|
Category: Art, Out + About
| Leave a Comment
Just a few for now…
Archive for the Category ◊ Out + About ◊
25
Feb
2010
Toronto Art Expo: The Videos
|
Category: Art, Culture + Society, Out + About, Travel, Videoclips
| Leave a Comment
It was a full evening of art at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre Thursday night after work. I didn’t really have a clue what I was attending, since all I got was a text message from Natalia a few days ago which consisted of a jumble of words: “free tickets art exhibit Thursday” and that’s all it took for me to say yes.
The official website: http://www.torontoartexpo.com/
I’m still working through the photos, but here are the 30-second videoclips I shot of the Korean Salmunori dance and drum group Jeng Yi and the whirling dervishes from Turkey at the opening night of the Toronto Art Expo:
I spent most of the evening staked out in the front row so I could shoot the whirling dervishes up close. I only brought my 50mm f/1.8 lens with me, not the zoom, because I didn’t have a press pass and usually art events discourage photography. I didn’t want to attract attention to myself.
I also grabbed some brochures about Turkey from their table near the entrance. What helps me to plan trips is to use the tourist brochures as a guide for distances and timing between cities. There are lots of maps for orientation and the descriptions about each city are useful, too. And, of course, it’s all free!
07
Feb
2010
Erotika Dinner
|
Category: Food + Drink, Out + About
| 2 Comments
I had a REALLY good weekend of eating! Text to follow…
01
Feb
2010
Hangin’
|
Category: Out + About, Working Life
| 2 Comments
As I’d expected, my personal photography and editing time has completely dropped as I try and keep up with the business end of things (meetings, emails, contracts, all that terribly exciting stuff). For instance, this is the only other photo from WinterCity that I’ve managed to edit and upload since Saturday night. One! Which has effectively doubled the total number of WinterCity photos I’ve posted. Sad. I don’t know when I’ll get to it but I will get to it, because there are photos I really like just waiting in that folder for some attention.
In other news, my December 30 poll about who should pay on the first date is now closed, and the most popular answer, with 60% of the 58 votes, is… go on, check it out.
30
Jan
2010
WinterCity 2010 Preview
|
Category: Out + About, Videoclips
| Leave a Comment
“Cosmogonia” by Compagnie Les Passagers (France)
“The Cube” by Peter Jarvis (Toronto)
Much like last weekend, this weekend’s been pretty ambitious, too: after a day of volunteering at The Brides’ Project, I went up the street for a meeting at the pub with prospective wedding clients, then headed to Nathan Phillips Square to catch as much of the annual WinterCity Festival as my extremities could handle with temperatures around -15C… and this is only Saturday! I have a brunch tomorrow, followed by a trip up to Scarborough for a location scout at the church I’m shooting at next weekend then off to North York to scope the reception venue. Let’s see how much steam I’ve got left over to edit the rest of these WinterCity photos tomorrow night. I think some fortification in chocolate form might be necessary!
31
Dec
2009
Me, Andy Warhol, Balloons, and a Moosehead
|
Category: Out + About
| 2 Comments
This photo is very “me” — cramming as many unrelated objects into a single frame as possible. I like that Warhol’s quote “The world fascinates me” is reflected from the glass to the mirror onto my head.
Since today was my last day of 2009 for photos (and the weather warmed up considerably), I thought I would make a slightly longer photo-stroll through my neighbourhood on the way home. I took some photos at a community garden, where a friendly fellow stopped to chat. He talked up the garden’s tomatoes and wished me a Happy New Year. It’s one of the many reasons why I love living here, because it’s urban yet neighbourhood-y.
A few of my favourites from this afternoon:
The rest can be viewed as [thumbnails] or a [slideshow] or in the Pictobrowser below:
30
Dec
2009
Ice Skating At Nathan Phillips Square
|
Category: Out + About
| 5 Comments
The ice was packed with skaters this evening! But it was really cold and I didn’t last that long. Rental Alert: the queue was ENORMOUS tonight. Get there early, or borrow skates!
