Holidays in the West End just got a bit brighter with the announcement of the new Lumiere Festival. After a successful event last year, the Lumiere Festival is once again teaming up with the West End Business Improvement Association to set up free, fun and festival lighting installations from the end of November until early January.

Lumiere Festival

On December 11th and 12th, Spectators can expect the commercial streets of the West End to be filled with live entertainment, street activations, and a free festive hop-on, hop-off trolley tour. New for 2015, MK Illumination has stepped up as a major lighting sponsor with an impressive new lighting feature at Morton Park.

Other highlights include horse-drawn carriage rides leaving from JJ Bean on Bidwell Street provided by Hollyburn Properties, a decorative lighting installation at the Hayward bandstand courtesy of the Burrard Arts Foundation, and a spectacular lighting activation at the Davie Community Garden courtesy of the BC Illuminating Engineering Society’s Emerging Professionals.

“2015 marks the second year of our Lumiere Festival as well as a special year proclaimed by UNESCO as the International Year of Lights,” remarks Stéphane Mouttet, a founding director for the Lumière Festival Vancouver Society.

“Together with our event partners, the West End BIA, the Illuminating Engineering Society and the Vancouver Pride Society, we look forward to celebrating the beauty of lights as well as the significance of light-based technologies. Our hope is to grow this winter event into an annual tradition that will bring together communities and foster a sense of connectedness throughout the holiday season.”

Photo courtesy of the West End BIA

Lumiere connects a number of the dots outlined by the City of Vancouver in the West End Plan, linking the neighbourhood more closely to St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation’s ‘Lights of Hope’, the ‘Lights for Life’ on Beach Avenue, and the programmable lighting system installed along Davie Village.

Stay tuned for more programming information and updates. Follow the Lumiere Festival on Twitter and the West End BIA on Facebook.

There have been almost 200 weekly photo roundups published on Miss604.com, over 46,000 photos shared with the Miss604 Flickr Pool, and over 11,000 photos shared with the #Photos604 tag Instagram. Residents and visitors alike love to capture our city and celebrate its poignant street scenes, beautiful landscapes, and memorable landmarks.

I enlisted talented local photographer Clayton Perry to help me share some tips for capturing some of the most popular types of photos we see of our fair city. This is the third post in a three-part “How to Photograph Vancouver” series sponsored by London Drugs.

How to Photograph Science World at Night

Where was this photo taken?
Both of these images are taken from the seawall at the Village at False Creek (Olympic Village).

What is the best time of day for a shot like this?
The best time of the day for a shot like this is what is called the “blue hour” – this is the hour or so after the sun has set. The sky still maintains its blue colour and you are able to capture this along with the lights of the city and this photogenic landmark.

Is any extra equipment needed?
Ensure you are using a tripod and a shutter release cord (or remote control). This allows you the longer shutter speeds needed for the light stream from the False Creek Ferries as they sail on by.

What is your top tip for getting this image? 
My top tip for this shot as with any night shot is to use your tripod and shutter release cord and as always, dress warm, once the sun goes down, night shooting can get chilly.

About The Photographer

Vancouver-based photographer Clayton Perry was born on Vancouver Island and moved to the lower mainland in the late 1960s. He spent most of his childhood summers either in Sproat Lake near Port Alberni, Lake Okanagan while vacationing in Penticton, Victoria BC or his hometown of Richmond, British Columbia. He developed his skills around BC slowly developing a massive database consisting of over 45,000 images on Flickr alone. His passion lies in taking landscape and city images. Follow Clayton on Facebook and Twitter for more of his photography.

One afternoon, after attending a show at the TRADEX in Abbotsford that left me inspired with gift ideas for the holidays, I got in my car and started writing out a shopping list on my phone. As the list grew in my notepad app, I decided to look up the closest stores that would carry some of my bright gift-giving inspirations.

I started up the car and headed to Sephora, which wasn’t too far from where I was. From there, I spotted RW&Co, then Purdy’s, Old Navy, London Drugs and H&M. In the distance, a Cineplex VIP movie theatre called my name but I knew I had to push on. Before I knew it, in one afternoon, I had checked everything off my list.

This was my one-stop shopping experience with Highstreet in Abbotsford, an open-air shopping centre with 90 shops and services, as well as over a dozen holiday events and activities happening this season.

The Holidays at Highstreet in Abbotsford

It all starts on Saturday, November 21, 2015 at Highstreet’s Central Plaza when one of Canada’s tallest Christmas trees (at 65 feet) will be lit at 5:00pm (with a 4:30pm pre-show). The night will include BC’s best marching band, talented dancers, holiday characters, Spandy Andy and of course, the jolly man himself.

Holidays at Highstreet continue with a Holiday Show every Saturday from November 21 to December 19 (5:00pm-6:00pm); Photos with Santa everyday from November 22 to December 23; Gift Wrap & Personal Shopping service from November 22 to December 24; and an Ugly Christmas Sweater Contest from November 15 to December 15.

Find all of these special events and more on the Highstreet event page and check out this shopping destination for yourself at 3122 Mt Lehman Road in Abbotsford (take Highway 1, Exit 83). Follow Highstreet on Facebook and Twitter for the latest information, and on Instagram for inspiration.

