All Good Things.....

All good things must end.

12 years and 25 days.
4408 days.
105,792 hours
6,347,520 minutes
380,851,200 seconds.....give or take...

That is how long I have lived in Switzerland with my wife.  We moved here as a (really) new couple to pursue her job offer as a new MBA at the world headquarters of Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland.   We arrived, exhausted, after we completed a brutal 11-day marathon closing my life in Calgary, Canada so that I could come over here to be with her.  I quit my job, cancelled the lease on my house, sold my stuff and threw out the rest then boarded the plane.   I remember sitting with my new girlfriend on the plane, saying "whatever has not been done, will not be done.".   The plane took off and we started our new life together.

Nestlé had made the preparations for their new star - they had allocated a lovely studio apartment of 35 m2 overlooking the lake.  Stunning view.  Single bed.  My girlfriend saw this on arrival and started crying.

How far we have come.  We have endured all the pains and joys of creating a life in a new country; a new culture.  We got a great dog. We have been married almost 11 years.  Bought a house and a ski apartment.  We have created two gorgeous boys.  And we have LIVED.

Switzerland is in the centre of Europe.  How lucky we have been.  We have lived minutes from the French border.  We shop and fill our vehicles often in France.  With a good friend, I was able to do a 1-day photo trip to Rome and back and  a two-day photo trip to Bergamo and Verona, Italy.  We take weekend trips into Bourgogne, Avignon, Lyon Torino, Freiburg, Alsace and a multitude of other places just for fun, great food and delicious wine.  Cheap flights abound, allowing us to fly to the Canary Islands, Croatia (gorgeous), Madrid, and a multitude of other places for very little cash.  TGV to Paris just to eat at "the duck place".

We have made great friends from all over Europe - Dutch, Swiss, Swedish, Norwegian, French, German ...some Canadians  and friends from the rest of the world.

We have been fortunate.

May 23 2013 we board the plane home to Calgary, Canada.   We are different people.  We have grown.

Most importantly, my wife and I have grown together, and we have created our future.

Together.

Keep watching this page.  Images from Abroad will grace these pages with the glory of Canada in the not too distant future.

Thanks for following.

Wade Walker
Aubonne, Switzerland

Project : One Photo a Day

I recently decided to pose myself a sticky problem : to produce one compelling, photograph meriting publication per day for one month. I selected the month of October for this challenge because it's long...and also a transitional month in Switzerland. The month starts green, and ends yellow, red and brown. And here, the color and patterns of the vineyards are worth giving the camera a good workout!

Below I am posting several of my photos published on my facebook site http://www.facebook.com/WadeWalkerPhoto. Please visit and "Like"!

Fun with Refraction

Light Painting

More Fun with Refraction

Smoke trails

This one's fun...friends of mine, at their wedding played the song "Fever" as one of their first dances. As their photographer, I decided to layer the lyrics of this song behind this beautiful picture of the newlyweds...

Fever

Splash

Jayden

Seven Sisters

And last but not least, I decided to add some Halloween fun to my project. I experimented with a technique to shape the bokeh - that is, the area that is out of focus behind the subject - in particular, the candles. In the spirit of Halloween, I shaped them, in-camera, as Skull and Crossbones...

Halloween

Hope you enjoyed!

The beauty of Liguria. And the food.

Recently I had the opportunity to again go to the Cinque Terre in Liguria, Italy. I had been here several years ago and, like probably most people who visit, fell in love with it the first time.

The Cinque Terre - also known as the Italian Riviera, consists of five ("Cinque" in Italian) brightly colored fishing villages on the rocky Ligurian coast. The villages in North-to-South order are Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore. Photographically gorgeous, it was a joy to visit this area again, despite the huge number of tourists that have already descended upon these sleepy villages. The villages are not accessible by cars in most cases, so are connected by a train service, typically running hourly. Due to time available to us, and overcrowding, we did not get to one of the most beautiful villages Vernazza.

This region suffered devastating flooding October 25, 2011, and Monterosso al Mare and Vernazza were especially hard-hit. Amazingly, only nine people are confirmed as losing their lives in this flood. We were told that Vernazza was still visibly damaged, and when we visited Monterosso al Mare, many shops were still closed. However, in typical Ligurian style, residents of Monterosso al Mare were selling their wares in front of boarded up shops, children were selling lemons, lemonade, and paper cups of potato chips and other small items - as a community trying to drive cash back into the village to restore it back to its former simply beauty.

