Let Them Eat Cake...

... but they'd better not get any on the dress!

I snapped this dress, worn by the diminutive Marie Antoinette, at the Royal Ontario yesterday with my cellphone. I had no idea that she'd been so short but the photo really doesn't convey just how tiny she was, but it clearly shows what a spectacular garment it is.

Cyclist on Duplex Avenue

Cyclists are a bit of a recurring theme in my work. I suppose it's because I haven't logged much time on my bicycle since moving to Toronto nearly four years ago. This one was a one-handed shot taken while I was walking the dog yesterday, hence the blur that adds motion to the image.

Despite the wind and cold, bicycle commuting in winter continues to gain popularity and, while I'm one of those timid souls who puts his bike away come October, I am somewhat envious of those who have the resiliency and riding skills to ride during the cold season.

Another Picture of Azure

When all else fails, post a picture of a pet, I say.

Enjoy.

Hygrometer

Clock faces and instrument dials fascinate me. They seem so much more elegant than digital displays that merely show an ever changing number. The sweeping motion of their hands and the spacing of their measured units feel much more personal and permanent. There's also the idea of hidden movement that one can potentially see. In digital equipment. motion is invisible, it is the mere transmission of electricity coursing through tiny wires and circuits, whereas an the intermeshing gears and springs in older equipment presents a pageant that is available to one by simply prying open the case of such a piece.

What do you see?

I see a loving couple who has the same right to happiness as a mixed-sex couple. In Canada and in California (for now) they enjoy the right to marry. Why would anyone want to take it away from them? What's the point of Prop? And who and what is it protecting?

Just so you know, JIm and Linden are not married, but they have been in a committed relationship for over 27 years. That's what I call stability. I don't know many straight couples that have been together that long.

Another Commuter

This time at Davisville station in mid-afternoon...

Jesus Loves You at Dundas Square

A proselytizer holds up a placard in Toronto's Dundas Square just as rush hour was starting.

Two Solitudes

After weeks without making pictures, I spent an afternoon playing with the 200mm and 50mm primes. This is one of the shots I kept. Taken from a moving car, this image of a panhandler at a busy intersection captures the ever-widening gap between rich and poor. In the context of last week's stock market meltdown and the US governments bail-out of AIG, it is a reminder that there is another, more basic economy (and ecology) at play in our cities. While the more fortunate among us watch the value of our portfolios plummet as the economic crisis widens, people such as this man (who lives in a tent by the side of the road) have already learned to live with little. Would our pride allow us to become mendicants were our personal fortunes to collapse? Would be, as Bob Dylan once remarked, "have to to get used to it?"

A View from the Tower

I love the way cities look when viewed from above. This picture was taken from the CN Tower Skydeck on December 31st, 2006.

Camera Operator

The lane outside my studio was transformed into a movie set for a couple of days. I captured this image of a camera operator from my second storey window.

TUFF Guy

I won first place at the Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF) earlier this week. My friend Zefred snapped a great picture of me at the podium. Can you tell how happy I was?

Flyby

Quick note to let folks know that I haven't forgotten this blog but have been extremely busy with a couple of projects, as well as checking out the Toronto International Film Festival. I'll return to my usual frequency of postings next weeks.

June 15th, 2008

I've done no photography this week as I've been writing. So I've reached back into the vault and pulled out a this of image of the Fairmount Royal York Hotel taken as a storm was brewing. It reminds me of the Batman movies. Enjoy.

Pushing My Buttons

Last week at Buskerfest, I stopped and chatted with a vendor who made buttons using panels from old comic books and magazines, which is pretty neat. Back in the 80s, at the height of the button craze, I decorated my favourite oversized tweed jacket with nearly a dozen buttons featuring everything from album artwork to the original Macintosh line art. To this day, I am fascinated by cool buttons and in my middle age, I've gone back to sporting them on my favourite jackets.

This snapshot is a sample of some of the buttons that were on display last week:

Cyclist on Queen Street West

One of the challenges of street photography is getting your camera settings right. This isn't always possible, especially if you're paying attention to one thing and something entirely different but much more interesting suddenly happens in your peripheral vision. You may find yourself swinging around and going from photographing a still life to capturing motion and there's not enough time to adjust. So you point the camera, press the shutter button and hope for the best.

