Panoptikal*

Sun Rises, Sun Sets (Hamilton, November 1st-10th, 2011)

2012-01-12T10:04:00.000-05:00

Sunset, Gage Park. November 1st, 2011.
Taken at the Pumpkin Parade, the day after Hallowe'en. When I took this picture I was facing north and looking towards Main Street; the sky was very clear and as the sun set slowly, the glowing pumpkins looked more ghostly and festive.

Sunrise, downtown. November 2nd, 2011.
On the way to an early-morning swim, I took this picture on Jackson Street.

Sunset, Main Street East. November 2nd, 2011.
Walking to the supermarket, I stopped to take a picture of the stunning sky. I love this rare intensity of colour, the way even the deep blue is overlaid by the orange glow of the sun.

Sunrise, back porch. November 10th, 2011.
I love the view of the sky from the back deck at my place. I am usually awake early in the morning and especially in winter, I get to see some beautiful sunrises (the window faces directly east). This one looks like a fire being smothered by its own smoke.

Far North Field (January 19, 2010)

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Taken on the drive north to Cape Reinga, through the bus window.

Security Guard (October 31, 1997)

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I took this Hallowe'en shot in the entrance at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), in Halifax. The costume was simple, yet effective...

The Alley (November 11, 2011)

2011-11-14T07:31:00.004-05:00

I took this picture the other day when I was walking back to my apartment after an early-morning swim. We've been having some delicious autumn skies recently, beautiful direct sunlight that isn't cut through by summer's leftover haze, nor does it feel crisper than glass like the clear sky in full-on winter weather. It's the kind of sunlight that makes you want to turn your face towards it and close your eyes, drinking it in. The colour of the leaves against the sky has been particularly lovely lately as well, though it seems most of the leaves have dropped off over the past weekend (typical sudden changes of season).

Still Leaf (November 5, 2011)

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Dusk Walk (Toronto; July 24, 2008)

2011-09-04T14:52:00.000-04:00

These pictures were taking during a walk from Parkdale to Christie Street, on a summer evening in Toronto. I love taking pictures of cities at sunset or in the early evening. There's a moment between light and dark where the effects of shadows are less predictable, almost eerie.

I've always thought that cities look like very different, almost fantastical places when photographed at that time, even scenes that might normally seem mundane can reveal a kind of luminescence, or alternately being shrouded in semi-darkness they take on an air of mystery that might otherwise be lacking. In the picture above, the paved alleyway looks darkly surreal compared to the still-light sky overhead, which in turn is reflected in the water pooled on the ground.

Sometimes the camera behaves differently in these lighting conditions as well. In the picture above this shows in the way the building is slightly blurred, and the reflection in the window is doubled up. It's actually hard to tell whether that's a trick of the camera or something happening with the light. You can see the same thing going on in this picture I posted previously, which was also taken during that evening walk.

This isn't the first or last photo I've taken of a corner shop at night. I'm often drawn to the low-light effect that makes windows--and lamps--glow in an unusual way. Below, the same effect is at work in this photo of a bank at the corner of Christie Street and Dupont. Because of the ambient, leftover daylight, the whole scene isn't as dark as it would be at night, so you can see the details in the building as well as the orb of light already being carved out by the parking lot lamp.

Below: Christie Street. This is one of my favourite pictures of Toronto. Again with the streetlamps, I love how they glow like little planets or stars, how you can't see what suspends them in the darkness, partly because of the contrasts between light and dark that turn the trees into sold black shadows against the still-fading sky.

Below: Davenport Road, as the sun's almost completely set. One of the things I like about this picture is the way the power lines form a shape that seems somehow analogous to the lines along the two sides of the road. Because of the strange semi-darkness the one brightest streetlight looks like either the sun or the moon (or both).

Generation Gap (Hamilton, Ontario, August 2011)

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Katydid (August 7, 2011)

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Spotted outside last night on a window ledge: a charming leaf-like insect. The larger family is Tettigoniidae, and a bit of digging brought up the specific sub-family, which looks to be Copiphorinae, "cone-headed meadow katydid".

