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?

Happy Canada Day

On behalf of all Canadians I'd like to apologize to the rest of the world for Nickelback. Please understand that we hate them just as much as you do. As a token gesture to alleviate the suffering caused by Chad Kroeger and his band of miscreants, I'd like to offer to you this video of The Tragically Hip singing "Nautical Disaster," which is perhaps the most Canadian song ever written due to its reference to the Battle of Dieppe during the Second World War.

On August 19, 1942, nearly 4,000 allied infantrymen, most of them Canadian, were killed during a raid of little strategic value which failed to accomplish any of its objectives. Every Canadian child learns about Dieppe as an example of the folly of war and its lesson is stamped into our collective memory. When Tragically Hip lead singer Gord Downey growls, "One afternoon four-thousand men died in the water here," he sends shivers down the spine of every one of us. This musical allegory about the pain of war and of failed relationships also features a grungy guitar aesthetic that is reminiscent of fellow canuck songster Neil Young at his impassioned best when fronting Crazy Horse.

Happy Canada Day!