Pierre St. Pierre and Photographers' Rights

This is Pierre St. Pierre (a.k.a. Roland Gritanni) who performed at this year's Buskerfest. St. Pierre is essentially a human jukebox who stands motionless on his pedestal with fingers poised over his accordion. When a passer-by drops change into his donation box, Monsieur St. Pierre comes to life and, with precise robotic movements, plays an all-too-human melody on his instrument.

The performer had posted signs stating that photography is by donation only and that those creating a video recording of the performance request his permission first. I find this more than fair and was glad to slip him a few coins for the privilege of snapping the following snap. But dozens of photographers failed to fulfill this simple request and I found that rather galling.

In this climate wherein our rights as photographers are beset upon by corporations, merchants, overzealous security guards and even passers-by (the classic "why are you taking my picture?" coming from somebody when I'm pointing the camera in the opposite direction comes immediately to mind), such simple guidance from a performer is not only appreciated but welcome. I feel truly bad that so many photographers failed to drop anything into this man's coffers. After all, if we are to be respected as a group, we must be respectful when others make such an effort to address us directly.

Welcome to the Porta-Mall (Buskerfest '08)

I'm getting that sense of déjà vu: that been there, done that, bought the overpriced t-shirt feeling that hits when I find myself in shopping malls or when I’m driving past the umpteenth complex of big box stores that dot the 401. It’s not a comfortable or comforting thought: I’m being sold the same old junk by the same people, except that I’m not in a shopping centre: I’m out on Toronto’s Front Street ostensibly enjoying Buskerfest, a four-day-long public festival dedicated to street performers from around the world.



Sure, the whole thing receives massive corporate sponsorship. There are bank and TV network logos plastered everywhere. And I can live with that. After all, I’m savvy enough to see past the barrage of advertising and I do ascribe to the notion that the wealthiest segments of our society (be they individuals or corporations) should pay to bring art to the masses. But I can’t see the artists for the all the junk for sale. For every performance space there are at least a dozen merchandise tents. Buskerfest, it seems, is not so much an festival of the arts as it is an open air shopping mall.



And just as your typical mall has a standard set of vendors hawking a standard set of wares, Buskerfest features the stalwarts of the urban street fair scene. Here’s your purveyor of mass-produced African sculptures. There, there and there are your sellers of “handmade” jewellery assembled with store-bought beads and baubles. Walk half a block for crappy five-dollar sun glasses. Stop at the corner for made-in-China hempware that has nothing to do with sustainable development. You get the picture. Food and merchandise vendors line either side of the street and the bulk of pedestrian traffic on the closed-off thoroughfare gravitates to these tents. Sadly, it seems, the urge to shop is far greater in most people than the desire to witness a performance.

The Old and the New

Once upon a time, Levi's were the dress uniform of the working poor. These days they're just another luxury item sold through a chain of brand-specific stores in shopping malls around the world. The image below, snapped just west of Toronto's Eaton Centre (a shopping complex that spans an entire city block) shows the contrast between the old and the new. The ad on the side of the bus shelter romances affluent buyers with a nostalgic and highly-glamourized image of a working man (playing on the iconography of Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire) while the stolen shopping cart containing a homeless person's possessions reveals the reality of urban poverty today.

Summer Games

And I don't mean the Beijing Olympics (which are nothing more than a two week infomercial for pharmaceuticals and crappy consumer goods) but the games people play in towns and cities around the world. In most places, the game of choice is soccer, which is ever more popular in North America. The pictures below were taken in a nearby park. The second one features players who have repurposed the outfield of a baseball diamond as there is no soccer pitch at this facility. These images are meant to convey the joy of play which is sadly absent in the increasingly commercialized and ever less meaningful Olympics.

Stock Photograph?

Although this is a candid shot, it looks staged to my eyes. Perhaps it's the upward tilt of the woman's head and her wide smile. Commercial photography, especially stock photography, has a distinct vocabulary and simulations of the expression on this woman's face have become part of a visual vernacular exhorting us to buy things we don't really need. Simultaneously, this shot conveys one of the great benefits of digital photography: the ability to instantaneously view a shot and to share it with others has made the art a far less solitary pursuit than it once was.