Stazione di Milano Centrale (May 17, 2007)

2011-07-28T08:03:00.000-04:00

Milan's central train station, or Stazione di Milano Centrale, was a project that began in the early 1900s but was continued and expanded over a long period, particularly by Benito Mussolini (Italy's Fascist leader from 1925 to 1943).

I didn't manage to get a picture of the outside of the station, but here is one I found online. The facade looks more like an over-sized Baroque/Classical mash-up done in poor taste by a 20th century Napoleon, which actually comes close to the truth since the pseudo-regal structure works well as a kind of visual metonym for Mussolini's public works schemes (including transportation systems). It was Mussolini who was said to have "made the trains run on time"--a dubious statement, of course.

I don't know if Mussolini, a fan of extreme efficiency, would have been too keen on the apparent chaos of Stazione Centrale. It seemed to be functioning, but any order that was there looked more like an emergent property than an obvious arrangement.

Like at Heathrow airport in London, they didn't announce there the trains would leave from until fairly close to the departure time. The area around the platforms was a current of human motion, torrents of tourists and commuters flowing towards the next train as its platform number appeared on the information screen, rivulets swirling into eddies of conversation in the bustle of travellers trying to reach the right departure place before all the seats were taken.

And I still remember it was apparently OK to smoke cigarettes inside the station.

"Your Boat Your Words" (Northland, January, 2010)

2011-07-26T07:00:00.001-04:00

Your boat, they will tell you,
cannot leave the harbor
without discipline.

But they will neglect to mention
that discipline has a vanishing point,
an invisible horizon where belief takes over.

They will not whisper to you the secret
that they themselves have not fully understood: that
belief is the only wind with breath enough

to take you past the deadly calms, the stopped motion
toward that place you have imagined,
the existence of which you cannot prove

except by going there.

--Pat Schneider

(Photo: Cape Reinga/Te Rerenga Wairua, Far North, New Zealand)

Hamilton Farmers' Market (July 5, 2011)

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I'd been meaning to take some interior shots of Hamilton's farmers' Market for a while, since it was re-modelled and renovated at the end of 2010 and re-opened early this year. The Hamilton Public Library, in the same building and right next to the Market, was also overhauled.

Above: I took this shot from the ramp that connects the upstairs and downstairs sections. There's also a new set of stairs and an elevator, which have replaced the escalators that were used in the past. Above the Market, you can see the new Library through a glass wall.

Above: A stand just inside the glass windows, selling organic fruits and veggies. The windows face York Boulevard.

Above and below: There's a wide range of goods available at the Market, that's one of the best things about it. There are a number of stands selling temptingly delicious baked goods such as pastries, cookies, pies and specialty breads (I try to get my bread here every week). Other vendors offer flowers and plants, for homes and also (in spring and summer) for gardens.

Below: This is a blatant "plug" for Sam's Cheese and Meats, which is where I love to buy deli meat, olives, and of course delicious cheese of all kinds (and they're happy to provide a recommendation for you, if the variety is overwhelming).

Below: In this picture you can see the Library again, with its brightly painted walls and white plastic chairs.

Above and below: More lovely goodies! Loads of fresh fruit and veggies available for prices much lower than those on display at the supermarket. And stalls like this one selling Mexican and South American products (below) are fantastic places to look for affordable specialty foods.

Above and below: British Baked Goods (one of my favourites--includes gluten-free products!) downstairs, and one of several meat counters/butchers in the upstairs section of the Market.

Above and below: Chicken, cheese and veggies are all available in the upstairs section of the Market, along with delicious fresh brewed coffee; this is a great way to start the morning, and I try to begin my day that way at least once a week!

