Last weekend we went for a sunny bike ride to Steveston, a historic salmon canning town located in Richmond, BC.

There are many wooden buildings that exist because of its historic canning past, which make for a great ride.

While in Steveson, we went to visit a small village called Finns Slough by bike.

It was an a smooth flat bike ride through the many farm fields.

As you turn the corner, your eyes become visually assaulted with the wonderful view you see below.

Finns Slough is a Finnish fishing village which is over 100 years old. Today it is a historic site that preserves the surrounding wildlife and habitat.

It’s absolutely amazing that some of the original Finn families still live there to this day!

The village isn’t very long and much of it is private-access-only, so we could only peep our heads through the houses to have a look. We were both amazed that many of these rickety buildings have held up over all these decades.

Here’s a photo of a path that leads to the back of Finn’s Slough which is blocked off for residents only.

It was about a 40 min ride back to Steveston. We were both pooped from the ride. We’d love to come and see what Finn’s Slough would look like in the winter.

Here’s a post dedicated to all the random snapshots I’ve taken with my phone of things that have caught my eye over the last little while.

The top two photos were taken during our visit to Octopus Studios. These two wonderful handbags were handmade by Nik Palmer of Palmer & Sons. We wrote a post on him last year which you can read here.

Last year over Christmas I came across this gorgeous church window. It was for sale at Liberty Furniture in Vancouver for a measly $7500. If only I had a the space or the cash.

Last month while I was trying to find a place that could fix my bike I came across an amazing bike shop, Super Champion Bicycles. This place is located on the edge of Chinatown and run by a super friendly chap, Tyler.

I love how his shop is adorned with vintage bikes that hang from the wood panel walls.

Speaking of bikes, here’s a snap of what my Brooks Millbrook bag looks like before I go on a ride. It’s big enough to stuff with my wallet, keys, iPhone and Canon 7D and lens!

Last week I went to visit my friend Tony from Wrong Wroks. He pulled out his beautiful silver Leica M8. I wish he didn’t show me this because now I want one! Mounted on the camera is my 1960’s Canon 50mm F1.2 Serelux lens.

Last but not least, Naomi and I came across this neat Hudsons Bay blanket in its original box at the Vancouver Flea market.

It’s been grey, bleary and cold this past week in Vancouver, so when the sun peeked out for a brief moment today, we took our newly fixed up bikes out for a spin on the Stanley Park Seawall. With over 8.8 km (5.5 miles) of oceanfront trails, it was the perfect place to take them for a mid-afternoon ride.

It was Ryan’s first time riding his bike since getting it back from the shop so it took him a few minutes to get used to the way it handled. The Seawall is a great place to ride these bikes because it’s fairly flat and with the one-speed, any terrain with even a slight incline can be challenging.

I love walking/running the Seawall in the summer.

We are pretty happy with the way the bikes have turned out. There isn’t really much else I want to put on mine except some kind of basket at the back. I’ve been thinking about a twin rear hanging basket (kind of looks like metal saddle bags) to hold things while I’m riding – like groceries, etc.

Ryan had to transfer his Brooks bag from the back to the front of his bike because his tires are too big and the top of the back tire was rubbing against the bottom of the bag. The only way to keep it at the back would be to fasten it tightly to the seat with some zap straps, although I think keeping it at the front still looks great.

I can’t wait for the weather to become warmer so we can start riding our bikes on a weekly basis!

The dreary weather we’ve been getting these past few weeks has been preventing us from doing any restoration on some of the outstanding projects on our plates. Not to be deterred, I pulled out something I bought last fall, a vintage Mole Richardson Fresnel light during one of the rare clear days last week.

For those who don’t know about Mole Richardson, they are an American  lighting company that started in 1927. Mole’s claim to fame is their innovation for using the Fresnel lens from lighthouses and adapting them into smaller portable lights.

During the war, Mole used this technology on boats and tanks. From the 50’s through to the 80’s, Mole Richardson lights were a the main staple for many types of films such as Star Wars.

I bought my light off eBay which is a great place to start if you’re looking for one. This one is probably from the 50’s. It’s the size of half a garbage can and extremely heavy.

It’s in decent shape and has its share of dings and dents. It makes me wonder what films is was formerly used for. I’m planning to pair this up with the desk I bought last summer. I’m undecided about how to restore it as the paint is not the original Mole Richardson red.

As for making it work, the light itself draws over 2K in power which creates some extremely bright light and insane heat. I’ll probably be converting it by stuffing it with LED’s and 110v power. I’ll do another update post later this summer on this project.

This weeks Tune Tuesday is by Eddie De Lange and Jerry Grey, A String of Pearls.

