Visiting the Island

A couple of weeks back we took the long weekend as an opportunity to visit Vancouver Island. After being here a couple of years, I figured there really was no excuse not to have gone over already, it’s only a couple of hours by ferry. We took the ferry to Nanaimo on the Friday morning, arriving mid-day. We had lunch by the water, walked around town a bit, went to the local museum (not bad and very cheap to get in) and that was about it. Being a holiday, a lot of stuff was shut down. Also, we were feeling a bit wiped out (it had been a busy few weeks for both of us), so we just spent the evening at the hotel. We stayed at the Coast Bastion Inn (part of a smallish chain of hotels). Nice hotel and very well located (depending on your credit card, you might also get a free upgrade of room).

The next day we went to visit the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre north of Nanaimo. They take in injured or orphaned animals and then re-release the ones they can back into the wild. Those that can’t be released live out their days at the center. Admission fees were quite reasonable and they seem to do great work there. Mostly they have birds of various types, but there are some bears (I think one that can’t be released and one or two they are preparing for release). The bears were hiding when we were there, but that’s fine. After that we meandered our way down to Victoria, stopping in Duncan for the weekly market.

 

I won’t go through a blow-by-blow account of our trip to Victoria, let’s just say we had a great and relaxing time. One highlight was the Abbeymoore Inn, the bed and breakfast we stayed in. It’s everything you expect from a B&B. Beautiful big house, wonderful hosts and an amazing breakfast. They were very conscious of our dietary restrictions and made special effort to make just as good a breakfast as what they had for other guests. They were also very helpful with things to do/see and even made dinner reservations for us one evening. So, check them out online. The inn is near Government House, which has some nice gardens to wander around, and Craigdarroch Castle (an old mansion that was used for various purposes over the years and is now a museum).  

Two other highlights of the visit were the Royal BC Museum and the Butchart Gardens. We only did the First Nations portion of the Museum, but that was good enough for us. I would particularly recommend the mask section, which has two narrations regarding the roles of masks and some stories. This being Victoria, we decided we had to do afternoon tea and the Butchart Gardens seemed like a great location to do it. You get a good view of a portion of the gardens, a choice of teas, and then a three layer tray of all kinds of little finger foods (mini sandwiches and quiches, tarts, etc.). The gardens themselves are quite nice, particularly the sunken garden (built into the old quarry) and the asian garden. My only complaint? The gardens are relatively expensive to get into ($29 a pop or something like that). Plus the tea is rather expensive too (also about $29). I would expect to get a discount on the garden admission with a reservation for tea.

All in all, a great weekend getaway that we sorely needed. We didn’t “do” much, but we had a great time.  You can see more pictures from the trip by clicking the image below:

 

Photo Ethics

For various reasons I’ve had to put off taking pictures for the past month or so, so I’ve been indulging in my photography fix by reading some good photoblogs and general photography websites. One I’ve come to enjoy is The Online Photographer.  A recent post raises some very interesting questions that I have struggled with regarding getting permission to take people’s pictures.  The issue is made even more complicated by the fact that the picture in question was taken in Cambodia, which raises numerous questions given the obvious socio-economic and power differentials between visiting photographers and the people who live in lower income countries.  As someone who travels extensively in the developing world, was born in a developing country, and does work on rural development, this is an important issue to me.  As a photographer, it is a real dilemma.  I find it difficult to convey a sense of a place without its people.  At the same time, I find it difficult to take pictures of people when I think they may object.  One of my resolutions for my next trip is to be less shy about introducing myself and asking to take pictures.

Getting back to the post on TOP, the author writes that they walked by the hut, glanced inside, saw a great picture waiting to be taken and then went back to take it (with at least one person in the hut giving them hostile looks).  I applaud him for raising these issues and for struggling with this problem, but the title of the post “Doing What You’re There For” I think really gives you the essence of his view.  I should point out that one commenter really nailed an important point on the head.  In the US (and most other places) you do not have a right to privacy on the street.  That is, it may or may not feel good or even be ethical to take a picture of someone on the street that doesn’t want to be photographed, but it is not illegal because there is no expectation of privacy.  There is an expectation of privacy when you are in your home.  As the commenter points out, why should we treat a hut in Cambodia any differently just because it is less structurally solid and has no door.  Certainly, if the photographer was walking down an American city street and someone had their door propped open, they would not take the same liberties of poking their head in and “getting the shot.”  (Or maybe they would).  

All of this also raises another interesting question for me.  A lot of photographers walk around with a model release form so that if they get a shot of someone, they can get them to sign the form.  The better photo agencies and photo competitions will not allow you to publish without the person’s consent.  What about when you are travelling somewhere where the form will not be understood (either because of language barriers or because of literacy issues)?  I haven’t really seen anyone address that issue.  And I do wonder how many photographers actually get releases (either here or there).

