When Hurricane Ike swept through Galveston Texas, it left behind an unbelievable path of destruction. The website boston.com has posted 28 absolutely stunning photos documenting the carnage. The one above really grabbed my attention. If you are looking for a builder in Galveston, you might want to talk to the guy that built this place.

You can view all the photos here.

It was with a great deal of nervousness that I recently agreed to photograph the wedding of my good friends Art and Tina. Shooting a wedding is tough. It’s one of the most important moments in someone’s life and there is no re-shoot if you don’t get the goods first time around. It was tough. It was tiring. But it was also a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I think it’s also the first time that I have shot for almost 7 hours straight (without stopping). You can check out the whole gallery of shots from the day on my flickr feed.

Here’s a few of my faves from the day:

1) Making it all legal – signing on the dotted line.

2) The bride’s floral arrangement

4) Art, Tina and her parents

5) The couple about to get announced into their reception

6) The head table at the reception

7) My good friend Amy – also a guest at the wedding

8 ) Perhaps my most favorite. Tina was crying because of her mom’s lovely speech. But the photo could be taken so many other ways. I didn’t even realize I had captured the tear drop until I was uploading the photos in post.

9) The couple’s first dance of the evening.

Welcome to wiebe.ca v3.0! This latest version of my personal blog is a complete re-design from the ground up with numerous improvements.

Firstly, I wanted to make this version more photography-focused, thus the rotating carousel at the top of the page. This will always show my latest top 5 photos, however, you will always be able to go back through the archives and see everything from day one. The text-based articles will remain more or less as they were before with random thoughts, rants and other tidbits. I am also going to add a section about tech advice since numerous members of my family and personal friends often ask my opinion on such things (it will be so much easier to just say “read the article”).

The side bar on the right has a spot for smaller one-line type posts or links – interesting things that don’t necessarily warrant an entire regular post. Another sidebar feature I am particularly happy about is Flickr integration. I have always wrestled with how to deal with photos on my blog and I never found a perfect solution. Flickr is pretty much the defacto standard for photos on the web, so I am just going to go with that and integrate my Flickr feed here. It should make life much easier. To add some levity, I have some funny YouTube vids on the bottom of the page for your viewing pleasure.

It seems like every time I upgrade this blog I end up blowing everything away and starting over. So why should now be any different. I went back through my old posts and never really found much I thought anyone would care about, so now we begin again!

Lastly, for my geekier friends, I have finally moved this blog over to WordPress (2.5.1) for content management. Joomla turned out to be too much of a challenge and too flakey at times. I am hoping by switching to a simpler system, it will encourage me to post more frequently.

Hope everyone enjoys the new wiebe.ca.