Archive for the Category ◊ Urban Life ◊
I discovered this place while walking last night and went back this morning to take some photos. The light wasn’t that great, so I’ll return when the light’s better and try again.
The weather forecasters were all wrong about the weekend, and this time it was in our favour — it didn’t rain! In fact, it didn’t really rain until today, which is fine because it’s Monday and most of us are working.
The fact that the TTC was on strike didn’t seem to deter people from getting out and about over the weekend. Motor vehicle traffic was heavier, as expected, but there were plenty of people around town. I was barely at home so the stories and photos from the second half of the weekend will have to wait a little while, but here’s a little preview of the literally HUNDREDS of photos I took (700+ yesterday ALONE!):
Saturday night was a Ta-Ta-For-Now party at a restaurant/lounge on Yonge Street for a quartet of CS friends leaving for adventures further afield:
For the last week or so, my shutter has been sticking but it wasn’t affecting my photos. Now it is! But only on the longer-exposure or wider aperture shots, for some reason. The photo above is of the four people we threw the party for, and I liked this sticky-shutter accidental double exposure shot more than the normal one.
On Sunday I went to Dundas Square for International Dance Day, where our very own Neesa was performing the zombie dance from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. The weather was fantastic, and we stayed all day in the square. I was in shooting heaven (I love photographing dance), with plenty of room to move around (unlike bigger events with barricades and 10x more photogs):
Here’s a short clip of the audience (you can see five of our group in this clip) learning the zombie dance.
It was a great weekend! More to come!
Had to set the alarm to get myself up to do this; Saturday mornings are typically lie-ins for me. This walk had already been postponed once (last weekend), and the forecast for today called for rain. Not to mention there’s a transit strike on right now, so anyone who didn’t have a car or didn’t live nearby wouldn’t be able to come — it seemed like the walk was jinxed. But I figured I would go unless it was pouring outside, because I wanted to be outdoors this weekend.
The sky was looking pretty tame through the skylight (a little overcast but far from rainstormy), so I stopped snoozing the alarm and got myself cleaned up and motoring to Davisville Subway Station, the meeting point. There were 10 of us in total, a group of mostly locals who either lived nearby or biked over; only a couple of us had to drive.
We started off at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, a huge property on the other side of Yonge Street where I used to live for my first three months in Toronto. During that time I thought about visiting to take photographs, but I think it was too painful for me at the time. I did make an outing of it once when I was living beside the Rogers Centre, in February last year. I made a mental note to return by myself, because everyone was walking rather quickly and I was lagging behind so much I had to speedwalk to catch up again.
Other people had cameras, but I took the most photos other than Hanson (Hansen?), who is also interested in photography and was snapping away at the back of the group. We discussed camera equipment at great length while we walked, which would likely bore the others to tears, so it was just as well we were bringing up the rear!
The TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) started striking an hour ago (midnight) with a notice of an hour and a half, and I just started reading the news about it:
Torontonians in shock after transit workers strike
Updated Sat. Apr. 26 2008 12:38 AM ET
Oh boy, this is going to wreak havoc. It’s times like this I’m glad I have a car. I went out to dinner with some friends and dropped them off at Union Station around 11 o’clock — they live quite far away, by GO Train. It’s a good thing they caught the subway before it shut down!
(In case you can’t tell, I’m the one losing a battle with gravity.)
What a difference seven weeks make! It’s taken us that long to finish the Alley Walk that was mapped out by Spacing.ca.
http://spacing.ca/laneways.htm
Postponing it for nearly two months had more to do with people’s schedules than the weather, but the warmer temperatures (at least 25 degrees C higher than last month’s outing!) was most welcome! Part I was in the snow, with gloves, scarves, and hats:
Alley Walk: Part I - Sunday, March 2, 2008
On Sunday’s continuation it was more like sandals, sunglasses, and hats. Which included bunny ears and all sorts found along the way:
nothing says spring quite like a pair of fuzzy ears
I missed out on the good weather in Toronto during the week I was in Vancouver, so today has been the most spring-like I’ve seen it this year.
I met with some lovely people this morning for brunch at Joy Bistro, where I had my requisite Eggs Benedict (Norwegian-style this time, with smoked salmon) and a latte. A fine way to kick off Sunday, because afterwards I walked it all off, spending a few hours shooting around Ashbridge Bay Park at the Eastern Beaches. I don’t get out that way much because it’s on the other side of town from where I live, but I’m missing out on some urban landscapes if I don’t remind myself once in a while to go.
Take, for example, this photo at Canada Place. The clouds are pretty threatening, but provide a contrasting backdrop to the brightness of the sails to the west and the cranes to the east.
I took this photo below in the bridge walkway between Waterfront Skytrain Station and the Seabus terminal (you can see some reflections in the left side of the photo). It’s also the terminus station for the West Coast Express commuter train, which you can see in the far right of the photo. With the sun reaching under the clouds and bouncing off the colourful train cars, the layers of clouds give a sense of depth and softness behind all the linear patterns of trains, tracks, and buildings.
My last example of how rain clouds can be underappreciated in photos is this one taken by my cameraphone while I was driving over the Alex Fraser Bridge into Delta on Wednesday. Most of the time my cameraphone takes horribly blurry, grainy pictures with blown-out highlights and weird colour casts. Well, what do you know — with medium light, monochromatic grays, and a compelling subject it really didn’t do badly at all. This is probably the best picture I’ve ever seen come out of my Samsung U510.
My flight to Toronto’s been delayed, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to post a few pics. Yesterday was a full day of family and friends and airports and beaches and — goodness gracious — enough food to feed an army.
I took my father and brothers to the airport yesterday morning, where they boarded a flight to the Philippines. There is a whole saga about that, but I’ll skip the storytelling for now and just show some pictures…
My father, the 71-year old Filipino cowboy:
My father brought a white hat because he thought that it would make them easier to find at the destination airport, where they’d be met. Leave it to my dad to buy a white hat and wear white shoes!
Man, did I ever need a tripod for this one. I made do by steadying the camera on the balcony railing on my scarf, bumping up the ISO, and using the 2-second timer.
No visit to Vancouver would be complete without dining here at least once. I always have a fresh coconut. I’d eat one of these a day if I lived in the tropics!
I had meant to shoot both sides of the platter to make this diptych, but when I was framing it all I could think about was how good it would taste, and hey — all that presentation disappears in minutes, so why not show more of it?
Salathai Restaurant
888 Burrard Street
images & text © 2008 All Rights Reserved by Gail Edwin-Fielding.
Wordpress Theme Made Free by Web Hosting Refer
Recent Comments