This post has been contributed by Thomas Slatter, SPES Communications Volunteer with Stanley Park Ecology Society (“SPES”). I have been following SPES since I moved into the West End a decade ago and I have been a member for three years. I wanted to offer the team an opportunity to share their news, events, and work so I have created “SPES Saturday” where they contribute and share stories with my audience once a month.

Migratory Masters

Birds of Stanley Park

By Thomas Slatter, SPES Communications Volunteer

For some of us, pumpkins and Thanksgiving are the signs that we’ve reached autumn, but for those with an eye to the sky nothing heralds the winter like the return of Vancouver’s winter birds. While we might moan at the lack of snow on Cypress, bird watchers are eagerly watching the birds flocking here by the thousands in order to escape the cold.

Lesser scaup on Lost Lagoon. Photo by Don Enright

Take a walk down to Stanley Park’s Lost Lagoon and join the Stanley Park Ecology Society at the Nature House (open only weekends in the winter), where you’ll see the birds congregating by the hundreds. Native herons stalk the shallows alongside scaups, ring-necked ducks, wigeons and more. Walk a little further and you’ll hear the chirp of songbirds – sparrows, chickadees and towhees. With all these birds it may sound Hitchcock-esque, but it could not be further from it. Bird watching is serene and peaceful, and there’s not a better time to do it in Vancouver.

Spotted Towhee. Photo by Andre Chan

Along the coastline you’ll witness a spectacular sight as flotillas of coastal feeding ducks, like the brightly-beaked surf scoters and Barrow’s goldeneyes, gather along English Bay and Second Beach to feed on mussels and clams. These ‘rafts’ of ducks seem so coordinated you might think they move in these numbers all year, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In actuality, each bird has come from a unique and individually chosen area thousands of kilometers away from Vancouver.

With satellite tracking devices, researchers have recorded Barrow’s goldeneyes and Harlequin ducks making huge trans-provincial journeys not once, but three times a year from mating grounds in places like Riske Creek, to molting grounds as far north as Yellowknife and Great Bear Lake, and then all the way south to Vancouver and its surrounding coastline for their winter hideaways. This immense journey is then repeated again when winter ends. Each move is fraught with danger, with the majority of fatalities occurring when the ducks enter the next area and have to contend with new predators and predatory patterns. A little thing like predation won’t stop them though and the ducks will return to the same site every year, with ‘site fidelity’ being so strong that hens will even use the same nesting bowl year after year.

Barrow’s Goldeneyes. Photo by Liron Gertsman

Each movement into a new area gives the ducks the opportunity to socialize and mingle. It’s during these periods of congregation (in particular during the spring) that the ducks will select mating partners that will typically last for life – though there have been some rare recorded ‘divorces’! If you watch for long enough, you’ll see these floating masses are incredibly social, with the ducks moving from group to group to reacquaint themselves with others. If anything, these floating masses are giant reunions, with all the drama you might expect.

Surf Scoters and Barrow’s Goldeneyes taking flight. Photo by Liron Gertsman

There’s never really a dull moment when you’re bird watching. It is at once peaceful and calming, but there’s always the chance you might see a rare appearance (keep an eye out for the rare and beautiful Western grebe) and at the very least you will be witnessing an incredible social event, with all the intricacies you can imagine if you just look close enough.

Western grebe. Photo by Liron Gertsman

With great thanks to Sean Boyd PhD. for his wealth of information. For more information, please do not hesitate to contact the Stanley Park Ecology Society online or by calling 604-718-6523.

There have been almost 200 weekly photo roundups published on Miss604.com, over 46,000 photos shared with the Miss604 Flickr Pool, and over 11,000 photos shared with the #Photos604 tag Instagram. Residents and visitors alike love to capture our city and celebrate its poignant street scenes, beautiful landscapes, and memorable landmarks.

I enlisted talented local photographer Clayton Perry to help me share some tips for capturing some of the most popular types of photos we see of our fair city. This is the second post in a three-part “How to Photograph Vancouver” series sponsored by London Drugs.

How to Photograph Vancouver at Night

Where was this photo taken?
Granville Street outside the Roxy Nightclub.

What is the best time of day for a shot like this?
The best time of the day for a shot like this is early evening when the streets have lots of action and cars zooming by as well as all the lights from the businesses on the street are on full.

Is any extra equipment needed?
To get a photo like this you definitely want to use a tripod and a shutter release cord. This will ensure you can leave your shutter open for an amount of time that gives your image the “light stream effect”.

What is your top tip for getting this image? 
Be sure to have a shutter release cord (or remote control) – eliminating any shake in your camera.

About The Photographer

Vancouver-based photographer Clayton Perry was born on Vancouver Island and moved to the lower mainland in the late 1960s. He spent most of his childhood summers either in Sproat Lake near Port Alberni, Lake Okanagan while vacationing in Penticton, Victoria BC or his hometown of Richmond, British Columbia. He developed his skills around BC slowly developing a massive database consisting of over 45,000 images on Flickr alone. His passion lies in taking landscape and city images. Follow Clayton on Facebook and Twitter for more of his photography.