Played by Benny Goodman and his orchestra, this Foxtrot hit number two on the US charts in 1941. Enjoy!

Last weekend we took a ferry over to see Peter Haase and Mona Fertig of Mother Tongue Publishing. Peter was taught letterpress printing by Jim Rimmer and I wanted to film some of his shared stories on camera.

The weather during our short  ferry ride from Vancouver to Salt Spring Island was absolutely gorgeous. The three photos below were taken with a Loreo camera lens.

We had an hour or so to explore the town of Ganges before meeting up with Peter and Mona. There isn’t much antiquing to do in Ganges but I had the best clam chowder at The Oyster Catcher in Mouats Landing which made up for it.

When we arrived at Peter & Mona’s wonderful house we were greeted by chickens!

In the basement of their house lies Mother Tongue’s cozy letterpress shop.

The shop is filled with all sorts of wonderful printed materials. They have three presses, a Vandercook proofing press, a Chandler & Price platen press and a wonderful green Golding Pearl platen press.

Here are some of the many beautiful lino blocks Peter is currently working on.

Our trip only lasted a weekend, but we’ll hopefully be back in the summer time to enjoy more of the island.

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post about cameras, so today I thought I’d post about a few lenses I’ll be taking with me on a short trip. I’ll be packing my 5D and two quirky lenses – the  Loreo 35mm F5.6 lens and the Jupiter 9 85mm F2.0 lens.

I bought this very small and light Loreo lens a while back on eBay for $20. It’s a pancake style lens that uses a plastic element and water stop aperture mechanism to control light. It’s apertures range from F5.6 all the way to F64. The Loreo is pre-focused so if you want your pictures in focus you’ll have to move your feet to get the shot or adjust the aperture accordingly. This lens isn’t going to give you National Geographic quality images, hence the awful reviews,but that didn’t stop me from buying one. I love the look plastic lens elements give so we’ll see how this one performs this weekend.

The other lens I’m bringing is the  Russian Jupiter 9 lens, a copy of the Carl Zeiss 85mm Sonnar. It’s a aluminum bodied lens that was produced sometime in the 1960s. My copy  is a M39 thread SLR mount.

The 85mm focal length makes it a great portrait/short telephoto lens. The decent F2 aperture should also give some good background bokeh. I managed to find the original plastic lens hood online but I probably won’t use it because the way it mounts is pretty flimsy.

I’ll report back with some photos taken with these lenses next week.  Stay tuned!

Last month, I blogged about my late grandfather’s photography and how I came across them on my trip last year to Asia. The boxes of slides have been sitting in my apartment, untouched – until now. I’ve finally managed to get my hands on a slide scanner and have spent most of the night picking and scanning a handful of them.

I have no idea if these photos are in any kind of order – any text written on the slides or the boxes are in Chinese (which I can’t read). All I can tell is that they belong to the same series. What I did like about this set is the mystery behind what they are doing.

There are groups of men and women hunched over low tables picking and cutting at what looks like small twigs. What I find interesting is that they all look so dressed up. Who goes to work in a full suit and tie to work manual labour on a farm? I wish I knew what they were doing and what year this was.

I feel really honored to be able to have these slides in my possession. The handful here is only a small portion of one of the slide boxes – of which I have a huge supply. There definitely is no shortage and I’ll be going through and scanning these for some time to come.

I love the hair on the two men below. They look so Dick Tracyesque

This weeks Tune Tuesday comes from a mysterious purple labeled Russian record.

I don’t have the slightest clue what it says or when it was produced (1950s?). In any case, enjoy!

Here’s Naomi’s bike ready to ride for Spring. It’s not completely fixed the way we want it yet, but so far we’re happy with the way it looks and rides.

A few things like the fenders and the bike rack could use some new black paint. The weather here is just too wet to do any restoring so we’ll just have wait until summer rolls around. Considering the chain guard is nearly 50 years old, it’s definitely seen better days. Since it’ll be hard to restore it like new we’ll just leave it as is until it needs to be replaced.

The handlebars on the bike were beginning to crack so I replaced them with some snazzy Brooks leather ring handlebar grips. They were a pain to install because the diameter of the handlebars were too thick but in the end I got them on.

We replaced the old, dried 26 x 3/8 stock tires with a new pair Schawble Delta Cruiser white wall tires. We love the way they look on the bike!

At last the final piece to any great bike is the seat. I picked up a Brooks B67S seat from Dream Cycles and popped it on. I also got a matching Brooks D-shaped tool bag as well (not shown here). All we need is for my bike to get fixed and some decent weather for both of us to take a ride around the seawall.