have been a professional web designer for 5 years. I love drinking amazing coffee and still schlep a camera around and conducts my daily errands on my trusty bike. I currently split my time between the small community of Sechelt, BC and the West Coast metropolis of Vancouver, Canada.
The majority of my training and experience has come from an exhaustive list of Meetups, WordCamps, but also has a Diploma in Journalism Arts and Certificate in New Media Design & Web Development.
View all posts by Robert Dall →
Back in my newspaper journalism days all my transportation was done via car, even in Yellowknife where I lived without a personal vehicle for almost three years. If I wanted to get anywhere it was via car.
Since leaving the profession. Selling the car and purchasing the best commuting bike in the entire world. I have always tried to find different and alternative means of transportation that provide less stress and more enjoyment to my day.
This summer I took my nephew to Stanley Park and in the process we rode the SkyTrain, a trolley bus, a diesel bus and for the first time The West Coast Express (WCE).
Typical seats found on the West Coast Express
For my four year old nephew transit is more a special treat then anything else. But for me it wasn’t anything more then the status quo of Vancouver living.
After a fun filled day we jumped on board the WCE. Experiencing every avenue of transit except the SeaBus that day. I can certainly say the WCE was by far the most civilized relaxing and enjoyable mode of transportation I have ridden. It was quiet comfortable and efficient.
Why aren’t we doing more of this?
I have taken the Greyhound to Chilliwack, BC on a number occasions and found, comparatively speaking, the Greyhound was about as enjoyable as fingernails on a chalkboard. It’s noisy, confined by traffic and the depots are off the beaten path of the highway.
I am sure the daily train travel would have it’s drawbacks, but with the wide seats, air conditioning, power plugs and tables for the laptop I have been left with one lasting feeling from the experience.
A high school friend named Jana Curll looked me up to do some photo reproduction of her art work.
A very basic studio set up in my living room.
Loosing contact as one does I never knew she was such an artist back in high school. Her work is amazing.
I on the other hand had to pull out the old Camera Gear and jury-rig up a studio in the living room to capture her work. It was the first time I had really shot something in over a year. It was fun to get back into the photo groove if only for a morning.
She is having a show at the Gumboot Garden Cafe for the month of July. I’d certainly check it out.
I didn’t really start feeling old until I realized that it was Elphiphstone Secondary Grad Night and both myself and Jana graduated in the same gym some 15 years ago.
This is when I really started to feel old. Lucky Dan showed up. I asked if we could jet, before I break a hip and my false teeth fall out.
On the way home I felt the entire day from start to finish was comprised of my past and how easily you are reminded of it.
I love you, ever since I joined your service a couple years ago. I have been able to reconnect with friends from Sydney, AZ to Yellowknife, NWT.
But Facebook we really need to talk… Your not Twitter, Nor do I want to be Twitter. See Facebook I joined your service to share my life with a close 200 friends, and I really try keeping up with all of them. Honestly, I have a personal twitter account, but I am not sure what to do with it because I already use this site, and that site, to voice my public views.
And, yes, before you privacy experts get your shirt in a knot. I know the privacy on Facebook is a basic one. And anyone with some savvy hacking skills could potentially see, copy, change any of my info on your site, and I am OK with that. I know the risk of what I post and have read more then one story about employees getting fired for posting stuff on Facebook. I also prefer to keep my business life and social life separate, so if I haven’t accepted your friend request. Isn’t not you it’s me. . .
Lets just call my Facebook friends an extended family for want of a better word. I’d be OK with telling them stuff I wouldn’t be comfortable tell a complete stranger, which quite frankly resembles the entire Internet.
If I did want to publicly rant and rave then I have half a dozen different services at my disposal, or I’d just make all of my post public. but I didn’t join Facebook to do that. Nor is Facebook something I want to use that for. I like Facebook for being Facebook it was the reason I joined and the reason I continue to log in each day.
Hope you had a great Christmas and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year.
When I was in high school I wanted to go into the media and during a class at the old Coast Cable 11 Studio’s in Gibsons BC. We sat in the classroom and watched BCTV.
