whole world was awesome.

Here is the running tally of fauna I've seen today in order of seeing: bald eagles, Garry Oak moths, turkey vultures, assorted small passerines, weasel, seals, deer, and lots of ducks.

As for photos? Not so much. Hopefully I am just warming up.

Don't worry, I'm not being stuck in a niche, if you can call a niche being obsessed with taking pictures of people with guns. Guns are not surprisingly popular on Flickr and not just because the U.S. is a gun-crazy culture; Canadians are too. In the past month, Vancouver has been the absorbed with an ongoing gang war that has claimed dozens of lives in brazen hits including the life of a young mother this week. It has brought home the fact that criminality isn't just fantasy, it is very real.

Yesterday was another long day that felt like a pretty compressed shoot at Pacifica Photography. Billed as a learning event, Modelscaping" brought together 16 photographers, four models and an MUA got to learn tips on working with makeup artists (MUAs), keeping a good relationship with your models and how to conduct a shoot. I did not shoot as much as usual this time because when we broke off into groups I was chosen as one of the 'captains' and became responsible for setting up four different shoots in the few hours we had. After a full day, I'm still kind of worn out.