I took the shot above in July of 2007 on the Gaspe Peninsula on Canada’s eastern coast. The lupines were in full bloom and they were everywhere — planted in people’s lawns and growing wild in big patches like this one. I’ve wanted to grow lupines at home ever since but they may not appreciate our hot summers. Everyone in town that I’ve talked to about Lupines that has tried to grow them has had a tale of woe and disaster. Unfazed, I’m going ahead with my plan. Living my dream. Planting my lupines.

Inspired by the hillside of blooms in the photo, I chose a little lump of a hill in the yard not too far from the front door. In my mind it will be just like the scene in Canada — lush green and thick with blooms. I bought one largish potted lupine and six smaller ones at the local greenhouse. The largish pot had a good sized bud so I figured that if everything went south, I might at least get one bloom before the hillside returns to wasteland. Lo and behold, a couple of weeks later I have my bloom.

This may be all I get this year. Heck, it may be all I get ever. I’ve been chasing rabbits out of the patch nearly every morning and the dreaded heat has not even set in yet. My fingers are still crossed, though. If these survive, I’ll supplement my little hill with more next spring and keep at it until you’ll swear you’re in the Gaspe when you walk up to my front door (except there won’t be a vast sea of blue in the distance — but I could leave a couple of kayaks in the yard just for effect).

Continuing my review of the the past decade…

More adventures in Canada in early 2008. This time it was a winter trip to Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rockies. I had visited this area briefly in 2000 on my way to Vancouver. It had been in the spring of that year and a completely different experience. This is grand country but I think it shows itself best in the winter. Still, I’d like to go back in the summer to see the green waters of Lake Louise.

Snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, hiking on frozen lakes — I added a whole repertoire of ways I’ve traveled to get a shot. Perhaps my favorite part of this trip was a moonlit hike up the Maligne Canyon. You strap some steel spikes onto the soles of your boots and start walking up a frozen river at night while the canyon walls climb around you and stars shine in the narrow streak of sky above. At frozen waterfalls, your guide can shine his powerful flashlight behind the ice to illuminate the intense blue and green colors. Slippery, cold and dark… but a great experience.

2008 was another extremely busy year in terms of domestic travel. Michigan, Kentucky, Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico and more. All while buying a new house and moving. It was a crazy year. I remember spending election night in a cabin in the woods in Arkansas and going down the mountain to check email at the nearest wifi hotspot. I had received a last-minute invitation to go to China in less than two weeks. I needed to send my passport in for my visa and luckily I had it with me. The next day was filled with driving back and forth across Arkansas visiting various Post Offices in different towns trying to find where I could get additional passport photos taken and get my package over-nighted to Chicago. No one Post Office seemed to be able to do both of these things but by splitting the chore between two (I believe in Harrison and Fayetteville), it got done. Ten days later, I was in Shanghai.

I’ve posted about the China trip on this blog before — you can enter “China” into the search box at top-right to find more. The trip started in Shanghai and then went up the Yangtze to several water towns with historic districts built on canals. The colors were phenomenal.

Those last two shots were from an open-air performance in Zhouzhuang. It was spectacular.

The architecture was also fun to shoot. Pagodas were everywhere, including the world’s tallest in Changzhou that had opened just a year before. Over 500 feet tall, it appears through the glow of the morning sun in this shot on the left:

The pagoda on the right is from Zhouzhuang. I hope to return to China again soon. It’s a big country and there are so many more things I want to see. But that’s the way it is with the whole world, isn’t it? So many things to see, so little time. I’ll continue to do my best to see and photograph as much of it as possible, for as long as possible.

Continuing my review of the the past decade…

In addition to a plethora of US trips, 2007 had me returning to Canada once again. Canada has always been a favorite destination of mine. The weather suits me, the people are great, and the country offers such a wide variety of locations to photograph.

I had whet my appetite on Eastern Canada in 2004 when we drove across the Gaspe peninsula and down (er… up?) the St. Lawrence. In 2007 I had a chance to do a similar trip again — but this time in reverse and largely by train. I started in Montreal. I had only spent a few hours here in 2004 so I enjoyed having an opportunity to dig a little deeper. It’s a great city and one that Sally’s family has historic ties to so I’m sure I’ll be back again.