Summer Dress

Taking a cue from The Sartorialist, I snapped this passer-by in a breezy summer dress. It takes a great deal of self-confidence to pull off this look and this has left me wondering whether the clothes make the person or vice-versa. How do you feel about your clothes? Does your wardrobe boost your confidence level or does your innate sense of self-worth shine through no matter what you're wearing? Do the clothes make you? The other way around? Or a little of both?

Cop Daddy

Continuing with the fetish theme, here's an older gent dressed up in a stylized police uniform. Notions of power and submission to authority are key components of fetish roleplaying. Perhaps by relegating power to the controlled abstracted environment of fantasy it becomes easier to deal with abuses of power and consequent feelings of helplessness they generate in the real world.

Leather Daddy at the Fetish Fair

One of the admirable things about the leather community is that there is far less age-based discrimination than in other gay subcultures. This picture was taken Sunday afternoon at the Church Street Fetish Fair, here in Toronto.

Carpenter

This was shot with a 200mm Zuiko prime affixed to my Canon 300D.

Pressure Gauge

Pressure gauge on a sprinker system in a building near my studio:

Turtle

Here's a shot from the goldfish/turtle shoot from a couple of weeks ago:

Reflected Sky

Snapped near Bowmanville, Ontario, the sky reflected in the water of a lakeside marina.

The Family Dog

Every once in a while, I like to share a picture of our dog...

Dashboard Hula Girl

I rendered the following image in black and white because if I'd left it in tacky colours, the image looked way to fake. Anyhow, just enjoy this cheesy dashboard ornament for what it is.

Dandelion Puff

I bought a set of diopter filters (aka the poor photographer's macro) on Craigslist today and went out to have some fun. The thing with diopters, as opposed to real macro lenses, is that they create extremely shallow depth of field, that is a very small front-to-back distance within which things stay in focus. This poses both technical and artistic challenges and one has to be very patient and creative in selecting those elements of the image that will be in focus and those that will not.

After the Storm

It's been a month of rainstorms here in the Queen City, and here's a shot taken at the Distillery District after one such storm. I decided to go out and play with reflections and puddles in the cobblestone and this is one of my most successful shots from that shoot.

Hope I'm not buggin' you...

Another snap from cottage country

Another Disappearing Act...

In case you've wondering where I've been....



A well-deserved rest has precluded blogging for the last few days.

Fossilized Eyeball

A quick jaunt to the Royal Ontario Museum yesterday yielding the photograph below. It is the fossilized eyeball of some creature that lived eons ago. Don't ask me what said creature was, I didn't read the descriptive note (and in all honesty I should have, or at least photographed it for later reading and future reference).

Mill Wheel

I love playing with texture and depth of field to create abstract compositions. Here's a shot of a mill wheel on display in Toronto's Distillery District (just steps away from my studio).

Dynamo

I'm obsessing over vintage bikes again (though I haven't had ocassion to ride my recenty acquired Eaton's of Canada Glider of late), so here's a shot of the dynamo that rubs against the back wheel of a funky old ride that's parked behind behind the building where my studio is located. Enjoy.

Shoes

I love old-style sneakers, you know the ones without all the high-tech accoutrements that look like they belong on the set of an 80s sci-fi movie. There's something comforting about a pair of old-fashioned high-tops and here's a wonderful paint-smeared pair that I snapped in an artist's studio about a year ago.

Something Wicked in Kleinburgh

One of my favourite scenes in literature is from Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. On his way out to meet his destiny with Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, town barber Mr. Crosetti runs into the novel's heroes, 12 year-olds Jim Nightshade and Jim Halloway. The two boys ask him not to switch off the barber's pole because they don't want to know where the spinning red and blue stripes start and end.

Do barber's poles still spin? I captured this image in Kleinburg, Ontario. The Barber Shop was closed for the day, so I have no idea whether this one does.