ARRÊT (Autumn, 1999)

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I think this is one of the best pictures I have of Montréal--certainly it's one of my favourites (I lived there for three years and took quite a few!). Not because it shows some famous local landmark or typical Montréal "scene", but because it captures something about the place that resonates more sub-consciously for me. A bit like this picture I took in Milan, which shows only a car parked on the street but which for me seems somehow representative of the place as it's seen from street-level.

The photo above was taken from almost directly opposite the building where I used to live on Avenue Coloniale (that building is off to the right and behind me, unseen).

I just love the blurs on the woman walking past in her short dress (or skirt) and heels; I remember those big chunky shoes were "in" at that time. I actually owned a couple of pairs myself--believe it or not! There's an interesting, staggered composition involving the walking woman, the street sign and hydrant, the cable covers, the tree, and a second person walking in the opposite direction on the other side of the street.

Back to the Garden (Summer, 2007)

2011-06-24T10:34:00.001-04:00

It's been a beautiful summer so far, following on the heels of an extended, and rather cold and damp, transition from winter through spring. To mark the recent solstice I thought I'd post some picture of the garden I helped to build in the backyard of an apartment where I lived a few years ago.

Above: leaves on a lily plant. I moved a load of lilies from other places (elsewhere in the garden, and also donations from other people's gardens) into one small flower bed by the back stairs. They started thriving pretty much right away.

Above: a lily caught in the late afternoon sunlight. I ended up with a lot of orange lilies and some very striking, blood-red ones as well with what looked like stripes of colour pouring forth from their centres.

Above: luscious green of a sage plant in afternoon sunlight. I love everything about sage--its scent, its texture, the shape of the leaves and its uniquely mossy, slightly muted colour.

Above: another lily leaf, with drops of rain from a summer showing still clinging.

Above: I loved taking pictures of the plants as they grew and changed over the course of the spring and summer. The blue-purple flower above wasn't what I expected; it looked like a little slipper, and the leaves grew low to the ground in curling tangles.

Above: A butterfly takes a break on the edge of a pot containing a rosemary plant.

Above: Lettuce-leaf basil. The basil grew rapidly and the leaves lived up to their name. This year I have about five different kinds (cinnamon, lemon, large-leaf, purple, sweet...), but none of them look as lush as these plants did.

Summer Morning, City Haze (June 16, 2011)

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I took this picture from the window of a GO train heading in to Toronto, last week. It was the only shot where I managed to capture the city skyline clearly in the background; I like how the CN Tower is parallel to all the poles next to the highway.

Scenes from The Ocean (May 29-30, 2011)

2011-06-07T10:00:00.003-04:00

Last week I travelled to Fredericton, New Brunswick, to attend and present at the annual meeting of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (the meeting is known informally as "Congress"). Since the plane tickets were a bit pricey, I decided to take the train (the VIA Rail Ocean) as far as Miramichi, New Brunswick, and then hop on a bus to Fredericton, about 3 hours' drive away. I really love this train ride (in spite of the lack of sleep!), and I've shown various shots from the train in a number of earlier blog posts.

Above: On the train leaving Montréal, Québec, things are looking summer-hazy in the early evening as the train crosses a bridge leaving the Island of Montréal behind.
Below: "Red sky at night"--a sunset, somewhere in Québec, heralding the clear bright day that followed.

Below: Sunrise and we're still in Québec; May 30. Shot through the train window reflection of me with my little camera held close to the glass.

Below: Heading down the rivière Matapédia towards the Québec-New Brunswick border, at sunrise; dramatic fog on the river and in the trees was very beautiful yet also very difficult to capture in low light, through a window, on a moving train, with auto-focus. Of course I tried anyway, and was rewarded with a few eerie-looking shots that actually were in focus. There were some odd effects though, because I used the "spot focus" (picked a spot on the screen and had the camera focus there all the time), and sometimes that created strange blurs.

Below: Pulling in to the station at Matapédia. The sunrise reflecting off the mist makes the sun look like an exploding bomb, with light radiating from the intensity at its point of detonation. This is a regular stop for the Halifax-bound train and I've taken early-morning pictures here before.