From Montreal, I took the train to Quebec City and enjoyed a stay in the famous Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac — without a doubt the most recognizable building on the Quebec skyline with its green copper mansard roofs. I spent most of my time wandering the old town. The weather was damp but it did nothing to detract from the beauty of the place.

A few days later it was back on the train, following the St. Lawrence toward the Atlantic. Around Mont-Joli, the train crossed the Gaspe peninsula through the same valley I had driven three years before. Much of the journey had been at night but dawn broke as we approached Chaleur Bay and I was able to enjoy the view from the large window in my tiny room as we followed the coastline to the tip of the peninsula at Gaspe.

I took a whale watching boat out one morning and got to see the fluke of a humpback rise from the water as she dove away from our boat with her baby at her side. I made a rookie mistake while trying to steady myself on the violently rocking boat to get a shot and the autofocus caught the coastline behind the whale instead of the whale itself. You’ll just have to trust me that it was a spectacular sight.

Perce Rock is another landmark that I thoroughly enjoyed shooting on this trip. Maybe it’s because I’m a Kansan, but put a big huge rock in front of me with some nice light and I am one happy camper. I spend a great evening exploring the endless variety of ways to shoot this hunk of geology until the light was gone and I celebrated with one of the better bowls of seafood chowder that I’ve had in my life.

Happy New Year everyone! This time of year always makes one reflect on the past and I’ve been doing my share. I’ve also realized that this year is a landmark of sorts for me — it marks my first decade as a travel photographer.

Well… that’s not entirely true. I’ve actually been shooting and selling to travel publications for much longer than that but it was more of a side business that I had outside of my full time job. I also shot mostly close to home. All through the ’90s I had been building a very complete library of Kansas stock and in the latter half of that decade (mostly after I quit my job in ‘97 and went full-time freelance), I had been steadily expanding my coverage into Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and the Great Lakes region. But the year 2000 marked a shift — Sally joined Midwest Travel Writers Association and we attended their conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. That organization didn’t allow photographer members but I could attend as the spouse of a writer-member.

This wasn’t my first international trip, but it was the first international trip I took specifically to shoot travel. It was also my first experience with a travel writers conference which, in some ways, is similar to a press tour. A great first experience. And I ended up with a lot of useful stock as well as a bunch of contacts and new friends. Until this point, I only knew a couple of other stock shooters and they had fairly different areas of interest than mine. It was a huge help to begin to develop a network of other travel shooters and to share ideas and experiences with them. A couple of years later I would join the Society of American Travel Writers (which does have a photographer member category) to continue to broaden that network.

To commemorate the past 10 years, I thought I might share a shot or two from each year here over the next few weeks. Not necessarily my “best shot” from that year, but something showing where that year took me. It’s also a great opportunity for me to re-visit some of my older files and see if they can be re-interpreted a bit with more modern post-processing. These two photos from that trip in 2000 were taken with (I believe) my old Olympus OM-4 and I’m guessing it was on Velvia. I probably used my old work-horse Tamron 28-80 zoom although the dock could have been my Zuiko 24mm lens. The first shot is of Qualicum Falls on Vancouver Island and the second is Saturna Island in British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. The meeting had been held in the city of Vancouver with a post-tour option on Saturna Island. We had driven so we tagged on some exploration of Vancouver Island on our own afterward. A really amazing trip. Standing on the edge of the small car ferry to Saturna and watching the Orcas swimming along just feet away is something I’ll always remember (I still carry that ferry pass in my car for sentimental reasons).

I’ve been on the road this week working on several projects. Domestic stuff — nothing outside the U.S. — but the inner Canadian in me was thrilled to spot this (and several other) Tim Hortons near Columbus, Ohio. Oh, Timmy! I knew you’d broken into Michigan but I’m so happy to see you spreading southward.

For those who aren’t familiar, Tim Hortons is like the Canadian McDonalds. Actually, they’re everywhere like McDonalds, but the menu is closer to Dunkin Donuts with some chili and sandwiches thrown in. I connect Tim Hortons with Canada at about the same level as the maple leaf. Tim Hortons IS Canada.

