Welcome to British Columbia. Fall is in full mode rain to day but sun tomorrow.

So get out and shoot the leaves and if you can try to isolate the light trees behind a black background to make your shots stand out.

More on defining space. What space are you in?

What can you do with this space. What is shape form balance?

This was taken at an abandoned gas station in West Vancouver.

It’s been a busy few weeks and I am back.

Check out the Waterpod Project in NYC. A sustainable waterborne living environment on the waterways of New York

http://www.thewaterpod.org/about.html

Conceptualized by artist Mary Mattingly this project brings ideas of past works into the process while elicting the collaboration of other artists. Two artists from Vancouver Mira and Derek Hunter are involved as well.

Live to ride article scanned and posted in Sept 08 Post scroll to it

I recently scanned this classic article from an old issue of Mountain Bike magazine 1989! It inspired me to explore in wild areas. If the resolution is too low for you and you can not read it I’ll re-scan.

Three bikers traverse an Alaska mountain range, raft rivers, bushwack … lots of fun… of course in the name of adventure ( fast and light). Get into these wild areas before governments develop these habitats.

Animals hunt for survival ……. Ignorant humans do it for the trophy.

Can you? Do you support this? Our provincial Liberal Campbell government does.

Film maker Twyla Roscovich produced this excellent video on Grizzly bears and current hunting practices. Take a look……

The Grizzly Bear hunting moratorium has been off for a few years now. It is unfortunate that this hunt occurs can you stop it? Do you care? What can you do? 2000 Bears have died since it was lifted. What is interesting and sad there are no clear numbers of the bear population so who knows if hunters are forcing the population into extinction?

I was fortunate to spent a summer in Glendale Cove on Knight Inlet at Dean Wyatts operation. Gained a total appreciation for wildlife in all of nature. Was in the area from March to September and saw a pretty full cycle very interesting once in lifetime wildlife interactions. Eg. Grizzly sow piggybacking a cub across a river. Kayaking with thousands of pink Salmon, Wolves chasing a deer over a bluff, wolves forcing a group of deer into the Ahunwati bay and then running the shoreline of the bay to intercept their landfall eagles fishing between ocean swells and yes even the birthing of seal pups…. yeah these things really happen while you text message on your blackberry but maybe not for long its up to you……..

I was talking to my Persian video rental store owner, he thought it pretty disgusting the way the recent elections were held.
Iran has a few problems…it was known beforehand a honest election would be hard to sustain.

A group of men known as the Guardian Council decides who is permitted to run for president in Iran.

We also know that the campaign did not take place in “fair and healthy” circumstances, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims.

Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based media watchdog group, calls Iran the “biggest prison” for journalists in the region.

The government regularly jails dissidents.
On the eve of the election, Web sites were blocked and cellphone text messaging was disrupted.

A wave of arrests (numbering in at least the dozens) has been reported since Friday; on Sunday afternoon, a 28-year-old journalist in Tehran told one of our reporters that members of the Iranian intelligence service had just come to her office and taken away a colleague.

Washington Post Op-Ed piece June 17/09 via Radio Free Europe

These seem like old tactics pre WWII in Germany, Tactics for countries that have no freedom of speech and run by despots. Familiar? Just void the intelligentsia.

I was fortunate to be a guest of Tatchu Adventures. BC surfing excellence hosted by owner Clay Hunting who also along with great surfing supplies gourmet meals all……. can you believe it ….. in a wild BC west coast environment.
The ragged green edge of the world … Can not beat it!

The west coast of the Brooks juts out into the Pacific about 17 kilometres, a ragged topographical discontinuity, its west face runs 10 kilometers along the Pacific. Its submarine aspect is gently sloping so as to produce perfect surf. Spring, Fall and wild Winter really pump. Just ask Clay and surfer/filmmaker Aaron Jackson.

It’s an experience you won’t want to miss. We Zodiac’ed out from Fair Harbour and hung a right at Union Island and scooted by the Bunsby’s to the west side of the Brooks. Boards were tied down and spray was flying as the Zodiac’s hull cut through infinite wave trains of breaking swell.

In the 1990’s the area was thoroughly documented “The Brooks Refugium Project” was a a multi-disciplinary study of this unique peninsula. Why is unique? It is thought that the Brooks missed the last ice age so it has plants and terrain not affected by glaciation. So …. stories can be told from this gathered data.

Check this link out. Grocery owner in Eastern Europe takes photo from an internet blog and uses it for advertising. Every photographers nightmare.

Online Photographer

Watermark your images.