A few of my favourites from the evening, which were all shot without a flash in low light with the 50mm f/1.8:
The rest can be viewed as [thumbnails], a [slideshow], or in the Pictobrowser below:
20
Dec
2009
Sunday Brunch + Games
|
Category: Friends, Music, Out + About, Videoclips
| Leave a Comment
My agenda for this weekend was to make it work-free and shopping-free, both of which I can say I accomplished now that Sunday is nearly over. I’ve been working and volunteering every weekend for what seems like FOREVER, though it was actually only November when I went to New York City and Ottawa, and I was working while I was in Ottawa. I needed a break very, very badly. The shopping-free part is a two-fold objective: to not spend money, and AVOID STORES the weekend before Christmas. My major goal for the holidays is not to set foot in a store for the rest of the year unless it’s a grocer. I have 11 days left, let’s see how that goes…
As for this weekend, I just wanted to sleep in and stay in my pyjamas all day as a respite from the weeks of sleep deprivation. That was Saturday, I woke up at 1:30 in the afternoon. Today I wanted to sleep in even more but I committed myself to a holiday brunch at Natalia’s. On Saturday I had no idea what I could bring for brunch that didn’t involve a store (I’m not even that keen on grocery stores these days, everyone’s cooking and baking up a storm), but I found some falafel mix and fried it up. Doesn’t sound very brunch-like, does it? But really, brunch can be anything, in my book. And I came home with an empty container so it’s all good.
We also played a modified version of a game called Outburst that involves a list of categories, a die with the alphabet on it (I think it excludes X and maybe some other tough letters), and letting everyone yell out a word/s that belong in those categories once the letter die is rolled. English isn’t the first language for many people in the room, which you might think is a disadvantage, but Farhad smoked everyone at this game, and he’s an expat. It’s as if he has a high-speed index engine in his head for all the English words he knows. For the rest of us, Sunday is meant to be a lazy day — a mentally lazy day!
Photos can be viewed as [thumbnails] or a [slideshow] or in the Pictobrowser below:
19
Dec
2009
Toronto Raptors vs New Jersey Nets
|
Category: Out + About, Toronto, Videoclips
| 3 Comments
Air Canada Centre on Friday, December 18.
Final score: 118-95
Go Raptors!
The photo above is pretty grainy as I shot this in ISO 1250 with my 17-55mm f/2.8 lens (which is pretty much the opposite of a sports lens; it’s a wider-angle/portrait lens, not a long-range lens at all) and cropped out the crowd. But shooting at 1250 allowed me to reach a shutter speed of 1/800 sec and capture lots of airtime under the net.
To the dismay of hockey fans all over Canada, I will admit that I have always preferred basketball to hockey. (As a player, I prefer hockey to basketball.) Watching a basketball game is a much more intimate experience than a hockey game: you are closer to the action, there is occasionally direct interaction between the players and the spectators, there is no dividing plexiglass, and there is far less equipment — players aren’t wearing layers and layers of clothing and helmets and carrying sticks.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote something similar about my first Raptors game in March 2008 against the Pacers.
If you’re wondering (as we were) why the Raptors are wearing jerseys that say Huskies, this jersey was introduced in December 2009 to commemorate the original team pre-NBA. The Toronto Huskies were a team in the Basketball Association of America (a forerunner of the National Basketball Association) during the 1946–47 season.
I’m still adding photos to the set, which you can view as [thumbnails] or a [slideshow] or in the Pictobrowser below:
17
Oct
2009
Brickworks
|
Category: Out + About, Videoclips
| 4 Comments
Waking up this morning required the assistance of an alarm. Not because I imbibed at the company party last night (I didn’t, unless you count two glasses of wine over five hours imbibing), but because I went home and worked late editing! I was probably the only person in the whole company who would even consider returning to a computer after Friday night’s festivities.
I made a trip out to Brickworks today with Jan and Natalia to do some location scouting for two non-wedding shoots this next week. I haven’t been to the property since the ravine walk a year and a half ago, and I’ve been meaning to get back there since. Shooting there tomorrow might be problematic due to the Toronto Marathon routing through Bayview Avenue, so I was looking for either access alternatives or location alternatives.
While we were there, we took in the Farmer’s Market and a First Nations social which included dancing, drumming, and yummy free food. Who can turn down free food? The bread was delish.
I shot a short clip of one of the dances called the hoop dance, which was really interesting: the dancer lay down a bunch of hoops and one by one picked them up and danced with them until she was wearing them all! Check out the video for 30 seconds of it:
Recent Comments