It’s not really the immense beach that stretches out a half kilometer at low tide. It’s not the magnificent sunsets over the Strait of Georgia and the Vancouver Island, either. And it’s not even the laidback, friendly and almost lazy atmosphere that lingers on the place. No. What in fact draws me irresistibly to the southern area of White Rock, BC, is the fact that it represents my current horizon.

Lying across from the US border, almost an hour and a half by bus from downtown Vancouver, White Rock is just about as far as I can go on my own without owning a car. It symbolizes the frontier between « here » and « there », the limit that separates dreams from reality.

It’s somehow difficult to accept the humbling fact that this limit has crept up so close to me when it used to lay literally hundreds of nautical miles away where the sky turns into the ocean... But just as change is an unavoidable part of life, so is the temporary shrinking of one’s playground. So for now, I simply make the best of the Lower Mainland while keeping my eyes on the horizon.

Today, however, I arrived in a ghostly White Rock hidden inside a thick fog bank. Knowing it was still early and the tide would be extremely low, I made a last minute decision and stayed on the bus, pushing west to Crescent Beach, end of the line. And there, finally free, I walked for hours on the dark sand of a naked beach while the fog moved in and out silently.

At times the fog got so thick I had to cut it with a knife in fear of loosing all visual references with land. I could almost have forgotten the presence of shore - a few hundred meters behind me - and decided to walk out all the way to the edge of the world.

Hundreds of sea birds were gathered around tidal pools, along with a large falcon that flew away too soon, just like the herons had too, clearly unwilling to even share ripples in the sand with me. A couple of Bald Eagles flew by low, gliding through the mist, reminding me of my earlier surprise at sighting 20 or 30 of them in high trees along the highway. Yes that’s right, 20 or 30 Bald Eagles spotted on a stretch of maybe 500 or 600 meters - and even though I do have a lot of southern France blood flowing through my veins, this is no exaggeration! Now if only I had a car and a strong telephoto lens!

In any case, by sunset the fog had receded half way across the Strait and I was able to keep shooting, carefully wiping my lens every few minutes because of the remaining humidity and sudden temperature change. Of course by the time I walked back to civilization and stepped into the Wired Monk Coffee and Bistro to pack up the camera and grab something warm to drink, the bus was driving by and I realized I was not going to make it back on time to meet friends at Yuk-Yuk as promised. Oops. Sorry. I obviously can’t be trusted with a camera and spare time, and I seem to become completely irresponsible when exposed to stunning sunsets. But what else is new?

Normal winter weather has finally caught up with us; Vancouver shivers under dull gray skies and sighs through rainy days. Abe is taking a well deserved break and as for me, well, I’m digging into old picture back-ups and playing with memories. Here are a few average shots taken years ago and to which I’ve just applied newly learned techniques in order to bring them back to life...

This time it was the Pitt River Bridge which crosses the river between Pitt Meadows and Port Coquitlam. Remote and hard to reach, the bridge is part of Highway 7 and even though it does feature a pedestrian lane on its north side, getting to it from the main bus route means either walking on the narrow roadside into incoming trafic for over a km or walking through a vast landfill. I chose the first to get there and the second on my way back which turned out to be a great idea; the landfill was blanketed by a heavy snow cover that made for a beautiful landscape and a very pleasant walk.

Once on location, it was just a matter of spending the usual hour and a half waiting and not moving around much, watching the light change slowly and taking shots every few minutes to be sure to capture THE moment. Last night was not the best sunset ever but it had very subdued tints that seemed to match the softness of the scenery. The Golden Ears, in the background, managed to light up in pink at the last minute and then the world shifted to gray.

The other day, up at 5:30 am, I headed down to New West to try and catch sunrise at the Skybridge. Graceful and aerial, the bridge is the longest of its kind in the world, spanning the Fraser River with the sole purpose of carrying the Skytrain further away from Vancouver and into Surrey.

After spending two hours outside by the river in a chilly dawn even by local standards, I concluded I’d be happier inside drinking hot coffee; after all the remains of the last snow fall are still lingering on the ground in sub-zero temperatures and eastern areas retain up to a foot of snow in the streets.

