I came off the red-eye this morning from Vancouver to Toronto and went straight to work (for the fourth time this year–oof), and wondered if my day at the office would seem to go on forever. Then I remembered today I was to have a leisurely lunch with JMV, who I met in Vancouver in 2005 and happened to be here while I was there this week. We somehow managed to get together today in Toronto.

I was fooling around with the two photos I took of him and moved them around in Photoshop when I stopped at this. I quite like it. I didn’t set it up like a diptych, but it turned out that way.

Tonight was one of the funniest Vandigicam outings I’ve ever been on. I came up with this idea just before the weekend, something silly that served as a break from any sort of “serious” photography: a Photo Scavenger Hunt that I modified for the group.

A bunch of us met at Havana on Commercial Drive, and I mashed us together in a booth and declared us one group instead of competing ones. By the time we had drinks and nosh and chatted it was already nearly time for the scheduled rendez-vous at Rime, and thankfully Jason had the foresight to send us in that direction to see if there was anyone waiting for us. There we found Lynn and as the light was starting to fade, we headed over to a wall mural to take our silly photos. The pic above was the first one, and as Cliff says (click on the photo for Flickr comments), “It only went downhill from here. Packing a phonebooth, Kiddie gelato scoops, car cramming and familiar strangers. ”

Ah, it’s good to be back Vandigicamming again. Everyone’s such a good sport!

One of the reasons why I chose Commercial Drive is because it’s sort of an “anything goes” kind of neighbourhood. I figured it was the least likely place to encounter anyone telling us to point the cameras the other way, and we’d find some eclectic backgrounds to shoot in. I came up with a list of 10 photo tasks that wouldn’t get us into trouble, fairly innocuous things such as squeezing into a phone booth. What we found was that even while we were stuffing ourselves into the booth, passersby didn’t even bat an eyelash at us! Like it was the most commonplace sight in the world to see people pack into a small space like sardines and take photos of themselves. We couldn’t stop laughing, which may have sent the locals scurrying away.

I blame the full moon for all this tomfoolery.

As Cliff mentioned, we did make a gelato stop before I got us to cram ourselves into the smallest car of our group (Janos’ Ford Escort) for a self-portrait. A random person in the neighbourhood where he parked asked us if we wanted our picture taken, and it turned out Janos recognised her from his days at the University of Victoria! So, not exactly a random stranger.

Did I mention there was a full moon?

It was Janos’ first Vandigicam meetup (what a first impression! “These people are MAD!”) and only Lynn’s second, so it was an interesting group dynamic. I love it when people are this game!

The others have yet to post their photos online. Until then, this is what I’ve got uploaded: vandigicam_tomfoolery

Vandigicam meetup by m.d.

Tonight was my first Vandigicam event since Code Blue a year ago. Vandigicam’s grown a lot since last summer, and I knew maybe half of the bunch who turned up at the Inukshuk at English Bay, but everyone was very friendly and a good sport about having their photo taken. Me, I’m still a bit squirmy about being on the receiving side of the lens, but Mark made me laugh and put me at ease. See, I even like this photo!

The crowd piled into La Bodega afterwards and I stayed late chatting with Bill, Jason, and Matt until we were subtly nudged out the door. It’s good to be back with the Vandigicam crew!

Portrait Throwdown III thread and photos.

[Update: Sunday, Sep 3 -- put together a photoset for the Portrait Throwdown. A work in progress.]

[Update: Wednesday, Sep 6 -- the podcast for the event is up at audihertz.com!]

In the span of one day I’ve uploaded one more photo of Van Dusen Gardens.

Now that’s progress.

Actually, I did a whole lot of other necessary things wedding-related so Flickr was relegated to the backburner. Makes me wonder how I managed to hold a full-time job, take university courses, and occasionally take part in extra-curricular activities in previous years. Actually, all I have to do is read the archives in this very blog — those entries were all textual grumblings. Let’s not go back there.

Here we have a hypersaturated photo of lily pads in the pond near the entrance to Van Dusen Gardens. I took the saturation as far as it would go on the slider, something I’ve not done before because it usually blows out all the details in the photo. For some reason beyond my neophyte understanding of Photoshop it brought out the glints of sunlight, making it look fairytale-ish. All that’s missing is the frog.

UPDATE: OK, finished uploading the rest of the garden photos. You can find them here:

Vandigicam at Van Dusen Gardens