Archive for the Category ◊ Flickr Toronto ◊

02 May 2008 Flickr + Reposado Bar + CONTACT Photography Festival
Author: Gail |  Category: Flickr Toronto, Food + Drink, Out + About  | 3 Comments

aqua

thanks for the drinks, Flickr!

Flickr’s Community Manager Heather Champ is in town partly because she’s speaking at a conference up north and Flickr is also a sponsor for Toronto’s annual CONTACT Photography Festival taking place all of May. She invited us to have “a drink and chat” at the tequila bar called Reposado on Ossington between Dundas and Queen, which of course is like a cattle call to… cattle. Free drinks on Flickr? See you there! It’s beginning to look like a running theme, here. The lure of “free” is too great for us mere mortals.

The event officially finished at 8:30, and I got in just under the wire (read: last call) in the crush at Reposado. As it is with any Flickr event, flashes were going off left, right, and centre. While I was waiting for my drink at the bar, the girl beside me said, “Hey, you’re one of my contacts on Flickr!”

For someone who’s been on Flickr for nearly four years, I don’t have that many contacts, and the last time I attended a Flickr meetup in Toronto was AUGUST 2006!

{ continue reading… }

14 Apr 2006 Toronto Flickr Meetup @ Green Room
Author: Gail |  Category: Flickr Toronto  | 4 Comments

Boy, time flies. I’ve barely been here in Toronto, and this was my third Toronto Flickr meetup! I wasn’t living here yet when I attended February’s at the Red Room, and last month I wasn’t here for even two weeks before the meetup at Gypsy Co-op then went to Europe only a couple of days after, so the Flickr meetups seem to mark my comings and goings. Fortunately, they’ve happened to fall on a time that I’m here.

funky lighting

With each gathering I meet a few more people, recognise a few more from the forum, and some from the previous meetup. I’m also — little by little — getting my bearings, after consulting maps of where each meetup is located and the best routes to get there. I know there are many benefits to going to such events, but yet I find a part of myself unwilling to go. The part of myself that’s practical and a good sport has to persuade the unwilling side of me to get out of the apartment, and this time the unwilling side nearly won. It’s not that people aren’t friendly, or the locations are far away, or times inconvenient. Not at all. In the two previous meetups, I’ve come away with positive feelings. I always have a good time, I talk to people. I seem to recall feeling this way before the other two meets, but once I got there everything was OK. { continue reading… }

16 Mar 2006 Toronto Flickr Meetup @ Gypsy Co-op
Author: Gail |  Category: Flickr Toronto  | One Comment

on fire

I was starting to exhibit recluse behaviour this past week, so I made a point of attending the March meetup for the local Flickr group last night.

My inclination to socialise has waxed and waned, with no real predictability. The day after I arrived in Toronto I bowed out from both my friend’s cocktail party and cosmic bowling later that night with another group of people. Rather unlike me, but “putting myself out there” usually means fielding questions that I still find awkward to answer. It’ll get easier with time.

Anyway, I took this opportunity to drive the car and get myself oriented to the grid of the city. Vancouver doesn’t have much of a grid, owing to its waterways, so in this way getting around Toronto is easier.

When I arrived at Gypsy Co-op I didn’t recognise a single face. The first person to approach me was Tracer99, then Mawz (also from BC), and later basslinegfx, dzgnboy, and b-real. Conversation flowed, with only a few pauses from me (“Why am I here? Umm… long story…”), and I did get to check out other people’s equipment. (That sounded salacious, didn’t it?) The lighting was a challenge, but I managed to get a couple of photos from the few available light sources:

Gypsy Co-op wall of libations

I figure one or two more Flickr meetups, and I’ll be able to deflect the questions with ease. Or, we’ll be in a venue with better lighting and I’ll just take more photos…

16 Feb 2006 Toronto Flickr Meetup @ The Red Room
Author: Gail |  Category: Flickr Toronto, Out + About, Widowhood  | 6 Comments

chandelier

Perchance, I was reading the Toronto forum on Flickr to see if they’d had a meetup in February yet, and noticed that it was scheduled for the 16th! I decided to go.

This is the first Flickr-based event I’ve attended since Vandigicam: Code Blue on August 4th, the day before David phoned me from the hospital. I flew East, and didn’t attend any Philadelphia or New York Flickr meetups. I went to one Northeast Photography Club meeting, the first week of December.

I wasn’t 100% sure I felt like mingling with strangers (which can make for awkward questions), but I talked myself into going, and asked China if she wanted to come along (which reinforced my commitment to going). { continue reading… }