Adventure inspires adventure.

I’m hitting the road tomorrow after work, and it’s an 11-hour drive if you believe Google. Fingers crossed Hurricane Earl doesn’t slow me down or halt me altogether.

Another shot from Parkdale, where you can gather al fresco.

Couches, chairs, a toilet, and a fire hydrant — what more do you need?

My hair won’t do that, it’s too thick.

In other news, it’s 32C today and I’m wearing black from head to toe. And long sleeves. I’m writing this to stay awake on the streetcar.

I was wondering recently whether there was any real difference between being a spectator and an observer. A spectator can observe, and an observer can spectate, right?

When I think of a spectator, I think of watching sports, especially sports I don’t play. I don’t really follow sports anymore, or sporting teams, because I’m at a stage in life where I choose different forms of entertainment and I don’t want to take up passive hobbies. I want very much to engage in the world around me. Sure, I’ll take those free hockey and basketball tickets that I get sometimes through The Firm (“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!” I was told many years ago), but I won’t pay for them. I’ll spectate, but I’ll bring my camera and take photos — of course! Then it can no longer be considered passive, I suppose.

When I think of an observer, I think of someone who will study the situation and be more attentive to what’s going on. However, when I look up the definitions, the word observer comes up a lot under spectator. Is it an expectation, then? Does that mean the observer is expected to notice more than a spectator? And a spectator merely an onlooker? Is whether a person a spectator or observer self-identified, or a judgement call by someone else?

Or, more importantly, why do I even think about stuff like this when I should be asleep?

Ever since I picked up a camera with the intention of making a photo that I could be proud of is when I stopped taking snapshots and started working on my observation skills. To draw a comparison, I’d say a spectator is taking a snapshot and an observer is “making a photo” — a literal translation for many languages. Some people call it “the eye” — and we all have two! why don’t we say “the eyes”? — but I think it’s much more deliberate than that, and it takes a lot of practice. I look at photos I took in my first year of owning a digital camera (2002) and they were nothing special. Maybe they improved in 2003, but I kind of doubt it. If I had “the eye” back then, it was closed! What I think people forget about is how much practice is involved, technical trial-and-error, and experimentation. But most of all, observation — and that takes practice, too. You can see the same things every day, but do you really notice what you’re looking at?

Sure, I take a lot of photos. But I try to make them all different, especially of things that look the same. The world becomes a much more interesting and exciting place when you’re observing it with both eyes open. In macro photography, for example, it’s a world within a world. From the sky, aerial photography becomes a bird’s eye view of civilization. Imagine photography in space!

Alright, time to close my eyes for a few hours…

It’s a maligned neighbourhood. Lots of good stuff around Parkdale and beautiful homes, but people get the wrong impression thanks to the media.

I shot this in Union Station with my phone and am posting from it, so maybe it won’t look the same on a computer. On my phone it looks like the railing forms the vertical part of a cross and the light source behind forms the horizontal. Seemed kind of a stretch until I saw the reflection on the left side.

I had a couple of “missions” yesterday, and I fulfilled the second one, leaving the first one for another attempt today. I took a different approach and headed out to Mississauga, where I was able to complete it, with some improvisation. One more check off the weekend list.

On the way home I spotted power lines that nearly made me stop to photograph them, then I thought the better of it as there wasn’t anywhere safe to pull over. Driving further east, I spotted shipping containers piled one on top of the other and it was just too tempting to pass up. Having lived in various coastal cities around the world (Melbourne, Sydney, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Vancouver, etc.), I’ve become somewhat of a cargo ship spotter. I’m fascinated by shipping and will stop to watch freighters go by. You get a sense of the immense size of these vessels while standing on shore, but especially when you’re in a motorboat on the water.

This afternoon when I saw the stacked containers from the Queensway, I searched for a road and followed it past fences and gates to an area full of containers by a railroad track. It was deserted — not a single security guard — and I parked my car near the entrance.

This is probably a good time to talk about safety…

A shipping yard is not the safest place to take photographs alone. I probably wouldn’t come here at night unless I brought other people. In other parts of the world shipping containers are homes for people, and here in North America it’s a decent-enough shelter for the homeless. I’m not afraid of homeless people, but I didn’t want to disturb anyone (especially anyone who might be paranoid) or discover illicit activity or encounter anything that died in a container. I proceeded with caution, and I sent a tweet with my location… just in case. (I never use the location feature in Twitter except for situations like this.)

So why would I go to a shipping yard in the first place? Good question. I knew I had completely the wrong lens for it. I was wishing my 17-5mm f/2.8 wasn’t still at Nikon Repair because to shoot in a shipping yard requires a wide-angle lens. A 50mm on a DX camera equates to about a 75mm focal length on an FX camera, which means I had to stand far away from the containers to get them in the frame, and it didn’t capture the feeling of being dwarfed by giant metal walls. (Because of the limitation of the lens I was using, I was going to turn some of these into tilt-shift fake miniatures, but after one conversion I gave up — takes too much time!)

Still… there’s no denying the lure of textures and colours in industrial sites, especially on a brilliantly sunny day like today. In fact, it’s a fantastic place to stage an engagement shoot or a music video. I’d love to return with lighting equipment and some (preferably big and burly) friends to shoot at night, with creative use of car headlights.

Seven years ago, I wrote a story on my blog about a night of debauchery in which I (unintentionally) incriminated those involved by disclosing full details such as their names, references to where they lived, and basically all the things one should never specify on the internet. Especially when the people were too drunk to remember anything. A couple of days later, I got a call from one of their girlfriends.

Boy, did I ever learn that lesson quickly! I logged into Blogger (this website lived on Blogger from 2002-2005), and changed the names to Sesame Street characters and I altered any identifying information to something well-known and silly. Because we all know Sesame Street characters don’t get embarrassed.

Then I read the whole story again and laughed so hard I wiped tears from my eyes.

August 3, 2003: I Am Man, Hear Me Roar

It reads like nonsense with the names changed, but it was all completely true. I should know, I was sober — unlike everyone else.

I read stories like that and wish I could retrieve more from the dusty drawers of my brain. I would like to chronicle them here before the memories fall out of my head. Let’s see if I can come up with one before the weekend’s over.

Live music in Yonge-Dundas Square, where I ended up after dinner.

Of course, I got the title from the 60′s hit song by the Lovin’ Spoonful, and here’s a cover by Joe Cocker:

I have a Toronto Summer 2010 set, best viewed as a slideshow in Flickr.

… to follow the mango martinis.