The sun is back, lets Kayak!!

Yes it’s true. The weather has finally arrived here in Squamish and no longer am I singing in the rain but rather basking in the sunshine.

It only took a four day kayak trip at the beginning of August to turn my skin tone from pale white to mega bronzed to match my undoubtedly rock hard abs I’ve likely had since I was an infant... Okay that maybe over the top but as soon as the rain stopped and the sun showed its face, it has been great. We’ve had consistently great weather for the past few weeks which means I’ve been getting out as much as I can both on my days off and after work.

I went on this 4 day Kayak trip just off of Tofino around an island call Vargas Island. It was a phenomenal trip. Our guide, Steve Crevier, delivered on every promise he made the whole trip. He promised good food, and I haven’t eaten better food all summer.  He also promised one of the days we would see whales, sure enough we saw whales on not one but two of the days. I’d never seen a whale, but one of these grey whales swam within 15-20 feet of my Kayak and was headed directly at me which lead me to believe that it no doubt passed right below me. We saw tons of wild life and it was exactly what I needed.                                                                                                                     

I felt so relaxed the whole time we were out there which was exactly what I planned for this trip. I’m sure some people are thinking “well duh, of course you wanted to relax on your vacation! That’s what vacations are for; relaxing hanging out with friends and getting pictures so you can remember how relaxed you were.” Well, I’m a photographer which means I take photos for a living. I guess the title of photographer inclines people to ask why I’m not constantly taking pictures, even though I wasn’t really asked a lot on the trip, I thought I would explain it a little bit. Truth is, even though I have a passion for photography, I don’t need to do it all the time. Sometimes relaxing involves not clicking the shutter for once. I do get asked a lot why I’m not taking pictures, whether it be at a small event, a family event or something like that, I usually get asked why I haven’t been taking lots of pictures...

Well, I like keeping my mind “present” wherever I am, but I guess that’s not the best way to explain it... As many people know, I really enjoy photography, but I don’t always need to be the one recording every event. I love being active and I love do the things I photograph (there’s a good dirty joke here involving photographing models). I’ll use climbing as an example; I enjoy composing a picture and trying to push myself to be more creative. I get a certain thrill out of getting a great photograph out of something like that. However, as much as I love that feeling of being a photographer and pushing myself in that sense, I equally love being the subject. I love climbing and that love can sometime inspire my photography. It works the other way around too, most recently I photographed a kite boarding competition and it was a lot of fun. Witnessing and photographing it made me really want to try the sport. I guess my point is that I don’t need to photograph things to enjoy them. In fact it’s quite the opposite. I most enjoy things when I’m not the photographer. A picture has the potential to last forever, but a memory lasts just as long and I’d prefer to remember things through my eyes rather than my lens.

Anyway, I wanted to thank Steve Crevier and John Bourcet for a great Kayak trip. If anyone is interested in doing a kayak trip, check out www.okanagankayaking.com.

Also, I had the pleasure of writing articles on both Shad and Kim Churchill most recently, and previously I got to write an article on an up and coming band called Proper Villains, check out the articles here:

Shad & Churchill:
http://www.squamishchief.com/article/20110819/SQUAMISH0501/308199972/-1/squamish05/rhymes-and-waves

Proper Villains: http://www.squamishchief.com/article/20110812/SQUAMISH0501/110819984/proper-villains-on-the-rise

I think I'm going to do a quick little blurb here about the interviewing artists, they were a big learning experience for me.
The first artist I interviewed was a Squamish Local, her name was Dana-Marie Battaglia. It was a great interview and I think it went really well considering it was my first interview with an music artist. The second story I did was on The Proper Villains, I was interviewing two members of the band at once so that was kind of interesting but it went well, I think I could tell my interviewing skills were improving, and they were also great about answering questions. I think I used to have this fear about interviewing people that they wouldn't like mike questions or everyone was annoyed that I was interviewing them, maybe its the B.C. attitude everyone has or maybe its just me... probably just me...
Anyways, I then had an interview with Kim Churchill earlier this week and it went really well as well. I think the goal for an interview is to have it as more of a conversation than an interview and I feel like I accomplished that with Kim, whether he felt the same way, I can never be too sure. Anyways the morning after I had an interview with Shad. Now, I'm a really big fan of Shad and that kind of created a problem. I was really nervous before the call and I really didn't want him to be unhappy with the interview or feel offended or anything that could possibly go wrong. I did calm down a little bit when it came time for the interview but I really tried focusing on questions that he may not have been asked before, but the issue is I didn't have much of an angle so my questions were kind of all over the place. I guess thats where pre interview planning would have came in handy. Previously I would write the words; who, what, when, where, why, and how on my note book and ask questions regarding those words and adding in little things I was curious about as conversation went on. Well.... as I started the call, I looked at the words and realized that these are all things that he's probably been asked many times before and things that I already knew or could already answer via research. Suffice to say, the interview didn't go as well as I'd hoped but it was still good. Maybe I'm being to hard on myself... either way, the articles got done and I guess they're not bad.

Coming up:

I leave for Ontario again early September, so I hope to do two more blog posts before then. One as a review of the upcoming LIVE at Squamish which features Metric, Weezer, Shad, Hey Ocean, Shane Koyczan, and many more bands. I also hope to get a bit of a Summer in Review post before I leave. But for now, Adios.

Much love,

Andre

Feel free to ask me anything you want, either Comment below or email me at i-feel-@live.ca.

Also Check me out on twitter, twitter.com/AndreLodder