Victoria, Canada

Recently, I went out on the town to photograph Victoria, Canada, a lovely city. Here's some of my favorite photos.

This is the Legislative Body of British Columbia from across the nearby harbor. The lighting done on the building is similar to the Eiffel Tower.

There was a fair amount of sidewalk chalk art in the downtown area. Here's a Mona Lisa.

In addition to the sidewalk chalk art, there were lovely pieces of art just on the corners. This piece was one of my favorites. It has a poem ("You who/lift a penny/from the gutter/with the same hand/point out stars/find me.") has part of the art. I wish there was more poetry-art decorating the world.


Victoria has many chocolate shops. This was a white chocolate Hello Kitty. How cute.

Despite how upscale the city is, there is a fair amount of punk music and bohemian culture here. This was one of my favorite band posters. I love the bright colors and the use of Alf. (Also, the TransAm Burnouts are a great name for a band.)

Victoria even has its own Chinatown.

Chinatown has two lions guarding the neighborhood. Legend holds that if an honest politican crosses between the two lions, they will spring to life. Here's one of those lions. Looks like no one could find an honest politican. Shocker.

This lion is even a little crabby about it.

Chinatown is decorated with all sorts of fun art like this.


I love the way the lights behind the clock turned out in this photo.

A part of a mural map. Here is obviously Victoria, on the British Columbia/Canada side, and Port Angeles, on the Washington/U.S. side.

Another bit of the same mural map.

I love this little bit of graffiti, which depicts a panda bear with two guns. (A commentary on animal rights and violence perhaps?) If it's not Banksy, it sure looks a lot like his work.

People are really into Killer Whales in the Pacific Northwest.

The Empress at night. I really love that I captured someone looking up at it.

The Empress. This might be one of their conference rooms.




This last photos are the inside of the Empress.



I have other photos of the Empress on my Flikr page.

Glass Making

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit in on and participate in glass making. Although I love glass and think it can be a beautiful artistic expression, previous to this, I did not know much about it.
In the beginning, the glass is heated on a pike in an oven. Then, other various colored glasses are attached onto the first, uncolored glass, then heated along with it. This forms a soupy-looking glass end on the pike.


At this point, techniques for adding designs into the glass come in. In this picture, you can see various little dots all over the glass. If the glass was left unmanipulated, it would simply come out covered in colored spots. Here, the artist has pulled down part of the glass at the top, farther away from the pike, down closer to the pike. This will create what is called a drape look. Only one drape has been added to this glass at this point, but typically artists add multiple drapes.


After the drapes have been added into the glass, it has to be reheated in the oven. This particular kind is referred to by artists as "the glory hole." (Glass artists were, up until the 70s, completely male, and this comes out sometimes in their choice of terminology.)


After being reheated, the glass has to be rolled again. The glass here is being rolled on a steel table, which absorbs much of the heat and cools it down again. If you look closely, you can clearly see one of the drape pulls in the design.


The glass is then rolled and reshaped with a wood bowl that looks similar to a spoon. The bowl sits in a bucket of water when it is not in use, and sometimes artists will redip the bowl while working with glass. This particular bowl is cheery, which is the kind preferred by glass artists, though any fruit wood works.


One of the last steps this artist chose was to add gold leaf. The gold leaf has to be rolled on, similar to the glass that has to be rolled on at the beginning of the process. Gold leaf is always one of the last steps of the process because it would vaporize if exposed to too much heat.


Next, the glass is blown to its full shape. The pike is howled out. Sometimes a tube is connected onto the opposite end of the pike and the artist blows to give the glass its full shape. You have to blow fairly hard at the beginning, and you have to blow harder as you go because the glass is stretching out and cooling down, making it harder to manipulate. At the same time the glass is being blown, the pike is being rolled in place so that the glass is even. (This is similar to working a pottery wheel, where the bowl is moving so that the designs will be even.)
As always, there are additional pictures on my Flikr page.

World Steam Expo

So, after mentioning on the blog that there was a steampunk convention in town, I decided to just go.  And I had a really good time.
I spent a lot of time in the game room this convention, mostly because my friend Matt wanted to look at some games.  One of them happened to be Arkham Horror.  The goal of the game is to prevent monsters from taking over the town of Arkham.  It took a long time just to explain the game, and even while I was playing it, there was a small moment where I was confused.
But I am always really impressed with the art and storytelling that goes into these games.  The art is always so intricate and lovingly-done.  And all these complicated, tabletop games have elaborate-crafted narratives behind them that set the foundation for the story but also allow a lot of room for differences game to game.  Together, there's this incredible world-building going on, where they create full universes (and then some) for the game to take place in.  As an aspiring writer, I can't help but admire all the time, creativity and work that goes into them.
As complicated as a lot of these games are, I'm not sure that I really want to play them all the time, because some of these games can take hours, and unfortunately, I don't usually have time.  I don't play games often, but when I do, they're usually more as a filler while I think over something important, so they're relatively simple computer games (Solitaire, Mahjong, Bejeweled, Destruct-O-Match).  So I don't think I would invest in these games for myself, but maybe occasionally play them with friends.    
I also tried to get some pictures of the coolest steampunk costumes I saw while looking around.  I didn't get all of them, but I did get a few.


Here we have a young woman, not that it's easy to tell.  One of the things that was really popular at the convention (but I haven't seen much elsewhere) were these leather masks that people were wearing.  They sort of seem like a steampunk update on a similar idea from cyberpunk and cybergoth ten, fifteen years ago.


A mannequin doing the steampunk.


One of the many merchants at the convention.  I like that she incorporated green into her outfit.  A lot of people just do that brown, black and cream look, but it's nice to seem some color.  I also really love all the many things on her belt.


This guy was one of the most impressive costumes I saw.  I didn't ask where he got those tanks, but they looked really good.  (Though, like a lot of things in steampunk, not necessarily easy to move in.)  I love that he's doing a steampunk version of a Civil War soldier.  It would probably be easy, if you were a Civil War reenacter, to adapt your uniform into something steampunk-like.


One of the guests of honor were the creators of Girl Genius.  Here's one of them now, making a funny face.


She then apologized and asked to take a more serious picture.  What for? I thought.  I got a great picture of you right there.


A young man looking super swab.  This picture illustrates my point of how easy it is to do steampunk.  He's wearing clothes that most professionals have, plus a few accessories and touches to complete the look.  If he was at a business conference, no one would think "steampunk," but yet he's really looking the part here.
There are more pictures up at my Flikr, if you're interested.  
One of the strangest things was that we had to leave the convention to get lunch.  Police officers and others stopped us to ask us about our outfits.  (Nicely, of course.)  We weren't particularly overdressed, just a little odd looking.