Left the Loft at nearly 2am, and I have a family shoot at 9:30 (followed by a helicopter trip and another shoot), so this is going to be the abbreviated version.

So many photos, so little time to post… more to follow.

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Brookfield Place

Crappycam photos three days in a row, Gail????

Yes, I’m reluctant to be posting photos from my phone three days in a row when I have thousands upon thousands of high-quality pictures at my fingertips just itching to be shown, but the downside of travelling and leaving the work behind is that it tends to pile up in my absence. (Can someone make a photo-self-editing app please?) My days — and nights — post-trip are spent in front of my computer to tackle the backlog, so I end up posting quick snapshots that I’ve taken with the phone.

Tonight I walked home in decidedly winter-like temperatures, cold enough that I ended up buying a cheap pair of gloves because I forgot my trusty Kermit-coloured mittens at home. I made a slight detour to find a pair at Brookfield Place which is decked out with lights galore, as you can see in the photo above. There was also an exhibit, but I decided to view it another day when I’ve got more time.

Remember these bears in Parkdale? (Scroll to the bottom of the post.) They’ve been CHRISTMASFIED!

backseat bears

And lastly but not leastly, I saw these at Longo’s and wanted to try them… wasabi cashews. Mmmm, so good, but a word of warning: don’t let yourself ingest/inhale the wasabi powder when you reach the bottom of the bag. It will singe your sinuses and throat like NOBODY’S BUSINESS and bring tears to your eyes!

wasabi cashews

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Cancer Research Conference community forum

I took a break from photo editing on Sunday to attend the Canadian Cancer Research Conference’s community forum at the Sheraton Hotel across from City Hall. As an active volunteer fundraising for cancer charities and as a volunteer driver for the Canadian Cancer Society, I want to stay informed about the state of cancer and cancer research in Canada. I wish I had more time to write about the conference itself, but I’ll have to save it for when I don’t have deadlines looming over me (read: not anytime soon!).

Fitting the conference theme, I took the opportunity to break in my new running shoes earned by participating in the Run For The Cure on October 2 (I was sponsored for $2,000 by The Brides’ Project). These shoes are branded with the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation’s logo and New Balance Canada donates 15% of sales from the Lace Up For the Cure collection to the CBCF.

CBCF branded running shoes

CBCF branded running shoes

The rest of the cameraphone photos were taken across the street at Nathan Phillips Square and City Hall. The skating rink is open, but it was raining and unseasonably warm so not many people were there.

Nathan Phillips Square

Nathan Phillips Square

Nathan Phillips Square

perchance

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snowman? looks more like a penguin to me

snowman derriere

I had to rescue my weekend from the jaws of work yesterday; Saturday was completely consumed by editing. I had hoped to make it to a couple of house parties on Saturday afternoon and evening, but alas, I was still editing at 10pm and running out of steam. I finally finished the job around 4am. It was such a relief to wake up a few hours later for brunch and know I could now move on to editing something else! (And now you know why I posted those graphs yesterday.)

After brunch I had to run a few errands around town and the last stop was the Distillery District to pick up prints from the lab. While I was there, I scouted the Thompson Landry Gallery Cooperage, where I’ll be shooting a wedding in the spring. It struck me as absurd that I’ve been to the Distillery District countless times and that was my only first time to visit the gallery.

Distillery District

Thompson Landry Gallery

Inside the Cooperage is A Taste of Quebec, which is exactly what it sounds like: a huge, huge temptation to buy and eat everything in sight. If you’ve been to Quebec, you’ll know what I’m talking about — they take food seriously in la belle province and when I’m there I’m always thinking about what I’ll eat next, even while I’m eating. I had a tough time leaving the cooperage without buying anything. I got as far as picking up jars and it took major willpower to put them back down again and step away from the cheese fridge and samples of sugar pie.

About the top photo: the quality is even worse than the other mobile phone pictures because it’s the front-facing camera on the Android, which has a lower pixel count than the rear camera. I was taking my photo to send to Tourism Toronto so they’ll donate money to the Starlight Children’s Foundation of Canada. I checked to see if my pic was posted, but the one with the pooch is hard to beat for photo of the week If you’re in the Distillery District, go look for the snow creature by the giant spider-like thing… for lack of better directions.

charity snowman

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World Press Photo 2011: Brookfield Place

Turns out I viewed the toughest images first when I checked out the World Press Photo 2011 exhibit at Brookfield Place two weeks ago. (Warning to viewers — the panels closest to the Bay Street entrance are the most graphic!) However, there is one image closer to the Yonge Street entrance — and this is the part where you should turn away if you’re faint of heart — that might bring up your dinner… I don’t want to say too much but it involves a bullfighter in Madrid who slipped when he tried to avoid the bull (read: bull horns). Just thinking about it gives me the shivers!

The walk home was chilly and I forgot my scarf, which meant I was speedwalking down a different route to escape from the wind off the lake, taking King Street nearly all the way home. This is the underpass just east of Atlantic Avenue.

King Street West

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Yonge Street bokeh

I finished second-shooting the Danish wedding late in the evening, and I was debating with myself while enroute to my car parked off College Street whether to check out some of Nuit Blanche while I was nearby or go home and sleep. Last year I shot a wedding until 3am in Liberty Village, and previous years I’ve been out of town the first weekend in October, which is why I’ve never been able to attend Nuit Blanche.

