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Lately I’ve been working a lot on creating advertising concept advertisements to build up my portfolio. Since I can’t go to exotic locations like New York, Paris or Venice to do the shoots, I bring the exotic locations to me!

This is a concept for an Armani Exchange advertisement that I came up with. The car, model and locations are all from different photos and they were chopped into this final photo. When doing work like this it’s very important to make it as photo realistic as possible. In this case, simulating depth of field in the photo, maintaining reflections of the environment in the glass of the car and also following the rules of physics when adding or enhancing light sources or shadows.

I’ve got a shoot at the end of the month based around this concept so I can’t wait to see finished product!

Today was Tash’s Birthday so I took her out to a very stylish restaurant called Sanafir located in downtown Vancouver on Granville Street. The venue is very trendy with extreme high vaulted ceilings, modern decor, plush leather cubicles, colourful Moroccan fabrics and candle lit for that ambient mood.

Sanafir is a small town on the Sinai Peninsula known for its traveled silk route and the restaurant has a fusion of Asian, Arabian and Indian dishes on their menu. The dishes are tapas style and each trio served is based on a different region’s exotic flavour and spices. We tried the Calamari trio which included a deep fried salted pepper, curry and salad mixture. We also tried the Chicken trio which had Indonesia Satay, Chicken Tandoori and a Moroccan style curry as well. Since it was a Tapas style meal we ordred the Dungeness Crab Risotto as the base side dish. The food was nice and a very unique dining experience for the both of us and we enjoyed the night out together.

Being away from family again returns us back to our “normal” life since its just the two of us again, but of course that being said, even though we are halfway across the world Tash was bombarded with SMS’s, emails, Facebook posts and Skype calls from family and friends wishing her on her special day.

Happy Bithday Tash!

Love Saj, Jamal and Candace Maximus…!

 

This weekend we drove up to Whistler and stayed at the Fairmont Chateau located in the upper village. Tash got a great deal on the rate so instead of paying $400 a night we ended up paying under $100. Aaron, Maria and young Ayden joined us as well and the plan was to make it a weekend of skiing since the slopes just opened and the mountain had plenty of snow dumped on it over the past week.

 

The hotel was very warm and cosy with the festive decorations out in force, however, for the high price that you would normally pay per night, I was expecting a very glamorous room with premium furniture on par with Burswood or Sheraton’s level of class. On the contrary, the room had a warm cottage feel, but nothing that special in my opinion to warrant a $400 per night rate other than the spacious area and mountainside views.

 

Saturday morning Aaron and I got a late start on the mountain, partly due to the sleeping in and also the heavy morning breakfast that we wolfed down! Once we got onto the slopes there was a slight flurry of snow and the mountain was just as I expected… at base it was -10 degrees Celsius and up there according to the thermometer it was -20 degrees Celsius! While we were skiing you couldn’t feel the cold that much, but when we stopped the blood flow to our fingers ceased and they started to hurt because of the cold and to the point where they would get numb after every run. Aaron’s goggles were fogging up so he tried the scuba diving method of defogging they by spitting into the lens and wiping it off… only problem is it FROZE instantly! The slopes were nice and powdery with the occasional ice patches but all in all a good first ski for the season… No real mishaps except for once stack where I twisted my knee a bit. My skis were adjusted for more aggressive carving so they didn’t clip off when I hit the snow.

 

The best part about the trip would have to be seeing how excited Ayden got with the notion that he would be able to play in the snow. In his excitement he ripped off his gloves to make some snowballs and a few minutes later he was balling his eyes out because he fingers hurt so much from the cold. Being the cute little curious kid that he is, he befriended many random people including a bunch of girls. He randomly walked up to them while they were taking photos and started to talk to them. Not long after he was hugging and kissing them and even stealing ornaments off the Christmas tree for them… what a smooth operator! I’m sure Aaron must’ve had some influence on him with that one! Equally excited to be in the snow was Tash… she was like a kid in a candy store. Tash absolutely loves anything to do with Christmas and seeing all the snow and decorations made her so excited. To give you an idea… Tash looks for her Christmas carol CD’s around September… so seeing Whistler village covered in snow with all the lights and trees decorated was her own little haven…

 

 

All in all it was a nice relaxing weekend… until the drive home… with all the beautiful snow a 2 hour drive home ended up being 10 hours… The road conditions were really bad because of the ice and snow so we couldn’t do more than 30km/hr. This wasn’t bad until we encountered heavy traffic because of everyone coming back from Whistler and then over 5 kilometres of gridlocked traffic because a semi trailer had jack knifed and blocked the only highway back to Vancouver! The Sea To Sky Highway had become one big parking lot and because there was no way to change your route everyone was forced to sit and wait over 6 hours for the semi trailer to be cleared away. People got so bored that they started to make snowmen on the highway, and some people got a little carried away with it adding certain anatomy appendages too explicit to mention. Once the traffic cleared as we drove along I would have counted over 30 snowmen… I guess people needed to do something to keep themselves sane during the wait…

 

 

So far on our North American based road trips we haven’t had too much luck when it comes to traffic. First was the 6 hour border wait coming back from Oregon and now the new record of over 10 hours for a 2 hour drive… Nevertheless, it was a truly beautiful winter wonderland..~*

Today I received my new Samsung Blackjack Smart phone in the post… I had finally reached my breaking point with my O2 Xda Mini II so I decided that I was going to get a new phone. Having had the O2 for over 2 years I’ve realised two things… when you go out to buy a phone these days… you hardly just end up with a phone. More often than not the advertising campaigns state “5.0 Megapixel camera, MP3 Player, Download your emails & Chat using instant messenger…” then in the fine print you see “oh and it makes phone calls too…” The next thing I’ve realised is that a touch screen phone is very cool in concept… but not practical at all. When you’re on the move trying to operate the keyboard with a touch screen that requires both of your hands to be free, you’re very limited to when and where you can actually operate the phone.

So there you have it… after spending two years with a Pocket PC style phone, I’ve become quite dependent on the organiser features and the raised entertainment functionality of Windows Mobile based phones, so I couldn’t go back to having “just a mobile phone”.

The Samsung Blackjack is a Windows Mobile 6.0 based smart phone with a full qwerty keyboard. This change of input interface takes some getting used to because I’m so used to pulling out a stylus and tapping away at the screen. The main page navigation is done using the side scroll wheel and the circular joy pad in the middle of the phone. After a few minutes it becomes very easy to navigate through all the menus. The Blackjack has a micro SD card slot as well and I have a 2GB transflash card in there to store movies and music. I can’t believe how TINY these things are. Technology has definitely progressed to the point where its unbelievable how they can manage to fit all these features into such a small device. The memory card is no bigger than your pinky fingernail and is smaller than a penny!!

Anyway, the best part about the Blackjack is the integration of email so you can get it pushed to your phone and also the addition of applications like Live Search. Live Search is the equivalent of google maps and it allows you to find Points of Interest like pizza parlours,post offices, petrol stations etc and you can use it to get directions to and from these places. In addition to this you can get live traffic updates to avoid any delays. I’m yet to find a stand alone GPS solution for Pocket PCs / Smartphones… but for now Live Search works just fine…

I’m definitely a fan of the Samsung Blackjack, especially because of the ability to customize it to be a personal device.