You ever think of about how good something was? I think of that sometimes you don’t realize it’s importance/value until it is gone.

Common sense tells us that OIL can last only so long. It is not infinite. A lot of good things come from oil yet we are squandering this resource every day on it as fuel.

We synthesize it for gas and waste 20 litres of it per year on oil changes per vehicle.

We are becoming the tools of our tools

We are being programed by our computers

We are being bought by the supermarket

We are being seen by television

We are being driven by the cars
The universal dictatorship of cars.

I read in the newspapers as very sad terrible news that the car industry is in crisis

and they are selling less and less cars, and it is sold as a Tragedy.

Which is the proof that the machines are mastering us.

This fact is quite revealing, because it breaks the last remains of human common sense.

It should be received as good news: Fewer Cars thats great.

Its good news for nature, because it would be less poison.

Its good news for walkers – the prehistoric human beings who still use their legs, instead of wheels – because we will be less killed.

But it is sold as a tragedy: A world without cars, can you imagine?

Eduardo Galeano author “The Open Viens of Latin America”

Do you have children?

Still feeling a might down from the results of the election. And its just not me its plenty of others too. The Tyee

I was born in Vancouver. I have traveled to practically every corner of this province in basically every mode of transport possible.
This province is special very few have intimate knowledge of the geography. Its physical, biotic, cultural attributes and their relationships. The ecosystems as an example are profound here but they won’t be if wilderness development continues. The realization of this appears to be way beyond the scope of the average person.

Those that do realize the importance will defend it. Those who do not will not.

How do you defend it … be active … show that you care … vote … be vocal

The prevalence today is potential worth in economic outcome. If you can’t make a buck from it it is worthless.

Run of river power projects. Unsustainable ocean based fish farming. Off shore oil development Coastal Tanker Traffic

There are 4 Million people in British Columbia

2 Million did not vote in last weeks provincial election.

Change did not occur. Do you want change to occur?

Do you want an oil pipe line to Prince Rupert from Alberta?

Do you want oil tanker traffic on our coast?

Do you want offshore oil development? Do you want to sit in traffic every day or ride a train to work?

Do you want a pristine province?

Gord the naked truth.

Yes it is election time in British Columbia.

We have major homelessness, inadequate public transportation europeans laugh at us…even quadrupling the Port Mann is not going to help, poor health care, poor education, Paramedics do not have parity, The Grizzly Bear hunt still takes place, Industrialized corporate salmon farming is destroying our wild salmon stocks, we still export raw logs, we have no endangered species act, and an 8 dollar minimum wage could you live on 64 dollars a day?

but we have the Olympics next year. 3 weeks I would have much rather had things taken care of at home seen those billions put into a Bullet Train out to Chilliwack and the poor taken care of.

“How is it made?” Not, “Why is it made?” That’s not nearly as interesting to me. In the initial moment, how was this made? What happened? What happened when the artist put the pencil or pen or brush to paper? And because it is almost impossible, when you work on paper, to correct it, that initial moment is crucial. It interests me that somebody had the courage and the idea to make that original mark.

USA’s foremost collector of contemporary works on paper

About art, you take it to the table, your idea, put it the paper, and it can’t be undone that inspiration with purpose or sometimes without its the pure volition, commitment to to the process the beginning of something, a start for something new

that might, just might give change to another venue, thought, process.

Its looking between the lines, taking the time to do so, and not asking the obvious.

Trains bring and trains take away.

I’ve wanted to free shape from it’s ground, and then work the shape so that it has a definite relationship to the same space around it…….so that it has clarity and a measure within itself of it’s parts …….and so that, with colour and to reality the shape finds it’s own space and always demands it’s freedom.”
Jasper Johns Akademie der Kunste Berlin 1999

While I was Pollocking in the basement Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) today with cans of enamel spreading with sticks brushes and rollers on a black floor in waves of texture in
flowing layers with varying degrees of opacity .. freeing actually. I was thinking of Jasper Johns. I guess its all about being feeling free. if you know what I mean

Recent music Great Canadian Band Great Lake Swimmers Rocky Spine currently listening to Dorfmeister/Kruder

Darcy and I had started from Nanaimo driving over the spine of the island west to Tofino. Then we headed out to Vargas Island and spent a night. It was January.

Paddling NW over to Whaler Islets we had a low rolling swell running at 6 feet or so spaced with 100 foot crests not a ripple on them. Semi Foggy.

When we got back to Vargas Darcy suggested we head over to Hotsprings Cove on the other side of Flores the following day. I said OK.

