Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Tagged !

I got tagged by Janina over at ( jm.n) and I am supposed to come up with eight things about myself, the picture posted of myself is when I was visiting Vancouver's China town this past summer.

1. I grew up and lived most of my life on Vancouver Island , our family( Mom and Dad, two brothers and a sister ) lived in Metchosin ( one of my favourite places on earth ) and Sooke, later we lived in Langford.

2. In high school I was always good at art, I regularly got A's and B's and shop classes too came easy to me also , I was terrible at English, my grade 12 English teacher said she passed by by the skin of my teach.

3. I started my interest in photography when I was about 15, before that I wanted to me a musician, but was terrible at playing the guitar.

4. I got my first newspaper job when I was 18 years old, I had just graduated from high school ( grade 12 ), beside taking pictures for the weekly paper, I had to deliver papers to drop boxes in stores, clean the office, make coffee, help with page layouts.

5. I moved to Brampton Ontario when I was 21, to start my first job on a daily newspaper, I had been never further east than the Province of Alberta in Canada, I drove the 5000 km in a 1973 Volvo loaded down with all of my worldly possessions.

6. I came back to B.C. after 4 1/2 years in Ontario, I missed the mountains. I applied for a photographer's job at the Kelowna Daily Courier where I have been ever since, during these years I have won numerous awards, including the Canadian Press 'News' picture of the year award in 2004 for coverage of wild fires that destroyed 234 homes.

7. I am an avid wood worker, I have built a quite lot of the furniture in my home, pretty well my complete office furniture, my computer desk, printer stand, shelves for CDs, light box stand, print paper holder. Mostly I used my Dad's work shop, but recently I acquired wood working tools from y friends who moved to Vancouver.

8. I have never been married, have no kids and live alone, I have my friends, family and neighbour's cats, to keep my company.

I don't know anyone else I can tag so I will leave it at that.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just as I thought -- down to earth, practical, artistic, animal-lover, nature lover, settled ... nothing really mysterious at all!

You know, I have to say how much I enjoy reading and saying out loud those wonderful native Canadian names, such as Metchosin, Sooke and all the others in your posts and on your website. They really roll over the tongue and for me are quite 'romantic'; nothing like our Aboriginal names, which can be quite a mouthful and make us cross-eyed trying to work out how to read and then pronounce them. LOL.

I can understand about the missing the mountains thing. During my marriage, of nearly eleven years, we spent almost every other weekend and lots of holidays building a real log cabin, along with my ex's closest schoolmates, in the hills outside of a Victorian small old gold ghost-mining town called Walhalla, pop. then around 30. It never got finished as it was burned down by the government who were reclaiming Crown land to revert to bushland; probably one of the first conservationist endeavours in this State. We don't have mountains here, just hills or ranges. Canada has mountains. And the pix you have shown us of them are just spectacular and Canada is on my worldlist of places to visit. In fact, currently there is a competition on a holidays show on local TV to win a trip to Canada; I've entered; doubt anything will come of it, but you never know!

Interestingly, my ex was also a very good woodworker, building lots of things for us and others, including our stereo record player with inbuilt AM,FM radio and huge speakers, from the ground up (he is an electronics whiz too).

Is there an online link to the local paper so that we can see some of your award-winning images?

Finally, dare I say it, you're a good-looking bloke! cough...

Gary Nylander said...

Hi Janina,

Thanks for your comments !, cctually, Metchosin and Sooke are aboriginal names , Metchosin or Smet-shosin as it was called in the Native Coast Salish language, Sooke was also inhabited by the Coast Salish people.......there are other names I like, one is Sombrio Beach, part of the Juan de Fuca Marine trail, both names came from Spanish explorers, interestingly, you mentioned building a log cabin you and your ex hubby built on crown land, before Sombrio Beach became part of the Provincial Park system there was a thriving little community of back to nature people who built tidy little homes from what the ocean cast upon the shore, real Robinson Crusoe like ! sadly once the beach became part of the park system, the people were asked to move along as they were on crown land.

I love being in B.C. , no better place for a landscape photographer to be !, I feel very lucky to be born and raised here, for my photography trips to the west, a one day drive from me I have the Rocky Mountains with some spectacular mountain snow capped peaks, to the west an another one day drive is the dramatic and log strewn rugged west coast beaches which buts up against the Pacific ocean.

My wood work skills are not the greatest.....I did though try to impress a woman I was romantically interested in at one time by making her a piece of furniture, but in the end it was not enough to convince her ! LOL.

Good luck with your contest for a trip to Canada !

Gary

Gary Nylander said...

I forgot to mention the best way to see my pictures in the Kelowna Daily Courier is to go to the "photo archive" here:

http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/gallery_courier.php

then type in my name in "Search the Gallery" top right corner.

Anonymous said...

Women are difficult creatures to convince sometimes, aren't they?

I'll check out the link, thanks Gary, and let you know what I think (that's not a threat, btw!) :~)

Anonymous said...

Hi Gary, No matter what I did, nothing of yours came up in the search results. :~)

Gary Nylander said...

Mmm....I'm not sure why you were not able to get anything in the search results I typed in "Gary Nylander" and it came up with quite a few of my images, I am on a Mac computer with both Safari and Firefox, both seemed to work, you could try just the website: http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca

You will have to follow the links for the photo archive on the left hand side of the main page to get to the photo page link that I posted a few days a go.