Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 35 mm — ¹/40 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Anthony Cookie

When we arrived at our room at the Four Seasons Hotel on our recent trip to Vancouver, we were greeted almost immediately with a tray of tea for the adults, and a tray of personalized cookie and milk for Anthony.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 44 mm — ¹/45 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

As I wrote once years ago, it can be dangerous to offer kids unsolicited sweets, but in this case, the cookie was well received by all. A sure fire way to delight an adult is to do something nice for their kid (and as I noted the other day, in the words of Seth Godin, good marketing is all about delight), so The Four Seasons Vancouver started out right.

Of course, you end up paying for all of it. It's not a line item on the bill, but the per-night charge is ridiculously expensive, only eclipsed by the charges for room-service and the compulsory “gratuity” they tack on. But anyway, once you're already paying, the little touches like a personalized cookie for your kid makes for a nice feeling.

It was our first time to see Fumie (A.K.A. Mommy) in a month, so Anthony was happy to bring a gift for her, that he made and wrapped himself. It made for a nice Mommy-and-Child moment...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 22 mm — ¹/40 sec, f/3.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Opening a Gift from Anthony
as Curious George looks on

The next morning, we ordered in for our first breakfast, which made for a devilishly luxurious morning...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/80 sec, f/4.5, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Egg Benedict, a Belgian Waffle, Coffee, and Tea

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 40 mm — ¹/60 sec, f/3.2, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos
Anthony Enjoyed the Bed

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/20 sec, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dusk

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 22 mm — ¹/25 sec, f/2.8, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Dinner
our last evening in Vancouver

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/2000 sec, f/2.8, ISO 320 — full exif
Life in the Country

My folks have a small farm (here in Rootstown, Ohio, where I'm visiting for the summer) that they've rented out since before I could remember. I do remember, perhaps 35 years ago, the last time we fixed it up. 35 years of hard labor later, and it's looking a bit rough for wear.

A renter just moved out after having been there 15 or so years, so I took the opportunity to walk around, and snapped some pictures of the decaying barn and even-worse-shape henhouse....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 20 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100 — full exif
Old Barn and Henhouse

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — full exif
Barn Door
35 years ago, this was in tip-top shape

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 30 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100 — full exif
Henhouse
35 years ago, it was too scary to enter
( Still is )

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/100 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — full exif
Henhouse Detail
Look at the smooth, straight line of the eaves 🙂

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 45 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/9, ISO 400 — full exif
Haunted Tree

The “haunted tree” appears to have been quite a large tree at one point, but seems to have been cut down a long time ago, about six feet off the ground. In the years since, numerous small sprouts of tree have grown out, giving it somewhat of a haunted Don King look...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/80 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100 — full exif
The “Don King” of Trees?

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400 — full exif
Barn and House

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/350 sec, f/13, ISO 320 — full exif
looking the other way,
Wide Open Spaces

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/10 sec handheld, f/2.8, ISO 1250 — full exif
Barn Hayloft

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 120 mm, crop — ¹/250 sec, f/5, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cattail
what wonderful detail

Portrait-Mode Desktop-Background Versions
1050×1680  ·  1200×1920  ·  1600×2560     

Prior to last week's visit to Vancouver and Whistler, I'd been enjoying the dynamic clouds during my trip to Ohio for the summer. (I posted some sorta' pretty cloud pictures here, here, and here.)

I'm back in Ohio now for another week or so, but the weather has been cold and drizzly, so I'm not getting any of the wonderful cloudscapes we had before. Still, I have plenty of pictures from before the Canada trip. The ones on this post are from a 10-minute walk with the camera down by the lake, one afternoon three weeks ago...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 20 mm — ¹/200 sec, f/11, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cattail and Clouds

I love the clouds in the picture above, but I had to apply some HDR-like processing to get the rest to come out. Only, I didn't use HDR... just some of what Lightroom calls “Fill Light” added to bring the grass out of darkness. It took 5 seconds.

I also used the local corrections that are new in Lightroom 2 to add a slight touch of extra brightness to the cattail. That took longer – perhaps three minutes – because I had to carefully paint the correction onto just the cattail and its stem.

For comparison, here's the original:

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/640 sec, f/6.3, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Cattail and Clouds
( original )

I knew that having the sky/clouds in the background would make for a challenging situation, so I stood on my toes to find an angle that put the sky out of the picture...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 125 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/4, ISO 250 — map & image data — nearby photos

Like any kid who grows up in the countryside, I loved to play with these things when I was a kid, using and abusing them until they erupted in a seed-scattering explosion that surely pleased Mother Nature. I've got some pictures of Anthony tickling his cousin Josh with one that I'll have to get around to posting.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm — ¹/250 sec, f/10, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
I See a Turtle
( what do you see? )

One goes to Whistler (in B.C., Canada) for the nature and outdoor sports like bike riding, but kids just want to play, so we indulged Anthony with some of the kid activities the village offered.