Unfortunately, I’ve found the U.S. Timmys to be inferior to the native Canadian varieties. Maybe the Canadian Tims rely on some artificial flavoring that has been banned in the U.S. Who knows. I only know that when I see a Tim Hortons it makes me happy. Honestly, it’s not the donuts. It’s a symbol of a country I love. I must have been Canadian in a former life.

Oh, and the funkiness of the above images is due to the Toy Camera App on my iPhone — it randomly applies lomo-like effects to each shot. I’ll have some “real” photos from the trip once I’m back in the office.

This weekend we brought home the family furniture (mentioned on this blog before here) that has been being lovingly restored for the past year. That’s it. We’re officially finally all moved in to our new house now. I didn’t say unpacked — just moved in. (And, true to my word, I did get some of the family history wrong in that first post. Oops.)

Many thanks to Dave MacFee and his talented crew for bringing this wood back to life. It was dark and dull when we dropped it off to you and look at it now. There are fireworks in that grain. Thanks also to Chris, Estelle & Jonathan for helping to heft the very heavy top half of this cabinet onto the very heavy bottom half. We couldn’t have done it without you guys.

To make a long story short (ish), this furniture was commissioned by Sally’s grandfather’s grandmother’s grandfather (I think I got that right — but you know my track record) who was instrumental in the building of many of the early canals in Montreal in the early 1800s. Phillips Square in downtown Montreal was named for him and the furniture was made for a large home he had built on Beaver Hall Hill.

Why I need to pay more attention…

When I was in Montreal a couple of years ago, I made a few casual remarks about the family history but didn’t really know enough to ask the right questions. I knew the house had burned down in the mid-1800s but was curious where it had stood. With new research we’ve been doing this past month to try and answer some questions about the furniture, I now know that I was nearly standing on the spot where the old house stood when I took this photo:

If I have my bearings right, the street along the right is Cote du Beaver Hall. I was right there and never knew it. And Phillips Square is probably within a three minute walk from here as well.

We’ll go back, do some family research, and properly visit these sites sometime in the near future. It’s just funny how close I was to a place I’d always wanted to see and didn’t even know it. Glad I at least took some photos.

Hard to believe that was less than a year ago. That trip set a great tone for 2008. Truly an amazing destination. This year will begin with another amazing place and I’m starting 2009’s travel even earlier. The first week of February will find me in Egypt. The rest of the year is a mystery at this point but with a start like that I’m sure it will be a wild ride.

The past month has had me furiously processing the images from 2008. I normally don’t like to be more than one trip behind but I didn’t even come close this year. I’m now in shouting distance of being caught up and may be finished by the end of the weekend. I want to feed all of my stock outlets before I start the 2009 travel so I need to keep moving. The China trip has been fully processed and is already in the hands of one stock agency. Once I see what they accept, I’ll place the rest elsewhere. I’ll show more here over the next couple of weeks as well.

Enjoy the new year everyone! I hope it brings success, health and happiness to you all.

With the move more or less behind us it’s time to get back to business. Today that meant catching up on some stock submissions that had been accumulating in my outbox. This shot of Vermillion Lakes near Banff, Canada, among many others will soon be available for licensing through Robert Harding World Imagery. I’m still backlogged in my post-processing but it feels good to be moving forward. I have two weeks before my travel schedule picks up again. We’ll see how much progress I can make before then.

I grabbed this shot at Appomattox Courthouse where Lee surrendered to Grant, effectively putting an end to the American Civil War. Seemed an appropriate photo. I didn’t quite get the feel of the film but, hey, I only had a few minutes available. If you want to see the real deal, rent the movie. Just make sure you have a full evening ahead of you. It’s a long one.

I returned from Canada late Saturday night and jumped right back into work on Sunday. Today I finally had enough of a breather to start the post-processing from this trip. The shot above is a pano created with the Photo Merge command in Photoshop from eight separate shots I took at Peyto Lake. I shot them vertically from left to right, handheld, with a fair amount of overlap between frames. What I ended up with is a 70+ megapixel image that has detail that’s hard to believe. I am so spoiled by Photo Merge. This would have been hours of work to manually fit these images together.

More Canada photos to come as I work my way through the files. It’s almost like taking the trip twice — although I’d much rather be there in person again. What a great location and great people. I hope to get back soon.