HOBBIES

COACHING

With an English father I grew up with football (soccer). The picture above is the first team I played on 42 years ago (I'm the chubby one at the back). My coaches were (L-R) Charlie James, Dave Nelson and Dave Smith. Time flies but I am still friends/in contact with quite a few of these guys. I played for Foothills Soccer Club in CMSA. I continued to play in the CUSA up until a few years ago. I now coach for the club that I played for all those years ago along with a spell coaching with Calgary South West United. I've been coaching now about 16 years and have my children's license and National C license. All three of my boys played with one on hiatus while he studies Astrophysics at University, one still playing and one who found another love. While I'm fortunate to say I've coached a player that now plays professionally (he was that good before I coached him) what I do it for is the love of game and to instill a life long love of the game for the players I've coached. It would be great to see them in the future still playing or having their kids play. When I was younger I also coached volleyball being an assistant coach to the Senior Girls Volleyball team at my old highschool, Henry Wise Wood and an assistant coach for the U16 Provincial Girls Volleyball team in 1988.

PHOTOGRAPHY

My love of photography started as a child. I remember working on a pin hole camera project back in elementary school. We went right from building the camera to developing the film (black and white) to developing and printing the pictures. It was fun. Later in elementary I became the photographer for a newspaper. At around the same time my neighbour was a photographer for the Calgary Sun and one day he showed me all of his equipment. I was hooked. Fast forward to today and while the technology has changed (I still own two film cameras though) I still love taking pictures. While they may not be the best photos they contain many memories. The above picture is a picture I took of Moraine Lake in Banff National Park in 2009. I love the color of the water!

ASTRONOMY

About the same time as when I became interested in photography we also did a unit in Astronomy at elementary school. I've been in love with the stars, planets, universe and everything about them ever since. To be honest I really wanted to become an Astronaut as a lot of kids did, and had planned to go into Aerospace Engineering and work my way to NASA but things changed (mainly the fact that I realized I'm a bit big to be an Astronaut and not smart enough). Even with my dreams "crushed" I still enjoy looking at the stars and planets through my telescope. The above picture was my set up for the eclipse back in August 2017. Kids don't seem as intersted but it was sure fun. I am a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Combining my love of photography and astronomy I've taken to Astrophotography. It's quite a steep learning curve and have just gotten started. Hopefully I'll have some nice shots in the near future. I've spent most of my free time designing, building and programming a focuser for my RedCat51 APO lens. If interested in learning more about that check out here. For anybody interested in looking up at the sky here is the forecast for viewing in Calgary. Just click on square on the image to get more information. You can also click here to see if there is a chance of an aurora this evening.