Tony Parsons and Mike McCardell were the text-book of what good journalism was. As I grew older my views of the media had changed, I was hardened by years in the news, and this hardening had led me to leave the media. but watch Tony and Mike, they, they were still the tried and true source they were when I grew up.
While Mike is still on the air, at least for now. Both were from the old school of journalism. The type that isn’t taught anymore. The type that really can’t be taught in the confines of a school.
I have stopped watch Global as it is now called, it’s a different station on the same channel. Chris Gailus although a Canadian spent many years at a FOX affiliate in New York, USA and is more of the sensational type and doesn’t have that same calm cool voice Tony has. But I watched tonight, just to say goodbye.
I have moved on to CTV and another veteran of the old school journalism, Bill Good, who use to work at BCTV. In hopes I can find a newscast that if it has to deliver bad news it will do it in a calm cool and collected way.
Update #1: Tony Parsons can now be found on CBC Evening News. Update #2: Mike McCardell can now be found on CTV News at 6.
When I first entered into web design from the world of the media– journalism and photography–the first course I had to take was on blogging. While I never had a blog and didn’t really want one, I wasn’t sure I wanted to take a course in essentially journalism, which was something I was really trying to distance myself from.
Powered by WordPress
But I took the writing for the web course in stride and had to sign up for a WordPress.com account. I decided to write on coffee as it was close to home, easy to write about and a popular topic. My class only required me to write 12 posts, but after those 12 posts I saw the power of blogging and had 1,200 unique page views and a number of comments about the blog.
So I really started to take the WordPress blog seriously about that time and got a domain name and style that fit and the readership continued to grow. WordPress was growing right along with my own blog, the two seem to feed off each other (no pun intended).
When I started to see other blogs link to mine in some authority I knew I was on to something. So what to do? Well the first thing was to make the blog self hosted and, well, that was the hardest part. But, it was also important to keep the blog looking the same. I picked the Freshy theme by Julien De Luca as it was one of the 16 different themes available to WordPress.com users at the time. While I could make a change when I moved the blog why change? As it works for me and the readers seem to like it. (p.s. the theme I am using here is a highly customized Orange Coffee We now run a child theme of Twenty Thirteen called R2D2 )
Change is a good thing…I think…
While WordPress had designed a way to take your content with you when I moved it wasn’t that easy. I had three issues with my content moving:
• I wanted to keep my old Freshy theme and while it was still available for download it wasn’t optimized for WordPress 2.7
• My old content from WordPress 2.1 didn’t format that well into WordPress 2.7 So if I wanted to edit any of my old content I essentially had to re-align the entire post.
• All of media, pictures and video had to be manually copied from the WordPress.com site and uploaded to the new server while persevering the perma-links.
Yeah this totally wasn’t that easy and I would never suggest trying to do it this way… I am sure there are easier ways to go about this but I just didn’t know how or my server at that time wasn’t allowing the import as it was suggested by the codex.
Etana and Robert, Photo by Laia Prats, used with permission
Robert Caplin is someone I have only met once, you might say we run in the same circles just in different end of the continent. I first talked Robert when we were both member of the sportsshooter.com. What I learn about Robert back then was when does something he does it right. Big big or go go home. . . Well Robert always goes big. Like the time Robert entered to win a Jack Gruber autographed monopod cover from the Salt Lake City Olympics. Robert set his lawn on fire to spell Jack’s name. Yes, he did get the monopod cover, but anyone who goes to that length for a monopod cover, must be dedicated to photography, Caplin is and it shows. He now lives in New York city after graduating school and having internships with LA Times and NY Times. I have always been impressed with his work. He is a gifted individual with telling a story through the lens of his camera.
Game changing
When the Canon 5D MKII,(the one that shoots 1080p video) was released, we all saw what could be done with this new hybrid of the digital age in Vincent Laforet’sReverie. But he had helicopters, car mounts, lights, and some resources that most people just don’t have. No doubt it is an impressive camera when put into the hands of some one who is truly a master of the craft. I though Vincent’s video was truly ground breaking and game changing. I though How hard it would be to put something like that together with limited equipments funds and budgets.
