Have I mentioned lately how much I love my job? I get to interview chefs, bartenders and musicians about their favourite spots in their own backyards. Recently I spoke with Matt Peters, the lead singer behind Winnipeg's Juno-nominated Royal Canoe, about the town he calls home. 

You can catch them on the road -- currently on tour for Today We're Believers -- or follow Peters' guide to  Winnipeg's urban essentials. And for a bonus 'Peg fix, check out the band's video for Exodus of the Year, a grainy, black-and-white homage to workaday Winnipeg. My own favourite Winnipeg sign, Nutty Club, makes a cameo!

Zombies. Vampires. Bow-wielding heroines. There are a few reasons Atlanta has become known as Hollywood South. More than 300 productions were shot in the state last year, including The Walking Dead, The Vampire Diaries and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,out this week. (If you're counting sleeps.)

That big- and small-screen imagination extends to the city’s bars, kitchens and theatre troops, says Chad Eikhoff, the founder of TRICK 3D, a local animation studio. In my Insider feature for The Globe and Mail, Eikhoff shares his five picks on where to find Atlanta's creative talent from JCT Kitchen's angry mussels to a Hunger Games hub. Enjoy. Just watch your back.

Blog bonus: Atlanta Movie Tours offers zombie and location tours in the capital. Or as they put it, Braaainss!

Are selfies or stranger-taken-shots ever any good? (I personally have an ill-framed Eiffel Tower photo on hand. You make the call.)

In this feature for The Globe and Mail, I write about Nicole Smith and her business Flytographer, which matches travellers with a candid camerman (or cameragal) in cities around the world. Voila -- holiday memories that you're proud to post.

She designs wallpaper in a city that is no wallflower. But in New York her work fits right in. Picture walls covered with fruit doves or a zig-zag created with thousands of pencils. 

In my new Insider for The Globe and Mail, Payton Cosell Turner -- one-half of design duo Flat Venacular -- shares five places to find inspiration in New York. Art, books, drinking pumpkin ale in the dark. I hope it inspires you too. 

How do you capture the beauty of trees uprooted? The knots and nubs and weathered patina? Emily Carr did with her spiritual Trees in the Sky as did Lawren Harris with his sculptural North Shore, Lake Superior. Me? (Hmm, maybe leading with Canadian master artists is a bit ambitous.) Still, I was taken with the bleached branches and fallen logs in B.C.'s Wells Gray Park.  Here, I canoed past a massive cedar rising like a totem out of the vivid-green Azure Lake. And I was drawn to a beached log washed up against the shore of Clearwater Lake. On its sheltered side minnows and waterbugs hurried away at my approach. In the background I could hear the kids playing in the canoes and the crackle of the camp fire. But in front of me was quiet mountains and calm water. Nature's beauty.