Last night, bored, I took out my cookie gun again and tried out a few of the transparencies I had made for it when I first constructed it.

When you go back through all of the photos that you took in 2008 it's hard to believe that it all came in one year. I got that sense when I was writing my last post on what I had learned and accomplished and I got that again this morning as I was scanning through my Flickr stream. I don't post everything that I take (they might have to sign me up to a super super heavy-usage account if I did) but I did have some hundreds of photos I did post. I slowed down near the end once I switched mostly to film and then there was that bad moment when my 30D died.

In my favourites from 2008 set I've lumped everything in from macros to landscapes to Strobist-style portrait sessions. Start from the bottom with this photo that I took just after New Years spent in Edmonton with my brother and his family (my Roy Arden moment)and it ends with this photo that coincidentally is another frozen landscape.

Still snowed in since Tuesday we had a nice surprise when we noticed that the magnolia branch we had pruned from the property had begun to flower. A couple weeks ago we welcomed a friend of one of our neighbours to give us an expert's tour of the trees and plants on our new property. He showed us what to prune or leave alone and one of the things we took was a branch from the magnolia tree. We were told that if we put it in water, eventually it would flower. On Christmas Eve it began to bloom and by Christmas Day we had this nice magnolia bloom.

This is the time of year when Vancouver gets its annual dump of snowfall. Normally we get only liquid precipitation but at least once a year we get an epic blanket of white stuff that people are just not used to dealing with. So for some people out come the shovels and road-salt; and for me, I stay home and bundle up and try to shoehorn lights into a small place.

Back in town I had one day to compete in the local Vancouver Strobist challenge, an ongoing "get off your ass and practice some of your knowledge" call out to local flash photographers. The theme was "Shadowy Self Portrait" which fits the navel-gazing nature of most photographers.

When I finally got off my skis this weekend I was able to get some halfway decent shots. When I was on my skis my camera gear was far far away. I had decided part way after loading up that I would separate skiing from photography. Actually, what that meant was that I could save my gear from being crushed every time I fell on my back -- which was often -- and sweated a little less.