
This piece of art is from Pascale Monnin, an artist from Port-au-Prince. It was featured today on The New York Times and it had been a while since I had been so moved by a piece of art. I stared at this one for a long time. This powerful piece transported me to a place filled with many haggard looks and profound suffering. It gave me chills.

Earlier this fall I got the chance to be invited to go snap some photos of a Red Bull/Transworld story-in-progress. From what I’ve been hearing, you should be seeing this in the upcoming issue of TWS, or shortly anyhow. It was an incredible set-up and with beautiful Vancouver as the backdrop, you can expect to see some amazing shots from the photographers present. It’s a concept shoot, which I didn’t attempt to capture but I’m sure you will get it once you see the results of the protographers in TWS.
Here’s the view from the beach ‘[...]‘

It was a sunny day only by the power of the drinking of the night before. Let me explain; it often went that whenever the forecast was bad and that a crew of ready-to-shreds went all out at the bar, the forecast would turn out to be great the next day. So it was on the day this shot was taken ‘[...]‘

Subtitled “Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism”, Kevin Phillips’ ‘Bad Money’ opens up with a quote from a chief investment strategist:
The “crack cocaine” of our generation appears to be debt. We just can’t seem to get enough of it. And, every time it looks like the U.S. consumer may be approaching his maximum tolerance level, somebody figures out how to lever on even more debt using some new and more complex financing.
According to Phillips, the public and private debt quadrupled from 10.5 trillion to 43 trillion under Greenspan. ‘[...]‘

I already wrote about Rawi Hage’s award winning first book, DeNiro’s Game, and although it took me longer than I had expected to get around to his sophmore literary work, I’m glad I did at last. Going from writing about survival in his native Lebanon to the immigrant’s quest for survival in Montreal’s cold winters, the landscape changes but the struggle remains. [...]

In heavy rotation in my headphones for quite a while already now, K’Naan has been bringing me a lot of energy these past few months. This Somali-Canadian artist has a lot of soul and he communicates it very well through his music. I haven’t heard anything this powerful in a long time. Not only does he shine musically but his lyrics actually have a meaningful presence as well. Pictured above at the 2009 United Nations General Assembly Millennium Development Goals Awards, his African experience and political awareness permeate everything he does, be it his music or his interviews. [...]

As I await the impending celebration of life coming my way, I did get to celebrate my own day of birth with some majestically orchestrated fireworks. Of course I like to think that the city of Vancouver had planned this for me, alas it was mere coincidence. This did not stop me from enjoying the opportunity to snap a few photos [...]

A great adventure is about to start and I’m guessing that you can tell what I’m referring to based on the picture. My focus this past month has been about getting our environment ready for our little one and of course trying to make the most of these last moments of ‘before’.[...]

Never leave home without your camera. Well I should have listened to my own advice and perhaps I would have had my tripod with me. I got lucky anyhow with this shot of downtown Vancouver. We rarely get storms with as much lightning as we got last night and it was quite spectular, specially after an orange glow had covered the entire city at sunset for the better part of a full hour. I also managed to snap a shot [...]

I used to ride this road near the Annecy lake quite frequently and it was with great envy that I watched the Tour de France time trial this week. This is Andy Schleck going faster that I ever did. I obviously never got the chance to ride it with the road closed although I did have some early morning rides where it was quiet by the lake, unlike on any summer weekend when doing the ride around the lake became more of a traffic management experience [...]