Home Video
Caplin came through to answer this question for me. He and his sister produced quite the amazing video with the same Canon 5D MKII camera. He writes in a story for sportsshooter.com that all he used was four people and a iPhone to produce this video.
The production of the video consisted of four people in total:
• Myself as ‘the cameraman’
• Etana, as ‘the talent’
• My Step-Mom as ‘the help’
• My Girlfriend Laia as ‘the producer’ Robert Caplin
He also shot the entire video in natural light, and some fast lenses (aperature f2.8 or faster) and used a reflector on just one shot. This is where the future of the industry is going where stills and video mashing up into a one solid visual artist.
Etana
Did I meantion that Etana is just a high school student who wrote this song herself and is only 15 years old? I also showed this video to a friend of mine who though this video was shot by a recording studio on location with a large crew. She did get the vocals recorded in the studio and then added some musical accompaniment to help fill out the song, but truly it was just a family affair.
Now we all don’t have New York based awarding winning photographers as brothers, who can put us in a music video in Time Square, but but don’t let that dismay you! Why I am showcasing this amazing video because I don’t believe it is out of reach of any photographer with a little dedication.
You can also video the behind the scenes footage of the video on how they used that iPhone too, and true to form Caplin makes an appearance at the end which captures him quite well I think!!!
Way, way back, even before college, (in a millenium far, far away) I was heading down to Seattle to visit my cousin Art Wolfe and while I was down there a little thing called the WTO meeting occurred and the villagers were literally rioting in the streets. I saw some amazing photos from that day, but none more amazing than this award winning one by Andy Clark. I didn’t know who Andy Clark was at the time, but I soon would. Andy helped me in my early career, getting a few photos on the Reuters wire.
Clarkfoto.ca
Blast through the next 7 years and I am having coffee with Andy, outside Reuters’ Vancouver office. We chatted about my new career of web design, the internet and Andy mentioned that he never really had a website to call his own.
I had mentioned a content management system called Pixelpost, which was an open source and developed mainly by Europeans (how very haute couture) and wasn’t all that known in these parts. I loved the slick user interface and I showed it to Andy and within moments I was contracted to do his website. Wow I thought, I am actually making Andy Clark’s website. This is the stuff dreams are made of. Or at least the direction I wanted to take my web design, knowing what most news photographers want in one.
And now the hard work
It took some recoding of the original source code and some help from Piotr Galas, one of the developers of Pixelpost, but six months after we had developed the concept, Andy had a categorized portfolio site he could update at his leisure. After a few tweaks and reviews from a few other sage photographers we launched the site on January 12th and the next day we had Rob Galbraith.com linking to the site.
The Result
Clarkfoto.ca had 2,000 visitors in just one day and blew through 10 gigs of bandwidth in a week. This is a great start for a veteran photographer of the Canadian news industry, and visits have been steady 300 to 400 a week since, which makes Andy one pretty happy fellow.
“I was very pleased with how Robert took my somewhat hazy idea of what the website should look like and transformed it into to exactly what I was looking for….very nice job indeed”
Andy Clark
Andy also has a blog, which I bet he will muse about shooting cricket, leica lexicon, curling, etc. . . but don’t listen to my bias opinion read it for yourself.
I arrived with only minutes before the opening of the Apple Store Vancouver to see what I expected to see. Hordes of people (some already wearing Mac t-shirts) to enter into the opening of the new Apple Store. It is small in comparison to the new Boston Store but is similar in size to the Palo Alto Store I had seen years ago.
Apple Store Opening in Vancouver is met with great fan fairThe Apple Store before the rushYes this is the line up for the free T-shirtYup the line goes out the door and around the corner
Over all I was impressed with the Apple Store and welcome it to Vancouver. It is sorely needed.
I have always been an Apple fanatic, but see, it’s not my fault. I was thrust into the computer age at the very young age of five, I think.
My father is a school teacher and he purchased an Apple two-plus for the house. The next couple years were a vast experience of syntax errors and catalog commands. I had to learn simple programming terms if I wanted to play any videogames.
As I grew, I found a different company and another cult following of something even better: The Amiga 500. It was my only brush with another computer system and not a bright one, although it’s word processor and printer got me through college. It has some great games and awesome graphics, but my overall use for the power of this computer of that time was far lacking.