Here, five-year-old Anthony tries a “bungee trampoline” kind of thing. The quality of the photos is horrid, but I want to preserve the memory, so they're here nevertheless.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/1250 sec, f/4, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Watching and Waiting

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/350 sec, f/8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
My Turn

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 45 mm — ¹/350 sec, f/8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Buckling Up

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/2500 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Whoa... Fun!

He then bounced up and down with the operator's help, eventually getting quite high....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 44 mm — ¹/6400 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Flying

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/6400 sec, f/5, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos

I would have loved to have had a tripod to make a longer exposure, to show the movement....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 26 mm — ¹/10 sec handheld, f/2.8, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was really impressed with our room at the Four Seasons Resort in Whistler (British Columbia, Canada). Not only was the room big, with lots of nice features (e.g. private veranda, two bathrooms, etc.), but like the whole hotel, the interior design and decoration is absolutely first class all the way.

Unlike the gaudy, pretentious, highly ostentatious displays in Las Vegas, or what you might expect from, say, Donald Trump, this place was low-key quality through and through. Las Vegas is what you'd end up with if you had unlimited funds, but limited class and style. This place had quality and style sitting there quietly waiting to be discovered in every little nook and cranny.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/40 sec handheld, f/2.8, ISO 400 — map & image data — nearby photos
Waiting for our Shuttle
Looking out toward the main entrance, from some lobby sofas

A good example of the attention to detail and the through-and-through class of the hotel design can be seen in the doors to the walk-in closet of our suite. The closet is seen only when walking by from the bedroom to the bedroom's bath suite, so it'd be perfectly acceptable to not have doors, and if you're going to put doors, pretty much anything would do. But “acceptable” and “anything” weren't the bar for this place....

Each of the double doors of the walk-in closet were heavy one-and-a-half-inch thick solid wood, with an inlaid panel surrounded by several levels of delicate moulding. They were certainly heinously expensive, but they didn't scream “expensive” because “expensive” wasn't the point of the design, only a byproduct. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the door detail.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/13 sec handheld, f/2.8, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Main Lobby
Four Seasons Resort
Whistler, Canada

Whistler is in the middle of the mountains, and known for skiing in the winter and all kinds of outdoor activities in the summer. (The skiing and luge events for the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held here; in the summer, downhill mountain biking is popular, but we restricted ourselves to fairly level terrain.)

As such, there's wood everywhere in the interior design. The first picture of this post shows the wood detail of the hotel's front desk, which can also be seen behind Fumie in the lobby photo above.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 23 mm — ¹/30 sec handheld, f/2.8, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lobby
from the stairs going down

In the photo above you can see a bunch of interwoven twigs/branches used to separate the lobby from some stairs going down to a lower level. It all fits in so well that you might not even notice, but it's a delight when you do.

It's even more delightful when you go up to them to see how they get them to hold together, and realize that it's actually bronze or the like...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/25 sec handheld, f/2.8, ISO 800 — map & image data — nearby photos

The lower level of the stairs have them as well. Here's looking across a short hallway to the side of the mini in-hotel art gallery...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/30 sec handheld, f/3.2, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos

There was art everywhere, and it was all wonderful, first-class stuff that fit perfectly into its environment. I don't normally notice art, but the pieces in the room and in the public areas (and in the art gallery) were exceptional.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm — ¹/40 sec handheld, f/2.8, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Lower-Level Elevator Foyer
with the art gallery at left

The gallery's centerpiece, a painting of a ballerina by Alexander Sheversky is head-turning stunning. My horrible photo below through the gallery doors just doesn't do it justice.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 @ 55 mm — ¹/125 sec, f/4, ISO 640 — map & image data — nearby photos

Of course, the price is head-turning stunning as well: $40,000 Canadian.

There was one piece that Fumie really liked for our entrance way at home, a tall and thin wax and oil piece by Susan Wallis, that – at only $4,000 – was almost free by comparison. The price seemed a bit more expensive, though, when compared to the real world of our wallet, so we passed. I see now, a few days later, that it's been sold.

It's a very nice hotel, but none of this comes cheap. Our bill for the two nights ended up being a bone-jarring US$1,300, so (to put it mildly), I don't think we'll really be able to make this a regular trip.