One of the major draws of this region apart from the villages themselves are the fantastic coastal and inland hiking trails, providing hikers and outdoor enthusiasts the opportunity to enjoy the region fully. The coastal trails were another casualty of these torrential rains and floods, destroying the coastal routes between Monterosso al Mare and Venazza, and Vernazza and Corniglia and Corniglia to Manarola. Thus the trains were even more crowded than usual. Sardine-can-packed would be an appropriate description, and it's only May...

Riomaggiore was our first port of call, having taken the train down to the "last" town. Riomaggiore is built high above the ocean with a staircase access to the port. There is a castle at the top of the mountain on one side of the town.

The trail from Riomaggiore to Manarola is easy to walk - it is wide and even for the most part, and takes about 45 minutes. Manarola is a gorgeous little town, and a good stop for lunch, assuming you are able to find a table. Be prepared to wait.

The image below provides an idea of the ingenuity of the architects of this village, and typical of this region. Photos I have seen of this region show enormous waves crashing against that cliff face, sending spray across these little houses. Very dramatic.

Corniglia was to me a bit of a mystery. Built high above the ocean on a cliff face, and requiring a climb of 368 stairs from the train station, one has to question if it's economy was ever built on fishing. However, it is as beautiful as the other towns, although smaller, and worth a visit for its charming alleys and tiny squares with restaurants.

Monterosso al Mare is the village that has stuck in my mind since my last visit for two reasons. The impressive "Monterosso Giant", which is holding up a platform while eternally looking over the ocean :

The second reason I remembered Monterosso al Mare is the food. I ate there one day in 2003 at a small place called "Ciak" and had their ravioli stuffed with sea bass in a shrimp sauce. Having had the same meal again this last time, I can understand why I remembered it as one of the best meals I have ever eaten. Delicious.

Window to culinary heaven : Ciak's kitchen

Your comments are welcome - have you been to the Cinque Terre? What were your experiences?

Pre-dawn Montreux Switzerland and Post-dawn Ouchy (Lausanne), Switzerland

Recently I had to get up and out at 5 am to capture the morning light from one of my favorite places in Switzerland - Montreux. Many years ago, in 1994 I did a tour of Europe with a girlfriend - 1 month, 5 countries. Time was pressing, so we could only afford to spend one night in Switzerland, in Montreux. It always remained in my heart as my favorite place I had visited in my entire tour. In 2001 I found myself living in Switzerland, in Montreux. It was then and is today, still one of my favorite places on earth.

Natural Ice Sculptures, Paquis, Geneva and Versoix

Recently in Switzerland we experienced a cold snap such that we have not seen in many years...certainly not in my experience here. We had high winds and very low temperatures (by Swiss standards). The combination of these high winds with a lake as large as Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) was perhaps inevitable - large waves explosively impacting with the rocky shore...the photos below tell the story better than I could...

Apparently, it is recommended we do not swim or jump into the water...

Hope they had insurance...

Three cars were entombed in the ice at this location in Versoix : One of them was from France and the other Portugal...what do you do if this happens when you are in another country??

Natural art :

No comment needed:

Ethereal Vevey

This photo was taken on a stormy morning in Vevey. To the right of Place de Marché is a set of three statues of seahorses that are near or in the lake. They can be magic in the right light and conditions. I was lucky on this morning.

I used a 10-stop Neutral Density filter to allow me to take a time exposure of 30 seconds, which gives the water that milky ethereal feeling. Fortunately, the sun chose that moment to envelope the statue in light. Sometimes the light just works.

A sleeping castle with an interesting historical link and a safely moored ship

I had the opportunity to find some time free last week, which inevitably meant I got out with my gear to capture more images of the beauty around this region.

The first image is one I have been planning for some time - to capture the sun as it rises over the Aubonne castle. The castle was built in 1680 for Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, an early visionary of the opportunity in Indian Trade. Interesting historical tidbit (Thanks to Wikipedia), M. Tavernier was the individual who discovered and sold the 118 carat Hope Diamond (as it was known when it was re-discovered after a theft in London) to Louis XIV. This was taken from a secret vantage point I identified near the Arboretum...

The second image was taken on a sunny morning of the CGN ship, "Lausanne". This ship, part of the fleet of the Compagnie Générale de Navigation sur le lac Léman (CGN) who operates the steam ships on Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) is one of the modern ships of their fleet, commissioned in 1991. Here, we find it safely moored at its home in Ouchy, a district of Lausanne in the Canton of Vaud. Taken with an ultra-wide 10mm lens to emphasize the texture and color of the mooring rope and chain.

Thanks for reading! I have a bunch of new interesting photos from an outing to La Salève, a mountainous outcrop overlooking Geneva, Les Rochers-de-Naye overlooking Lake Geneva and others, but I need some time to select the best ones. They should be up soon!

Wade