As I sought a career in photography and journalism I realized that I needed to get back to Mac, and through college I was introduced to the iMac.
I graduated college and moved to Yellowknife. It was their I picked up my first Mac from a friend for $500. It was a great steal and allowed me to work from home and connect to the Internet, it was also nice to see Steve Jobs back on board.
My Amiga 500
And while I did occasionally use a windows machine, I still loved my Mac and how it was so simple to use. I was blown away when a friend of mine had upgraded to OSX but I knew my iMac couldn’t handle it. So I had to wait for the new OS.
Go East and find thy Jaguar
I left the North with my iMac and moved to the Prairies of Manitoba where my new job had me on a G4. Although it had the processing power it was still classic. This was all the power anyone could ever need, right?
I noticed more friends were ditching their spyware riddled window machines for the new, sleek and cool iMac and something called the iPod. While I decided to leave full-time employment and freelance my new laptop went on a safari and found a Jaguar (OSX v10.2).
I decided to move back to Vancouver and it seemed that everyone had an iPod. My laptop was showing its age and the 10-gig hard drive was barely enough to process files of today’s digital life.
As I reached the 30-something and ventured into a new career as a web designer, I found that the Mac is not perfect for everything and Mac still had a lot of work to convince the masses. But the tide was turning, the stable Intel chip was part of the process.
While my need grew from a 12-inch iBook to a 17-inch MacBook Pro, I also love the new chip and new power. I am left with a few questions for my fellow Mac cult members.
My 17" Macbook Pro
I have always loved my Apple for being the little quite guy in the corner who knew all the answers, just very few paid attention or cared. But now that people are flocking to the Mac and Apple is also the undisputed king of digital music, will they still be that friendly little (well not so little) company who make great products, have great customer service and a loyal cult following?
If we don’t remember History are we doomed to repeat it?
I remember a coffee shop that used to have great customer service and a loyal cult following. Unfortunately, it thought it could monopolize the market and lower quality and no one would care. Well I’d say you take a look at the Starbucks share price and tell me different.
Also, what is the difference between Howard Schultz telling me how I like my coffee to Steve Jobs telling me how I want to use my computer? Well essentially, there isn’t. And how are computers and coffee related? They are both related to the Customer Experience.
While Apple is riding the wave of great usability and Apple stores are opening up world wide to huge crowds and fan fair, can Apple really keep its loyal fan base while appealing to the mass-market consumer? Starbucks is having to close stores, retrain staff and look to save its reputation with the customers it still has left.
Author Leander Kahney speaks about how Steve Jobs can rarely, if ever, give interviews. He never tells people when products are released, and released hardware and software locks down in propriety software and then people are told to sign a multi-year contract with one company or another. Yet Apple still wins over thousands of customers, which says something about how this one company is still doing everything right.
But if Shultz walked up and told me what coffee to buy or how to buy it and, oh yeah, sign this multi-year contract if you want to drink our coffee, I’d tell him to shove it.
So I will line up with the other members of this cult as that little company from Cupertino opens its latest Apple Store in Downtown Vancouver (Pacific Centre Mall, 701 West Georgia Street, Saturday May 21, 10:00am). I am still its biggest fan and avid user. But I only worry that if all the hype of a store opening and all the pomp and circumstance of a MacWorld will ever succeed the value of what is really important: the quality of the product.
During my internship at Creative Spirit Communications I was invited to the Bill Reid Gallery. I jumped at the chance to visit the new gallery and saw the progress of Mystic Messengers being elevated and hung on the wall. It was an amazing morning to witness such achievements and to be so close to such great art. I met Haida artist Jim Hart who was carving a totem pole for the opening of the gallery.
Although I never made it back to check out the progress of the the totem pole that was being carved, I was excited to attend the official opening on Thursday, May 8.
Location Location Location
The Bill Reid Gallery Opens up to the Public on Saturday, May 10 and is located at 639 Hornby Street.
This is one of the largest collections of work in such a cozy and welcoming space. It is nice to see a permanent home to one of our greatest residents.
Mythic Messengers
Martine Reid at the opening of the Bill Reid Gallery
