penumbra's VirtualTourist Home Page

When I started building VT pages, I planned to write tips only if the tip had not yet been covered. This actually consumed a great deal of time searching through all of the other tips and left me with very few tips of my own. Not very satisfactory or rewarding. I’ve since adopted the philosophy that we each have a unique perspective and I’d like to share some of my views with you. My hope is to intrigue you enough to be curious about a city or reminisce enough with you to provoke a smile.

I’m attracted to the cities. I studied architecture in school and if this “computer thing” hadn’t worked out, I might be designing buildings instead of just taking pictures of them. I love the beach and mountains but I’m not much of an outdoors person. All of these themes are combined in Vancouver which would be my recommendation to visitors if they only had time to visit one city in Canada.

I grew up in Calgary and somewhat to my surprise, still find myself living here. I find that if I spend a lot of time in Calgary, I take the lifestyle for granted. I appreciate the city much more when I return from a trip and I always look forward to coming home. The city has doubled in size since my childhood and grows ferociously whenever the price of oil rises. I tend to stay within the inner city that I knew as a youth, since the outer suburbs contain mostly cookie cutter houses in a maze of roads.

I never used to be much of a traveler. Sure, I’d take my vacation each year and drive somewhere in Canada or the United States. The first time I went to Europe was for a week long business trip but I didn’t even stick around to seen any of the sights. When I received a three year assignment in The Netherlands, I vowed to get on the trains every weekend and go somewhere… anywhere. I fell in love with the trains and I was bitten by the travel bug.

I’ve always enjoyed photography but I was always frustrated by film cameras. I never liked paying the price for picture development and I was often disappointed with the results. Enter digital photography. You can take as many pictures as you want, see the results immediately, keep the gems and delete the disappointments. Perfect. Travel and photography are a natural fit and something I hope to pursue for the rest of my life.