happy 17th to me

so i spent my birthday this year going out, alone. sounds so lame, and in some ways it was, but really, it was pretty awesome. last year, it was annoying as shit; it was deciding between two people, and that was damn annoying, because i felt like i had to appease them both, even though it was my day. so, this year, i made my day mine, and went with it, and just did what i wanted to do. and it was pretty cool. that said, because i'm a retard, i basically walked from the vancouver city centre canada line stop allllllll the fucking way to park royal. let's not get into why.

whee candid.

lighthouse park - a pretty damn cool place. shame i didn't have too much time to look around it, but it'd be awesome to go back there sometime.

moss/fern gametophytes (or sporophytes, stfu.) ftw! i get such strong urges to take shots of them everytime i see them, so here they are. shame i forgot everything i learned about them in bio 11 already.

these next two were focus stacked, but shittily as you can see from the weird haloish effect - this is cause i shoulda used the self-timer instead of normal shooting, cause each exposure was about 2 seconds long - the shake from pressing the button was enough to put some amount of blur into it. even though they didn't turn out, it was incredibly fun for me to take these shots just cause poring over the focus and all that stuff and not caring about anything else is so relaxing

from http://s877.photobucket.com/albums/ab333/jaieger/082610/

granville island

me being a pedo/stalker/etc. at granville island

the point of this picture was to blur out all the kids so that it was some kinda cliche statement, something about kids' energy and never slowing down, or some stupid shit like that. but the boy totally stood still for the whole half second, which makes it that much cooler imo.

i think i'm getting pretty damn good at candids of strangers. imagine the awkwardness if either of these two ever found their way onto this page, eh?

another candid of some random dude

is it just me, or is this thing fucking freaky as hell?

to make up for that, have some cute dogs.

i'm not quite sure what this was - obviously some kind of martial arts demonstration, but otherwise, no idea. i think it's something related to native americans though, there were like native-ish drums and chants and the like. pretty cool stuff.

that's a stroller that this guy's got balanced on his chin. afterwards, he balanced my camera on his chin, too. never did a thousand dollars look so fragile to me. 

from http://s877.photobucket.com/albums/ab333/jaieger/081510/

grouse grind-ing

the grouse grind was a pretty interesting day.

my two friends (these guys here) and i did the grouse grind, and to start off, we each got a mouthful of bug spray. tastes like chicken. anyways, long story short it took us 2 hours to finish the damn thing, cause andy (the exhausted looking one) was pretty weak. he talks copious amounts of shit when he's gaming, so here he is fulfilling the gamer stereotype. gursh fared much better. as in, he didn't vomit like andy did. on a much sadder note, some hot girls asked us to race to the halfway mark, and while gursh and i could've done it, we felt bad ditching andy, so just let it be. bros before hos, i guess. 

here's another shot of andy looking exhausted. poor guy was literally silent and pale the entire way up, and he's not exactly a quiet guy around us.

when we got to the top, this thing was there. it ran away several seconds after my taking the picture. i had nothing to do with that.

afterwards, we saw a bird show, where they brought out and showed us some birds of prey - a barn owl, a harris' hawk, a red-tailed hawk, and a peregrine falcon. they flew them all between perches except the falcon cause it was too foggy, but either way, needless to say it totally made my day. that sentence rhymed way too fucking much. we also saw a lumberjack show which was pretty cool but i'm too lazy to post that too.

i dub thee DERPPP. or herp.

andy's deathgrip on the gondola handle bars. this guy really needs to get out more.

from http://s877.photobucket.com/albums/ab333/jaieger/081210/

bloedel conservatory

this is one of many birds at the Bloedel Conservatory at queen elizabeth park - i went there for a photowalk and came out with a ton of shots i'm really happy with; since there're so many, i'll just post this one. cause this bird and i totally fuckin bonded - at first it wouldn't even look at me, then eventually came over and gave me quite a few good, even posed-looking shots. definitely recommend anybody finding themselves with time and $5 to burn to check that place out, it's pretty cool.

from http://s877.photobucket.com/albums/ab333/jaieger/081010/

vancouver rain

this being vancouver, it was only a matter of time before i went out for a rain-themed photowalk, and this is what i got. if the view outside my window is any judge, looks like there'll be a lot more where this came from - which is just as well, i'd really like to try out those awesome macros of waterdrops where you can see a wideangle view of the stuff behind it. but as soon as i get that shot, the sun better come the fuck out. until it snows, at least.

from http://s877.photobucket.com/albums/ab333/jaieger/083110/ and   http://s877.photobucket.com/albums/ab333/jaieger/080710/