Once warmed up, I reversed my public transit course and traversed the Greater Vancouver in a diagonal that lead me all the way to Horseshoe Bay where I walked around for a while, paying a long overdue visit to Batchelor Bay and Cliff Cove.

Somehow, the camera and I were not in agreement today, and the later it got, the worse the dichotomy.

Oh well, I’d still manage to save a few shots, just to remember I was there.

But as early as the sun rose from behind a sleepy world and framed itself almost perfectly between the pillars of one of the bridge’s legs, a thought crossed my mind and stayed with me the entire day…

« Something’s off.

This should be our time.

The place is right and the moment too. The bets are in. Lines have been drawn, others erased. Ideas are coming into focus, dreams are vivid and hopes very much alive. Lessons have been learned and like the flow of an endless river, growth gathers momentum. New horizons become tangible that were but fleeting visions in the night. The Essential, once only visible to the heart, pays the eyes a visit and decides to stay for a while. It’s all there. It’s ready to shine.

It should be our time. »

Nope, it’s not over yet. Far from it. An angry winter is still raging over Vancouver and this afternoon, yet another windstorm brought the bad news much closer to home. Too close for comfort, actually, but in the end, we were amazingly lucky. It must have happened around 15:00, time at which I believe the winds were gusting between 80 and 90 km/h. In any case, when I got back home around 17:30, the damage was done. The biggest tree in the garden, which happens to be the biggest in the neighborood too, had fallen down.

Now notice how lucky we were in our bad luck: the whole thing looks like a precision drop. A little to the right and the street was blocked. A little to the left and it came down on the house. The other way and the power would have gone out for an entire street. Or a car could have been parked underneath. Still, it’s a very sad end for such a beautiful tree. What a winter!

Long overdue, the Vancouver in HDR gallery is finally online. It features close to 60 of my favorite HDR photos previously released throughout Coriolistic Anachronisms.

Also featured in the gallery is the very exciting newcomer Highslide. Highslide is a cool new photo gallery script similar to Lightbox (the little marvel driving all the slideshows on the blog) which I first heard about here. Although it won’t totally replace the existing Lightbox setup, I thought it was interesting enough to be introduced in its own gallery. Very interactive, Highslide allows for multiple photos to be opened at the same time and manipulated around the page. So check it out!

A recent exchange with a Frenchie, now living in BC (of course, you kinda have to speak le French to get le irony of it):

«  - Vous vivez à Vancouver?

- Non, j’y survis. »

After yet another violent windstorm followed by a heavy snowfall, the inflated roof of BC Place Stadium seemed to collapse today in front of the amazed eyes of thousands of Vancouverites. The stadium administration eventually issued a statement in which it stated that a tear in the west panel of the roof had forced a controlled deflation. It is assumed that wind strength and wet snow weight were the cause of the incident. It’s the first time in its history that the roof was lowered for such reasons. A new panel is being shipped to repair the tear.

A 60,000 seats facility, BC Place features the largest air-supported, non-retractable roof in North America. The dome is made of two layers of a Teflon-coated fiberglass fabric only 0.85 mm thick but stronger than steel, the same material used for the sails at Canada Place. Sixteen fans are maintaining the pressure inside the stadium slightly superior to atmospheric pressure thus keeping the roof up. Air locks are used as entry points into the stadium. The design allows for the deflated fabric to cave in but never touch the seats.

On a final note, BC Place will be hosting the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, time at which the stadium’s roof will have reached the end of its lifespan. What if the weather keeps deteriorating until then? Maybe we’ll host the ceremonies at Science World.

Borrowed from a French movie...

If silent tears won’t come in troubled times, maybe you should talk. Sometimes it’s when talking that we start to cry. And when crying, we often manage to say things we couldn’t say while talking.

And then stolen from a song in a movie about seeking redemption and the patron of lost causes...

Una cámara,

No dice nada,

Y al mismo tiempo,

Lo esconde todo...