Author: Sandy Phillips

Many moons ago I met Grandma & Grandpa Phillips for the very first time. We went out to their home out Henderson Highway where they had lived since the 60’s.

In the dining/living room was what I thought was a gorgeous cross stitch of a bowl of poppies. No one else shares my enthusiasm. The Phillips’s have many grandchildren, etc so I figured the chances of Cade ever being gifted that art was slim to none.

Many years later my BIL and I were clearing the belongings from the care home where Grandma was living when she passed away. Low and behold, there it was. My BIL looked at me and said, that thing is not coming to my apartment! I couldn’t believe it was now mine.

It must have been important to Grandma too cause of all the things in their large home, this was one of the personal effects she chose to take with her.

For many years it has hung on my walls, dusty and dated. A large part of my hesitation was what would happen to the cross stitch when I opened it. Would it fall apart? Every framed item in the Phillips’s home was done at Eaton’s, where Grandpa worked for many years in the shoe department. I should have known it was framed well.

Yesterday I took it apart and it came apart easily with no damage. The glass was very dusty but easily cleaned. I decided though that the frame needed to be changed and so, out came the chalk paint, again.

This piece was something Grandma started when they moved into the house in the early 60’s. My MIL figures she finished it a couple years later.

For sometime I have been contemplating the purchase of this lens for many reasons.  First off, eventually I am going to run out of abandoned homes in this area, secondly, I love wildlife and thirdly, I wanted it.

I have been seeing all sorts of photos online of these amazing bird shots and I developed a severe case of lens envy.  I know that its not the camera and not the lens that makes the photos!

I found a good deal on one before I left for B.C. and decided that I did not want to go there without it in case I saw whales in the ocean or bears while up on the gondola.  I had it shipped to my parents place and it was there when I got there on Saturday evening.

I did a lot of searching when I decided I was going to take the plunge.  No one is selling these lenses.  I tried to rent one while in B.C. but most of the rental places were to far and the rental rate was a little high.

Its heavy but not heavy enough that you cannot hand hold it, which I did with my first day out with it.  I will need to buy a monopod to get the best I can out of it though.  I also need to purchase a new camera bag.  While it does have its own case that fits inside the bag I’ve been using, its not ideal.

And not only that, it comes with its own manual which is okay for days like this when its too hot to go out.  Good day to read and get ready.

As I get aquainted with it and learn how to use it properly, I’ll write more.

Its so big I feel like I should name it.

We’ve spent most evenings down along the Fraser River, fishing.

There are a lot of tugs. Busy, busy River.

There’s an eagle that flies around but he’s to fast and once we spot him he hides.

So instead I take photos of the tug boats, this once towing a HUGE barge.

This is Helen. Helen is an approximately 31 year old Pacific White Sided Dolphin.

Helen has partially amputated front flippers due to her being entangled in a fixed fishing next. She was rescued and rehabilitated and then deemed unreleasable.

Helen was highly entertaining and is the only whale/porpoise remaining at the Vancouver Aquarium.

My Aunt loves lilacs. So much so that she goes out in the middle of the night and cuts them so she can have them inside. The problem is, she doesn’t have a house, therefore, she doesn’t not have a yard or a garden. She’s an apartment dweller!

A couple weeks ago when my lilac bush flowered I took this picture for her.

Now I have to share with you that this is a learned behaviour. She got it from my Grandmother who always had fresh cut flowers in her apartment. She lived in downtown Winnipeg so she had to buy them from the local florist at The Bay.

My husband was sure he spotted a albino duck in a small body of water not far from our home. The duck turned out to be a snow goose!

I did at least get a shot of this sky and its reflection.

My lost stop on our Sprint Car Race journey was this home right along the way, close to home. All of the homes I found were right along side the road which make for perfect roadside shots, which I generally don’t like.

What I most enjoyed about this yard was that big, old, dead evergreen.

The front of the home was obscured by the other live trees.

The first time I photographed this barn, we were on our way to Grand Forks for a hockey tournament. I’d have to say it was 2013 or so.

Each year after that I admired that it was still standing and relatively straight. This is no longer the case.

When our impromptu trip to Grand Forks was planned, I figured it would be the perfect time to wander out to an old church that has been on my to-see list since last summer.

Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be easy to get to with at least 10 miles of travel on unknown gravel roads that had been subjected to rain. I chickened out and decided to wait for my husband to travel with me.

I did find this one on the way though.

On our way to Grand Forks I spotted this house. Homeward bound I stopped for this shot. When we left Grand Forks it was pouring and cloudy. When we got to this one it was still drizzling but not enough to stop for a couple quick photos.  The sky was perfect so I stopped.

First stop, this house right on the side of the highway.

The skies were amazing and a little adjustment with my exposure produced this shot.

This is also where I discovered I have two flecks that I can see in my view finder but don’t appear on my photos!!

The weather continued to be off and on for the rest of the ride which gave for some very “moody and dreary” shots.

Sitting Bull was the leader who led his people during years of resistance to United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.

North Dakota and its University teams were famously known as the Fighting Sioux from 1930 until the university retired the nickname in 2012, ending a seven-year battle with the N.C.A.A. North Dakota had been one of 18 institutions the N.C.A.A. singled out in 2005 for American Indian mascots it deemed hostile or abusive.  The dispute dragged on, with the state Board of Higher Education and the Legislature weighing in. Ultimately, in June 2012, North Dakota voters overwhelmingly chose to phase out the nickname.

This statue of Sitting Bull sits outside the Ralph Englestadt Arena. Said to have cost the former Fighting Sioux goaltender $100 million. He spared no expense when the facility was built. He had granite imported from India to have the Sioux logo put into the floor of the main entrance. 3.2 miles of brass was also used in the building.

The arena truly is an amazing site with a whole lot of history. Kind of like Sitting Bull.

Monday afternoon I headed out to the Bay in town to see if I could get some photos of the pelican’s using manual mode! Within about 10 – 15 test shots I gave up and switched to priority mode and eventually ended up on auto, again.

I have done a lot of reading on shotting in RAW and JPEG mode and decided, after I purchased a bigger SD card, that this was a good idea.  There is always that chance that you may have gotten the perfect shot AND you do need to adjust the exposure in order to save it instead of hitting delete.

Anyways, long story short, I went out twice on Monday, took over 200 photos and kept maybe 10.

I did manage to save this shot because I was able to adjust the exposure (from the RAW file) and ligtning it a bit.

Here is an instance when I would have liked a lens with a longer focal point but again, I’m not there yet.

A wise man who has an amazing talent for bird photography, told me, pick something, be it focus, white balance, apeture, whatever.  Learn it, learn it well and move on to the next thing.

Thank goodness I no longer have to pay for film and developing.

For the last couple weeks Cade has been telling me about this goose he kept seeing in the Long River which he assumed was hurt as she would swim with her neck stretched out in front of her along the water.

The other night we all went out for a ride in the boat and wandered down the Long River a bit. Cade remembered a goose nesting on the corner of this lot so I zoomed in and there she was.

When we got around the tree she was laying with her head stretched out in front of her like the one Cade had seen in the water. So I googled it. The is typical behaviour for a female goose on or near her nest. Cade is lucky he didn’t wander down to check on the other goose cause I’m positive he would have been on the receiving end of the goose boots!