And before you ask, yes I do have pictures of people from around the world on my flickr site and no I didn’t get permission from most (nearly all) of them.  As I said, I struggle with it myself.  However, I can say that I have never invaded anyone’s private space to take a picture.  All were on the street.

A Paris Afternoon

This year my trips seem to have been ridiculously short affairs.  Last week was a perfect example.  Leave Vancouver Tuesday afternoon, arrive Paris Wednesday afternoon, meeting all day Thursday, leave Friday morning.  Insane.  But, I did get that Wednesday late afternoon and evening to walk around Paris.  I covered a fair bit of territory in that short time too.  The Champs Elysees was being prepared for the Christmas market, which was nice to see, and the walk through the Tuileries was very pleasant.  I saw the Louvre (from the outside) and the Centre Pompidou (I went in, but only to check out the cool stuff at the gift shop).  I’d love to be able to go back and have the time to actually go into the museums. Oh well.  Of course, I ended up the evening with dinner on the left bank.  The second night I went out for dinner with some of the other meeting attendees.  Turns out we were lucky enough to be there the day the Beaujolais Nouveau arrived.  Magnifique!  Oh, and of course, I got to use my French, which is getting rusty from lack of use.

Since I wasn’t going to be in town for long, I didn’t bring along my digital SLR, just my poinit-and-shoot, but it did okay (click on the pic below to see more).  I did have to do a bit more post-processing than I normally do, however, to deal with the lousy lighting conditions (it was rather gray out).

Okanagan Valley Wine Weekend

The weekend before last was a holiday up here in Canada and CS and I took advantage of the extra day off to drive to the Okanagan Valley for the weekend. This is the main wine region of British Columbia and filled with far too many wineries to visit in one weekend. We had a great time, sipping wine, eating good food, visiting the towns in the region and, of course, we ended up with a nice trunkful of wine (should last us for the next year or so). Penticton also had a fun farmer’s market in the downtown (including some musical performers, including the drummer pictured below).

It’s hard to say which winery or wine I liked best, but I have to highlight two. The first is the Merlot Rose by the Soaring Eagle Winery. Definitely was a surprise to me, but we ended up buying four bottles, it was so good. The other was a port from Elephant Island Winery. This was also a surprise, both because it is a port and because it comes from a fruit winery. That’s not to say we didn’t have some nice reds and whites (as evidenced by the nearly thirty bottles we brought back). In particular, we picked up some nice rieslings. But those two just stood out from the rest.

More pictures can be found here.

San Miguel and Zacatecas Aug 2008

I’ve recently come back from some much needed rest and relaxation down in Mexico at my parent’s house. My brother came down from New York and we got the chance to just hang out and chat about life, which we haven’t really done in a while. Mostly it was a lot of eating and sleeping for the first couple of days — very needed. Of course, we did make it to the hot springs just outside of town one morning, an absolute must when visiting San Miguel de Allende.

Another highlight was a quick trip up to Zacatecas, the heart of the old silver mining area in Mexico. It’s a nice little city (about 150,000 people) with lots of little squares filled with music in the evenings, a beautiful old theatre and, of course, plenty of churches to see. One was quite interesting due to the three inscriptions above the door in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. The Arabic said “In the name of God” and we later got the Hebrew translated into something like “the house of god.” We asked inside and apparently after extensive consultations in the records, nobody can figure out why the three inscriptions are there.

Zacatecas is also home to two wonderful museums housing the collections of Pedro and Raphael Coronel. The brothers were both artists in their own right, but also collected fabulous pieces of work. Pedro Coronel had pieces from all over the world, but his collection of European masters, including Picasso, Dali and Kandinsky is extensive. Raphael’s museum is noteworthy because he collected masks from all over Mexico, resulting in a stunning collection of over 5,000 masks. Both museums are housed in wonderful old colonial era buildings, making them a real joy to visit. We did miss the abstract art museum, but I’ve been told it is also worth seeing.

If you get the chance to visit, you should also stop in to the high end Quinta Real hotel. It is built into the old bullring next to the old aqueduct, giving it a charm that is hard to top. We decided to go there for breakfast one morning. Given the fruit they serve at the beginning, the included coffee and juice, and the portions, it was actually reasonably priced (about 12-15 dollars per person).

Overall, Zacatecas was a great place to spend a couple of days. I would have wanted one more day perhaps to see the other museum and to be able to visit the old silver mine, but perhaps that will wait for next time.

The second weekend back in San Miguel was spent going to a great concert by some local musicians (with my brother sitting in on percussion for one tune) and a get together with my best friend RPV who has been down in Mexico from Vancouver for a couple of weeks now visiting his family. We had him and his mom over for the afternoon and spent a wonderful time together.

As always, I tried to take some pics and they can be seen by clicking the one below.