This was as close as I got to Nuit Blanche this year — taking photos on Yonge Street, which was closed off for the event. As you can see, the crowds were thick and non-stop by the time I got there near midnight. I think I’ll have to call it a night, I have the Run For The Cure in mere hours, and then if the sun decides to shine I’m off to the apple orchards to shoot engagement photos.

Yonge Street

Yonge Street

Yonge Street

Yonge Street

I also tried to shoot some video, but it was just way too dark:

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You may remember I posted pictures of The Mother Of All Bikes this summer when I first encountered it on the street near my house. It’s really something while stationary, but I figured it must be even more impressive in action. Today I was at Pedestrian Sunday in Kensington Market on a mission to see man about a horse (OK, I was checking out a friend’s VW van for possible wedding transportation/photo ops next year), and decided to stay a bit longer to get in my churros fix and gawk at the hippiefest that is the market on Pedestrian Sunday.

I spotted the bike at the north end of Augusta Street and shot a bit of video of it with little kids drumming on it, which is the closest I’ve come yet to seeing it in action.

A couple of the tires were a bit flat so maybe it’s moved from Parkdale over to Kensington Market for a longer stay. It made the journey, but I wonder how fast it goes? Maybe next time I see the bike, it’ll be pedalling down the street.

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So it’s not quite the motorcycle ride I’ve been jonesing for, but it’s getting there!

I had an impromptu dinner with my friend Austin, who rode his scooter to meet me in Chinatown. I was getting ready to walk home when he offered to give me a lift, and he even had a second helmet. Let’s go!

I got out my digicam and we were off — but I only realized once I started filming that the camera had reset itself to the default clip size, the smallest resolution, and then I ran out of battery juice less than three minutes into the ride. Ah well, I’ll try again once I’m more prepared!

The ride starts off at Spadina Avenue, then a sorta kinda illegal left turn onto Dundas, where we continue until the camera turns itself off at Bathurst Street.

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Roy Thomson Hall

I took a bit of a detour this evening after work, to Chinatown to meet up with a lion.

Queen Street near Spadina Ave

A lion? Yes, we were meeting at my favourite Vietnamese restaurant, Xe Lua, on Spadina Avenue. After dinner, I brought him to Dundas Square.

Dundas Street near Yonge

Yonge-Dundas Square:

There were lots of people at Yonge-Dundas Square, and to my surprise they kept the fountains running.

Yonge-Dundas Square

Yonge-Dundas Square

In the end, I never did get a photo of the lion — dang! His name is Maurice, he’s even got a web page. He’s a stuffed lion puppet who travels with a human named Bret Amazzeing. They travelled from the New York area together to visit Toronto for a week.

with Bret Amazzeing at Yonge-Dundas Square

Bret got in touch with me nearly a year ago, but his original trip to Toronto fell through and since that time he and his sidekick Maurice toured India, Australia, Hong Kong, and a few other places, entertaining children and racking up the air mileage. With WeShareSmiles.com, he’s also toured Sierra Leone, Jamaica, Poland, and Mexico, taking his unique combination of puppetry and magic beyond the English-speaking world.

Fast forward to Thursday evening, trying pho for the first time and a grass jelly drink as I introduce him to Vietnamese food in Toronto, his first time here. We swapped a lot of stories, not just of travel but life in general. Bret’s a decade younger than me, but he’s an entrepreneur with a few companies under his belt, a magician, puppeteer, photographer, videographer, and all-around entertainer. He’s full of stories, and full of verve. People talk to him wherever he goes. It made for an entertaining Thursday evening!

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beery sky over Liberty Village

I know what you’re thinking.

“She walked home in a heatwave. Dehydration makes people hallucinate.”
“She drank WAY too much beer yesterday.”

OK, first of all, those were 6-oz (0.17744-litre) glasses. And I shared them.

Ever heard of beer lace?

I’d never heard of it until I lived for a few months with two Irish lads in Sydney, Australia, in the years when I lived out of a backpack. They were serious drinkers — one drinking seriously (for taste), and the other seriously drinking (competitively). They introduced me to all manner of homegrown shaken-and-stirred concoctions, and sometimes they’d conduct the drinking lessons out in the field.

One night they brought me to a hotel pub to meet some of their mates and discover more Aussie brews. What I didn’t know at the time was that in Australia, a hotel is really a euphemism for pub, there are often no rooms, but equally often there are strippers. I don’t think there’s an adequate descriptor for the level of awkwardness I was feeling, standing with a crowd of men ogling a woman dancing buck naked only a few metres away from me. Not to mention I was barely 20.

But I digress…

It was during one of those auspicious occasions in my learning the ways of the Aussie that the Irish lads tried to teach me how to “read” lace — the foam patterns on the side of the glass when you take a sip. According to them, the “lacier” the side of the glass, the better the beer. They even went as far as to count the number of sips as evident by the layers of lace. They argued if you couldn’t count the lace, the beer was crap. Such is the wisdom that was imported to Australia and inculcated into the local drinking establishment. I came away enlightened.

Maybe it’s my imagination running away with me, but when I looked at the sky on the way home, I immediately thought of beer lace. And my beer educators — one of whom also taught me how to player snooker-style pool (along with Lachlan). It’s funny how much trivia sticks in the brain after 20 years!

sky over the Queensway

last light over the Queensway

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