September 2009

What a month! Instead of going mountainbiking and hiking in South Tyrol we decided to have a 2 weeks vacation in Canada. Actually it was 17 days but getting there from Europe means to loose 2 days with traveling. But it was absolutely worth the long flights and the jet lags. Canada is simply a wonderful destination. It is one of my favourite holiday sports on earth. Maybe even my favourite one at all? I can´t say. It´s a close one for me inbetween Ireland and Canada.

This was our second vacation in Canada. Western Canada or to be even more precise: British Columbia and Alberta. With a country that big you have to specify in which part you have been. The fist time was in 2001. 2001 was the last yeat I shot slide film. In January 2002 I got myself a used Nikon D1 and went digital. I never looked back. It´s more the other way around: In 2001 I shot 2.000 images during my 3 weeks trip. Film material and framing alone was almost 700.- EUROs. The same money today buys you a laptop, an image tank or a APS-C DSLR. What´s more: In 2001 I have to worry about X-rays on the airport. I worried that the lab would loose my films. I had to wait a week to get the processed slides back and it took me hours on the lightbox just to select the images and get them into the right order. Even worse I had to trow away a couple of hundred shots. The rest I put in slide magazines and of course I had to put the once I want to show to friends in different magazines.

This year I shot over 5.000 images using my 2 Canon DSLRs and my small Panasonic FT-1. My wife shot around 600 images using her Panasonic TZ-5. So a lot of images to organize. Using Lightroom it was not that hard at all.

Here is my workflow: First I dumped all the images from my image tank on my desktop. As it was more than 60 GB of data it took a couple of hours to get it into lightroom and the standard images rendered. But this is a process that runs without you so no work at all. I always love some device is doing the work for me. Like our dishwasher or my Roomba.

After the images were loaded in my computer there all already sorted in the right order thanks to the Exif data. Wonderful. No more guessing. What I did next was to give 1 or 2 stars or no stars to all images. 1 star images I wanted to keep as a memory, 2 star images I want to further select for the slide show and the images with 0 stars I deleted. I had about 1.000 images I deleted and almost 2.000 images with 2 stars. Then I looked at the 2 star images and slelected them further to get 1.200 3 star images. These I reduced to 700 images with a 4 star rating. These were the images I wanted to show to my friends. It´s great that I can now look at all images from the trip or select the best or anything in between within seconds. It´s wonderful. Great modern times.

Ok. So I like the digital workflow but how was the trip. In one word: awesome! Great country, wonderful, friendly and relaxed people, plenty of space and a nice RV to explore the parks. The weather was just unbelieveable. We were there for the last two weeks in September and except one day we had nothing but sun. We had 5 days in a row were there was not a single cloud visible in the sky. I can´t remeber when this happend the last time in Austria or everwhere I have been in the last years. Here Canada definitely has an advantage compared to Ireland.

Why the image above. It is not possible to choose the single best images from such a trip. The most obvious choice would be an image showing Lake Louise or Maligne lake or an image from the Columbia Icefields or one showing one of the great waterfalls but I went with the image above because I like it and because I liked that evening. After the Rockies we enjoyed the beautiful Sunshine Coast. This evening we had a walk during sunset at the sea and I think that live comes not any better than this.

It´s named three cones because the family enjoyed there icecream during the sunset at the sea. And the young lady in the carriage did not even have to walk. She enjoyed being hauled while eating her icecream looking into the setting sun at the sea. Life definitely come snot better than this! And most of all: Unlike me she was not afraid that this moment does not last forever and that just after another week this wonderful trip will be over and would be nothing more than a memory. But - what a memory!

I will post more shots of the trip on my website soon.

settings main shot: A-Mode: 1/640s@f5.6, 100ASA, 70-200/4 IS at 200mm

other images: Canon 5D + 24-105L except RV on road which is Canon 500D + 70-200IS