vancouver
Last year, my buddies at Huckberry hit me up with a fun idea, “Shayd can you be our tour guide, we want to come to Canada.” No brainer, I said yes.
We did a whirlwind 72 hour trip from Vancouver to Tofino and back, with a few cool pit-stops along the way in my Landcruiser. Here’s the video they made and a few photos I took along the way…
Ever since I shot my first roll of film in 2009, I have been obsessed with finding old film cameras. Sometimes I get lucky and a relative or friend will drop off a box of old cameras for me to rummage through, but often enough, there aren't any treasures.
As the technology advances, and digital imagery becomes more popular, it's becoming harder and harder to find what I'm looking for. There's really an art to keeping film alive, and one of the best ways is the second-hand market via Kijiji.
Kijiji is nice and easy to use, I was able to search for various cameras and quickly find what I was looking for... this was a surprise as the cameras I am after are becoming more rare. I was able to set up a deal for the camera and a lens at a fraction of the price of finding one at a used camera store, and the best part was picking it up off a seasoned photographer who was retiring and had bought the camera brand new.
The treasure I found is a high-end film camera from the 90's called a Mamiya RZ67Proii. This camera was often used by celebrity photographers like Annie Leibovitz and remains a sought-after film camera for artists and professionals looking for a high-quality image with the beauty of film.
Here are a couple of shots from the first roll of film I shot down at the beach.
I've found that in the last few years of my life, I have been working at surrounding myself with people who inspire me. I learn from the different types of people I meet, making for a diverse group of connections in my life.
Fate had it that I ran into some folks I followed on the internet while living on Galiano last winter, I stopped by a lookout off the road, and sure enough there was a group of people there who happened to be the one's I had been following, the owner's of the project known as Moonshine Kingdom. We chatted briefly, and shared a few interests in landcruisers and the gulf islands before parting ways... It wasn't until a couple of months ago when we reconnected to start planning a visit to the Kingdom.
I got a few people on board... my friend Bourton, captain of the Ella Mackenzie, a famous tugboat from the early 1900's, Sara Harowitz and her boyfriend, Dustin from Montecristo Magazine and Julia, my partner in crime. We set out mid-day on the tug to a dropped pin on Google Maps, cruising at about 8knots in the hot sun.
We took an important stop near Lighthouse Park for a dip in the ocean to cool off, then finished the journey to Moonshine Kingdom.
It's always been a dream of mine to have a little property, a cabin, something to call my own... This is why I was so keen to check out this 1 acre property off the grid, and surely it did not disappoint. As soon we arrived, we were greeted with a rowboat with Kristyn on board, ready to shuttle us to land. We hopped on with all our gear and played rock-paper-scissors for sleeping accomodations...
Kristyn & Sophena are lucky to have a natural spring that provides fresh water to the property... they installed a gravity fed system that travels steeply down the rocky face behind their place, creating enough pressure to have on demand water all year round... also perfect for the outdoor shower and wood-fired hot tub.
There is little to no plastic on the property, a refreshing detail to discover, and as the sun disappeared, candles and gas lanterns lit the way along the property, creating a warm glow for the evening. The hot tub was a perfect place to burn cardboard, paper and wood, such simple systems, but all you really need.
We killed time listening to music and swimming in the day, and in the evening we spent time getting to know each other around some food, drinks and pie for desert. As the stars came out, we jumped in the ocean for a midnight dip with the phosphorescence glowing almost as bright as the stars. The water was cool but nice for swimming in the night, especially knowing we had a hot tub waiting to warm up the bones.
