A combination of colors yellow and blue are dynamite together! We all know that. So placing sunflowers against a blue sky, you can’t help but create something beautiful. You want the sun shining on the sunflowers to punch the yellows to the max.

Good wildlife photographs can even be taken from a Cruise Ship to Alaska. Wanda took this seal on an ice flow pic as she sipped some wine with daughters Serena and Angela. From this high angle, the image pops!

Serena took a wonderful picture of a cougar kitten. This small cougar was rescued in British Columbia, after its mom had been killed. It wasn’t easy to get the picture, as the area it was in was extremely dark. Serena really captured the moment!

Tags: cougars, B.C. wildlife

Not many photographs really POP like ones with flower content. All never ending flower content! In this case, a 70-200 lens set a f22 showed this almost blinding yellow in a wonderful pattern of color and light. A simple picture that can be taken in gardens or parks. Must have a tripod. It took about 30 minutes of looking for the best angle before I actually set the tripod up for this shot.

Tags: flowers

Photography really pops when you find a great sunset - in this case a military warship cruises through the evening waters of Howe Sound, near Vancouver. The ship was moving fairly quickly and I had set the camera speed a little higher than I normally would for such a beautiful sunset


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Tags: Photography

A photographer must realize that having the camera on “auto” will not solve every lighting problem. And in the case of the line of pelicans, all these beautiful birds would have been overexposed. The background was dark and the subjects were bright white. Set the camera immediately to manual, and cranked the exposure down a notch or two. Thus the background became darker and darker, and birds the right exposure. With a few adjustments in Adobe Lightroom, and several more in Photoshop - an interesting picture is born! Took this several days ago south of Penticton, British Columbia. The pelicans were just resting on the lake.

Tags: Pelicans,

One of my 2008 highlights was working on Stephen Hume’s epic story of explorer Simon Fraser’s incredible trip down the Fraser River in 1808. Although Stephen worked on the Vancouver Sun series for almost 4 years, I was only involved on two segments of the adventure. This involved Fraser’s trip in the Fort St. James area of British Columbia, and the journey from Prince George to the Pacific Ocean. For those interested in Canadian History, find a copy of Hume’s book. I saw a couple in Chapter’s the other day. The volume is full of photographs from myself, Mark Van Manen, and Ian Lindsay from the Vancouver Sun. Stephen and I had a WILD ride down Iron Canyon in the rapids and whirlpools. He got the worst of it. I jumped on shore from the jet boat, and had Stephen and the pilot (the operator of this jet boat HAS to be called a PILOT) go through the whirlpools again for pictures! Looking through the lens, I could see the sweat on Stephen’s eyeballs!

Tags: Simon Fraser , Canadian History, Fraser River, Stephen Hume