For your shopping pleasure

I now have an online gallery with redbubble, where I've uploaded a few of my photos. They are for sale as Canvas Prints, Framed Prints, Mounted Prints, Laminated Prints and/or greeting cards.

If you don't find something there that you like, feel free to browse my Flickr site, as I can make arrangements to have 99.9% of the images there uploaded to RedBubble for your shopping pleasure. Email me (amboire [at] yahoo.com) with details about the image(s) that you'd like.

Sales of some of the images I've loaded to RedBubble will benefit the Prince Rupert Wildlife Rehab Shelter. In particular, a percentage of the earnings on any photos that I've taken at the shelter will be given to the shelter. They have been so generous and I feel this is a grand way to show appreciation for them and the tireless work they do.

Check it Out!

At the beginning of the year, I joined a group on Flickr, called Utata. It's a lively group which runs special projects and assignments that members can participate in (or not).

They have a yearly Big Project, which will appear online as a zine, and will also be published in print. I had been wanting to do something for it since the project was announced, but it wasn't until the night before the submission deadline that a series of words started to form in my head and prevented me from sleeping...

I was able to enter in four of the six categories: landscape, stock photography, portrait, and (the aforementioned) special project.

So please, check out my submissions! And, by all means, feel free to enjoy the other entrants' work as well!

More about Alaska

Since we didn't manage to film OUR experience on the Unlimited Thrills Ride in Anchorage, I filmed the people who went after us... I posted it on my Bebo site so you can check it out.

Here is a photo we took from our visit to the Alaska Branch Office... the Branch Office actually closed just over a year ago; I'm pretty sure it operated out of the Kingdom Hall, anyway, so it would probably have consisted of a few rooms. Here, though, the mail box and sign still has a place near the front entrance of the Kingdom Hall.




I don't usually take photos of the Kingdom Halls we see - that's more Chad's thing - but this one was just gorgeous. As you can see, it was red brick; plus, the greenery and flowers you see a glimpse of actually spread around the whole building, including several planted areas within the parking lot.

Alaska was Amazing!

So here's some more about our trip...
We went on an Ultimate Thrills ride one afternoon. Chad was in a store getting memory for his camera, and while I waited, I could see this ride at a place across the highway. It was like a giant slingshot - and you get to sit on the "rock"...



You get the idea, right??

It was totally, terrifyingly AWESOME. 11 stories... 4 G's of force...

We tried to film it with our Sony camera, but Chad accidentally hit "off" instead of "record". D'oh!

Fun, huh?! It was such an adrenalin rush! Waaaaaaaaaaa hooooooooooooo!!!


So let's see, we saw (in the wild): LOTS of moose; black bears, a grizzly bear who was eating dandelions, while surrounded also by purple lupins; a beaver; porcupines; rabbits; gophers; marmot mom & pup; foxes; a wolf; squirrels; swans; seagull colony with chicks in the nest; harbour seals; sea otters; dall sheep; mating dragonflies; sandhill cranes; Chad got pooped on by colony-defending seagulls while getting pictures of geese & goslings; a grouse with two chicks, a pair of Arctic Terns (they're really pretty, especially in the air) and, magpies! (They're one of my favourites - and we haven't seen them since we lived in Princeton; so I was really excited.) We also saw, in captivity: buffalo, muskoxen, elk, plus some of the animals also mentioned above.

We went to a day and a half (Friday morning, and all of Saturday) of the Convention in Anchorage. There were around 2,700 people while we were there.

Also, we had to camp at the border because the crossings are only open for certain hours each day; but it was neat, cuz we saw the sun set around 1 am, and rise around 3, without getting dark in between. It's a really strange feeling!

We camped ten nights all together, and didn't have even a single campfire! I did, however, have two days' worth of diarrhea. That was fun. Actually, that was the crappiest part of the whole trip! :p Good thing we'd bought that porta potty!

So, check out our pictures: mine are here and Chad's are here.

Our Baby Moose is Famous!

Morris was on the CTV National news tonight! They were doing an 'article' on the weather / flooding in BC, and part of it dealt with how wildlife is affected.

It turns out, another baby moose (a girl) was stranded by the flooding, then rescued and taken to the shelter in Smithers. So, there was our Morris (the slightly larger moose on the left) bottle feeding along with his new companionon TV.

I really hope I'll get to see him when he's grown up! But in the meantime, I recorded the news clip, and it's posted on my Bebo site. Enjoy!

The Tale's Conclusion

Well, our time with the baby moose, Morris, has come to an end.

Last weekend, Chad & I drove him to Smithers, where he can grow up with limited human contact, in a large free-range area that will make him more likely to be able to be released to the wild.

The people at the Rupert shelter gave us a thick black plastic sheet to line the back of our truck, and sleeping bags to cover that. Then the woman at the shelter prepared a bottle for him, and I gave it to him before we left. Then they helped us load him into the back of our truck, gave us another bottle and some willow leaves for the trip, and we headed out.

Anyway, a few hours, and one speeding ticket later, we made it to Smithers in one piece. And boy, was Morris glad to get out of that truck! The put him in a smaller outdoor pen, surrounded with a wire fence. They use that while the animals are young, and still need to be bottle fed. We got to go in and spend some time with him, and say good-bye. He was doing well - he adjusted with NO problem to the "formula" they use. Then we had a brief tour of some of their property- including seeing their resident cougar - and got back in the truck to head out.

As we pulled away, I saw that Morris ran the length of his pen, trying to follow after us! It was so heartbreaking.

I have no doubt that he will do well in his new home, and I hope that I'll get to see him again once he's all grown up. It was an amazing experience, and I will cherish the memories I have with him for a long time.

A most thrilling experience

Last evening, after work, Chad & I had the most amazing experience.

This moose calf's mom was chased off by some dogs, and didn't come back to him. He's less than a week old - he still has his umbilical cord! The conservation officer intervened on the baby's behalf, and made preparations to get him to a wildlife shelter. He was going to be headed to the rehab shelter in Smithers, but due to the mudslide that closed the highway yesterday, ended up bringing the baby to the Rupert shelter in the meantime.

The shelter's owners gave him a rehydration solution, and the vet gave him an injection of precautionary antibiotics. Chad & I got to spend some time with him. I ended up spending about 5 hours with him, trying to get him to drink the goat's milk the shelter owners provided.

A few times he tried to suckle my NOSE!! - a most amazing, delightful & bewildering experience. By the end of the time I spent with him, he was quite excited to have the milk, and drank a fair bit. It was thrilling.

His prognosis for an uneventful release looks good at this point, though it will be several months. I'm going back shortly to spend some more time with him, and feed him some more; but in the meantime wanted to share some photos I took yesterday.