Up really early the next morn really frosty, light fog but you knew it was going to clear. The morning blue was just hinting through the mist.

We got beyond Whaler and the breeze started to build from the south.

We were in a double and by this time between walls of water…we were way out there to avoid any breaking shoals. The wind helped us on our way. Every-time we got on top of the crests (they were way less than a hundred feet between now) the wind was just howling, way down in the trough it was silent. We arrived at the hotspring. I was really glad Darcy was bracing in the back.

The next day a front was firmly established and we snaked our way through the narrow passages at back end of Flores. Later we got out in the open at the bottom end of Clayoquot. It was really interesting pretty full conditions we ended up paddling over the reef wash under The Catface which seemed way safer than going out further. The waves were breaking right over Mink Islet. We should have stayed in Ahousat eh but did not. Had a bit of standing wave action as we got closer the Vargas from the exiting water from the Meares area. Forearms got a bit of tendonitis. It was really dark when we arrived at the wharf. We unloaded and headed to the pub.

I was running around the Fraser Valley recently and have favorite photo location near Hwy 7 where I go to regain and try to retain some sanity…… I know its difficult.
The moment we lose nature we lose a panacea for a variety of ills, maybe I am wrong? …. That’s why I like to see checks and balances on all development for without nature some of us will go completely crazy.

anyhow

I saw this coyote probing for rodents so I strapped my 200mm ed on and watched him get closer.

At this time of year they haven’t shed their winter coat. Notice how it blends perfectly to its natural foraging environment.

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Have recently been perusing “Let my people go Surfing”

Yvon Chouinard’s (the founder of Patagonia) 2005 dictum on sustainability and the transcendence toward local based economies from a reluctant businessman’s point of view. Much of the book is devoted to Patagonia’s philosophies on the environment, business and design.

The World Watch Institute*

…state of the world report in 1991 stated “with an annual output of $20 trillion, the global economy now produces in 17 days what it took and entire year to generate in 1900. Already, economic activity has breached numerous local, regional, and global thresholds, resulting in the spread of deserts, acidification of lakes and forest, and the buildup of greenhouse gases.

If growth proceeds along those lines of recent decades, it is only a matter of time before global systems collapse under the pressure”

Hmmm, that was 18 years ago. That was before industry in the far east torqued in.

What happens when you become dependent on world economy and growth that can not be sustained?

Rather timely one would think.

Everything needs to be re-thought. Your place in the world needs to be re-thought. Where is your place in the world? What do you value in your world?

*Worldwatch Institute delivers the insights and ideas that empower decision makers to create an environmentally sustainable society that meets human needs. Worldwatch focuses on the 21st century challenges of climate change, resource degradation, population growth, and poverty by developing and disseminating solid data and innovative strategies for achieving a sustainable society.

This local fashion photo is a toned black and white print. Not selenium but sepia not film or with developers but digital sepia via Photoshop. It constantly amazes me that a computer program sequenced in binary code ones and zeros+ logarithms can basically eliminate the use of film ….. all you need now is to update to digital DSLR + lenses + your digital darkroom and workflow programs to physically output in addition to thinking about what you want and how to achieve it in an efficient way.

The snow is gone at sea level so get out and make your photographs.

Note this photo are there any things that make this interesting to you visually. How it was framed? Positioning of the subject? Why did I make the horizon line off kilter?

Check this out now! I want everyone that has even thought about Telly skiing to don one of these. They are in limited supply at your nearest outdoor store. They look so good and keep you warm too.

The dawn of a new year has brought some memory of those who have passed.

We are rapidly coming up to the anniversary of Larry Burrows death.

For those who do not know he was a gifted art photojournalist who died when his helicopter was shot down during the Vietnam conflict on
Feb 10, 1971. His camera a Leica and remains were found 27 year later in 1998. The helicopter containing 3 other young war journalists exploded in the air when hit by 37mm South Vietnamese anti-aircraft shell. Photo portrait here is taken 3 days before his death.

Here is his what is left of his Leica 27 years after the fact. click the thumbnail.

Check this link out for more info…The Online Photographer

Arne Naess

‘Like Wordsworth, he lamented the attenuation of such awareness in later life through loss of contact with animals, plants and significant places.’

It must be all about loss. Losing what you have without knowing until its gone.
Will it be to late then I guess its up to you isn’t.
Once you are gone…who cares…is it all about you?

Anyway just a couple of thoughts Arne was a Norwegian and mountain climber to boot.

