From Vancouver, with Love.

Rough love from a hyper-jittery and excited little puppy, that is. When this six-week old puppy jumped on my 20-month old son Anton and had his paws and wet tongue all over him, my son went from being excited to a complete surrender rather quickly. Oh my, too much luv!

We were in Vancouver, BC, during the holiday weekend spending time with our friends Sonia, Bob and their two lovely kids Joshua and Renee, plus this little "Gu Gu" ("Dog" in toddler Chinese). We also got a chance to visit the beautiful aquarium and saw this amazing beluga whale. You can tell he couldn't get enough of it!

The next day we went to find this tiny place where they sell awesome frozen wantons and stuff. Awesome stuff but really hard to find. Somehow all the blocks along Kingsway in Vancouver look similar to us. It took us several drive-arounds and a phone call back to our friends in Seattle to finally find it, again.

I think I have remembered that place this time. My wife wishes Vancouver was a bit closer to Seattle...

Anton's morning jogging and urban sprawl

I really dislike Costco...it's ugly and most of the time boring, except when there are plenty supplies of good samplers.

Last sunday we went there shopping. I suggested to my wife that she does the shopping (she likes it there) and I would take our 20-monther for a walk nearby.

Across from Costco is an old barn. By in the early 1900, the whole area was a diary farm owned by William Pickering. It's all but gone except the old barn. People need spaces to live and do their thing, including Costco shopping. Therefore the urban sprawl. It can be an ugly sight in the Issaquah area.

Fortunately they turned the old farm place into a protected wet land and built a trail through it. So my son Anton and I did some nice jogging.

Geese Watch

It's a rare sunny day in late December, so I decided to drive down to the Skigit valley and photograph the snow geese. This is the time of the year that the snow geese will congregate in the valley.

Within an hour, I was there, driving along the country road searching for snow geese. It didn't take me long to spot them, hundreds of them, feeding in the field.

It's a beautiful sight...green fields, snow geese, with the mighty Mt Baker in the background. I couldn't ask for more. I was going to shoot (photograph, in fact) some close up using my 100-400mm lens, then wait for the sunset when the geese will take off, capturing them against the rosy sky. All planned out...

The first sight of trouble is...I dind't pack my 100-400mm, instead, it was a 70-200mm, way short. So my only option was to photograph them taking off and flying, against the rosy sky. Still not to bad. Just wait for the sunset...nature photograph is all about waiting for the right moment, right?

About 30 minutes later, the sun started setting and the air was getting very cold. No sigh of taking off, just quack, eat, more quacks. Now I realize that trouble was, well, the second trouble is, it took several elements working together to have a good picture. I got the perfect weather, picture perfect setting, tons of snow geese, but they were not flying! They seemed so content, just kick back and eat.

Quack, quack.