Rockets Rock the WHL

First place Vancouver Giants - eliminated.
First place Calgary Hitmen - upset.
Kelowna hockey fans cheered their Junior hockey team to another WHL championship on home ice Saturday over the top-ranked Calgary Hitmen.
Next stop - Rimouski - for the Memorial Cup.

Rockets rolling

Excitement is building for the hockey playoffs once again in this sporty B.C. city of Kelowna.

While some are focused on the Vancouver Canucks in the NHL, our local fans have another team to get even more excited about - our own Kelowna Rockets in the WHL.  The team is in the driver's seat in the Western Hockey League championship series against the Calgary Hitmen, returning to home ice Monday after winning the first two games of the series in Calgary.

It reminds me of the 2004 season when the Rockets won the Memorial Cup on home ice against the best junior hockey teams across all of Canada.  That week provided a lot of outstanding action for me to photograph as the newspaper published a special daily section of Memorial Cup stories through that memorable week.

Let's hope history repeats itself this year.

Kelowna writer rising

I'm constantly inspired by other artists around Kelowna - and pleasantly surprised when another is recognized internationally. I recently had the honour of photographing for the Vancouver Sun a fiction writer whose books have become popular world-wide.

Alan Bradley, 70, writer of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and two more mysteries about a precocious English girl, 11-year-old Flavia de Luce. The series of books has been sold in 13 countries; the first of the Canadian books launched a week ago.

Similar to a common hangout for Flavia, an old church in Kelowna became an interesting background for the portrait of the Okanagan mystery writer. I hope local artists continue to be appreciated for their creative works. Some of my more recent creative works have taken life in a re-design of my website.

More news is good news

I hope people enjoy news about new developments in photography, with hi tech equipment continually adding to the digital evolution.
I've just added a news page to my main website with today's top story - the new spark in remote trigger technology.  Here's the new gadget's I've deciding between right now for when they become available in Canada for my Nikon cameras.

On the web again ...

Feels so good to be on the web again ! Everybody sing it now, like Willy Nelson. Feels so go to be on the web again.

I've been clicking my mouse more than my Nikon cameras over the past couple of weeks, doing a redesign on My Website to add new content, cleaner navigation all under a more attractive banner.
Here's a snapshot of one major page attached to the blog. However, to really appreciate it, you've got to visit the site and see how it adjusts with the browser size.
Keep tuned... there's more to come in future weeks as I renovate the photo galleries with hundreds of my images (including many award-winners). I just hope my cameras don't get jealous that my mouse is getting more of my attention right now.

Avalanche Dangers, again

With the dawn of a new year, thoughts return over the past 52 weeks and the memorable photos captured. Naturally, any recap has a logical starting point at the beginning of the year.
Coincidentally, the first news assignment I photographed in 2008 is coming back with a vegence again 53 weeks later.
A Vancouver daily newspaper called me up on a Sunday afternoon with word of an avalanche that buried people at Big White ski resort earlier that day. Could I get photos of the search that continues in the slide path inside the ski resort, asked the assignment editor.
Quickly, I grabbed the photo gear I thought would best fit the shoot and some extra gear to get to the site. Along with set of downhill ski gear, I grabbed my telemark skis and boots - just in case I'd have to do a bit of manual pushing on the flats or even uphill.
Fortunately, I arrived in time to catch a ride on the last chairlift ride of the day (for the general public) and arrived at the cloudy summit as the light was starting to dim.
From underneath my jacket, I attached my 300mm lens to my camera body and shot a few quick shots of the searchers visible from about 500 metres away. Staff guarded the roped off access to the region, making a closeup more challenging.
Bypassing the immediate approach, a few turns down another run led to a flat area of some 300 metres of pushing to get closer to the bottom of the avalanche debris zone. Good thing I put on the telemark skis - my downhill gear would not have served me well for this skitrip.
Profusely sweating, I arrived just as the searchers were starting to pack up to leave. The new location that took me at least 500 calories of energy to get to, afforded a few quick images of ski patrollers and their helpers riding out on snowmobiles. Not much of a shot usually, but the one who was clutching his search-dog on his lap made it more interesting.
The first grab shots of the searchers made front page of at least a half-dozen daily newspapers across Canada. What a way to start a photo year.
I'll revisit a few more shots in the coming weeks.
Here's a couple photos from the event.

What's in Santa's bag?

It's the time of year when kids of ALL ages start making their wish lists for gifts from Santa Claus. For some it's the latest computer game, others dream of a shiny new vehicle to race around the living room.
For photographers invested into the Nikon system, news just came out from Japan of a new beast to send a few extra beats into our hearts. Measuring in at a whopping 24.4 megapixels is the brand new Nikon D3x - a studio photographer's new convenient option to medium format cameras. With a shooting rate of 5 fps at full frame, or 7 fps at a cropped mode, it may even be seen as a decent action shooter.
Images released online so far show excellent image quality, now the question arises: is it worth the price? At MSRP of $9,500 Cdn, it's Nikon's most expensive camera ever - about $4,000 more than the 12 megapixel D3. Sure, that price is still far below medium format cameras or backs, but can it be justified in a tightening economy.
Do I need the extra 40 percent increase in resolution over my current model? Will my computer need replacement to process the huge 75 MB raw files? Will I start filling hard-drives as fast as I used to fill DVDs?
Will the camera be seen in Canada before Christmas?
So many questions ..... I'll have to ponder these things among others - like how long can somebody eat macaroni and cheese before going crazy? Just kidding.
After you look over the photo of this new camera, you can view many more images shot by a "lesser" model on my website.
Merry Christmas all.