Inspired by reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Silent Spring spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy—leading to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides)

He threw himself into the environmental work founding Deep Ecology which concentrated on soft technology and non-interference in the natural world…. he believed that you had to confront technology and economic growth.

Today we have economic growth at the sacrifice of everything, food quality, everyday consumer products with toxins and the geography of the environment.

He believed, through his personal philosophy “ecosophy” ecological harmony/equilibrium that human beings can understand by expanding their narrow concept of self to embrace the whole planetary ecosystem.

Now there’s an idea maybe its not all about you after all maybe we should forward think to make a better more survivable world.

Not really a surprise he remained pessimistic about the 21st Century up was pretty optimistic about the 23rd.
when he figured population control results technology would be non-invasive and children would grow in natural environs.

We are on the cusp of change and who know where that will lead. Maybe war, or some other upheaval, technology will have to change otherwise we will be destroyed, will we revert back to more simpler times in more natural sustainable environments? These are future questions.

Arne Ness led an expedition to climb Tirich Mir 7690m in the Hindu Kush in 1950. He passed on January 12 2009 at 96. He was exuberant, and full of frolic compared to Dalai Lama and Gandhi. More at The Guardian.

Bob May

Adventurer Arctic Legend and Pioneer

Son of a park ranger ( Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park) and committed naturalist parents ( father was an entomologist) Joined hudson Bay Company in early 1930’s at 17.
At 18 went to Northern Baffin Island. and adopted traditional Inuit life as only “qallunaq” white man in region and assumed duties as doctor, teacher, trader and nurse. Became an expert in arctic survival. Guided a McGill University research team in that time period members said ” Bob May can out-eskimo the Eskimo.”
In early winter 1939, he almost perished with 3 other Inuit in an ocean storm 30 Km off the east coast of Hudson Bay. They lashed themselves to the deck of their boat to be kept from being washed overboard. Two months later on a hunt trip they ran out of food after 14 days. While the others were looking for caribou he chopped through a metre of of ice and caught a small trout. Four days later he managed to kill two caribou. The next day the others returned with more food. It was minus 35 the whole time.. He was an original member of the Canadian Rangers the arctic militia group. During WW2 they provided information that was vital for transatlantic military flights.
Over the years he overcame many trials the environment presented, produced a large family, became a well known and respected guide, and a champion of Inuit culture and the arctic environment. Passed in November 08 at 90.

I was fortunate to ski in the Esplanade Range in the Northern Selkirks with Golden Alpine Holidays A truly amazing experience. Super alpine guides great food and fantastic lodges. Recommended if you like powder, safety oriented experienced fun-loving guides and terrific mountain scenery.

Here’s are a couple of photos from the coast range…..this is a great place to ski out of bounds. You get good views of some towering peaks too. This side of Wahoo Tower I think has only been done Climbed once A. B. Buttress by Fairley/Driscoll/Durtler I believe that was the combo. The exit off the south side is a piece of duff.
You can see this little gem from the summit of Monmouth at the beginning of the traverse. When you are on top of Lillooet and Dalgleish its a bit closer as the Manatee range is a stones throw away. If you have nothing to do for a couple of weeks do this trip its outstanding… you might want to allow a week for bad weather or some Dharma time. Telephoto was 80-200 2.8 ed nikkor maxed at 200mm on a high overcast day. Aside from the Waddington Area there are a some really good rock routes to do. The Serl/Down route on Queen Bess would be one and say something like Warbird in the Klattisine bang a few of those then there’s always the Toba ….. there’s a lifetime of granite out there.

These guys will dig you out. But you gotta make sure you don’t get buried. They are pretty efficient at finding bodies.

This is my friend Too Much. Some of the best roads we followed didn’t go through. But that didn’t matter.
Less traveled yes
This was taken in British Columbia in the back of beyond it was hot unlike today near Watson Bar 40k away from the truck.

Sharpen your tools that is ice tools…axes crampons and sharpen yer focus too because that is what you are going to need for Bardean in winter.

One of the yet to do problems of the local coast mountains so get rid of your bouldering futons and embrace some real winter excitement.

The avalanches are over everything has been scoured down to the base layers…. if we get some stable weather the conditions may be right for these once in a lifetime climbs. (Actually the ava hazard is still high due to rainfall warnings 1 deg C at sea level translates into a lot of snow higher so be patient) It’ll be an adventure you’ll probably have to fly in to the base of the climb upper Chehalis/Statlu area. There is a cave halfway up the Tuning fork if you want to hunker down. Rescue will be difficult, so don’t entertain it.
It looks a lot steeper than it is, a third of the route is quite steep just look up.