King Street Subway Entrance

The comings and goings at the entrance to the King Street subway station as a Streetcar arrives. One of the advantages of working weekends is reduced congestion on public transit. Were this a weekday afternoon, there would be five times more people in this shot.

Cyclist on King East

With the rising price of gas, it makes sense to take public transit or to use alternative modes of transit. I made this shot while riding the King Street car as this young man rode alongside.

Back from Hiatus & Dr. Draw

Sometimes, real life gets in the way of blogging, especially when one is bogged down with equipment testing and upgrading. I've been dealt a whammy this past week: having updated my software and my camera equipment at the same time, and through a process of elimination, finding out what works and what doesn't. The good news is that both my camera bodies (the old 300d/Rebel and the new 400d/Rebel XTi) work fabulously). The bad news is that my Tamron 28-200mm walkabout zoom is shot and the printer driver for my HP 1022 (which is no longer being udpated for Mac OS) behaves weirdly under Leopard. So things aren't as bad as they could have been.

Without further ado, here's a shot of Pierre Luc of Dr. Draw snapped during their performance last night at Toronto's Historic Distillery District (just outside my studio). Now, for the past several weekends, I and the other tenants in our building have been subjected to the craptastic and overly-loud stylings (I hesitate to call it music) of the bar bands that were hired to play free open-air shows for the public. The gods (or some administrator somewhere) must have listened (I'm sure there were numerous complaints) and finally hired a competent set of musicians and (mercifully) turned down the volume to below Black Sabbath levels.

Formerly based in Montreal, Dr. Draw is a Toronto band based around violinist Eugene Draw that plays an ecclectic mix of rock/jazz/classical fusion instrumentals. Think Godspeed You! Black Emperor meets Trans Siberian Orchestra.

Ghosts of the Distillery District

Okay, they're not really ghosts, but people in motion that travelled across the frame while I was taking an extended nightitime exposure. The Victorian allure of the Distillery District adds an extra air of Holmesian mystery. I can hear the hound of the Baskervilles howling in the background. Unfortunately, I didn't bring along my camera today to capture the area after the thunderstorm.

Fake Plastic Bird

This fake creature is part of a string of illumated birds from IKEA mounted on the window of our studio in an effort to draw upward the eyes of potential patrons as they walk past the building. An identical string can be found inside the building on the railing of the gallery that leads to our second-floor entrance. If I were to dub it's style, I'd call it minimalist cute, kind of like a grown-up take on Hello, Kitty.

Shuttered

Below are two version of an image of a shuttered window on the side wall of a former customs warehouse in Toronto's Distillery District. I've processed it in colour and black and white to show how processing can affect the mood and tone of a piece.

Enjoy.

Groovy Pride

Since I have been less than regular in my posts these last couple of weeks, here's a bonus shot for today. This is our friend Steve, aka The Queer Bohemian having a groovy ole' time at this years pride parade. Blissfully mellow, you can tell that he's digging the positive vibe. Far out, man. Peace.

Enza Supermodel

Enza "Supermodel" Anderson was this year's grand marshall at the Pride Parade, among her many accomplishments, she has run for public office, coming in second in the Toronto Mayoralty race in 2000. In 2002, she tried to run for the leadership of the right-wing Canadian Alliance Party, but failed to raise the necessary $25,000. She also writes the On the Move person-on-the-street column for the Toronto edition of the Metro daily paper, in which she profiles a different random Torontonian every day. As always, she looked fabulous performing her duties as this year's honoree.

How I Spent Canada Day... (At least part of it)

I spent this Canada Day morning taking apart, cleaning up and reassembling a "rescued" bicycle that was left out for taking by a neighbour. It is a vintage single-speed bike with a coaster brake (the type you pedal backward to activate) and manufactured by Raleigh at its Nottinghamshire factory, but rebranded as an Eaton's of Canada Glider. (Eaton's is a now-defunct department store chain that was legendary for its annual mail order catalogue). The bike has already been "urbanized" by its previous owner (i.e. spraypainted black to make it less attractive to thieves) and has some minor rust, but it runs perfectly and, suprisingly, is perfectly adjusted to my height. The only thing is that it's a ladies' frame, but in this day and age of weird bike geometries, who's going to notice right?