Below: Poking my head out for a breather at Matapédia, I'm rewarded with honey-coloured light and honey-scented air as dawn breaks through the mist-borne scent of thousands of unseen wildflowers.

Below: A stunning scene--early morning canoeing by the Québec-New Brunswick border on the Restigouche River, which eventually opens out into Chaleur Bay and then the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a scattering of islands adorning its throat. Finally I caught a picture that wasn't blocked by the trees growing alongside the tracks; also caught, frozen now as eternal salutation, is a greeting waved out by one of the canoe's occupants.

Below: While there isn't a great deal of variation in the landscape in New Brunswick, I loved how the colours here were painted intensely in the bright sunlight.

Below: Possibly the work of beavers. I've always been amazed by the extent of these denuded forests, standing in water; I can't say I really have any idea how this happens, but I'd seen similar environments in Ontario and been told that beavers were involved. It's an intense effect on a landscape, whatever the cause.

Toronto Street Sign (January 12, 2008)

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(Seen in the Annex.)

Basilica of San Nazaro in Brolo (May, 2007)

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I was struck by this church as I was strolling along in my first solo wander through central Milan. I hadn't ever seen architecture like this before--possibly because the church was begun in 382 CE, a date that puts it in the early period of Christianity and squarely within the Roman era as well. Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, died in 336 (the Edict of Milan was in 313). Christianity became the religion of Rome in 380--just two years before the ground was broken for San Nazaro in Brolo. So its construction occurred at a unique juncture in Christian history.

Hamilton Fogged (April, 2011)

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Here are a few pictures I took in downtown Hamilton last week; we've had some pretty strange spring weather, but I can never complain about fog. I love the way it truly makes everything look like "another world".

Easter Vigil (April 23, 2011)

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This year for Easter Saturday (last week) I was invited to the Easter vigil at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Hamilton. I'd never been inside this particular church before. A treat! It's in the style of Gothic cathedrals, the ones built with flying buttresses, but this one doesn't have the buttresses (as can be observed from the outside of the church).

Above: Rib-vaulting in the roof and classic pointed arches.

Above: One of the church helpers popped open this window before the service began. I think this was to alleviate the incense a bit (frankincense actually). I actually have a dish of the same incense at home, I do love the smell of it.

Above: Low light in the church as the vigil service begins.

Above: Lighting of Easter candles. I love any ceremony involving fire, and had never seen this event where a church in total darkness is gradually lit up by the spread of many tiny lights.

Above: Although this is blurred, I still quite like it. It's the Bishop lighting someone's candle at the end of a pew.

Above: I love these kinds of "soft" arches. I don't know the technical term for this, but it's a great effect; they are pointed/ogival arches of some kind, with a kind of fanning out of strips of masonry, common in the large churches with this type of Gothic design.

Above: The congregation and guests mingling after the service.

Above: Another shot of the vaulted roof. It's actually called "fan vaulting", specifically.

Sidetracked: Cards!

2011-04-27T08:49:00.001-04:00

Recently I ordered some business cards from Moo.com, on the recommendation of fellow York Education PhD student and Tweeter Kelly Bergstrom. Academic "conference season" is coming up and I was getting tired of my old cards, which didn't show my blog or Twitter information. Each these cards will also have a photograph of mine on one side. I thought I'd share the images I chose for the new cards, just for fun (and possibly some feedback--I wasn't sure which pictures to use!).

I was seduced into ordering from this company for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they allow one to choose many different photos instead of just a single image. Normally at local copy shops, you can only choose one picture file that is used for the whole order (if you're making greeting cards, for example). Another reason was that I've found you can't easily order funky, full-colour business cards from a regular copy shop either. Since I tend not to hand out many of these cards anyway, I opted for a very simple text on the back (with email, blog and Twitter information), and space to write in other details if necessary. Then I chose ten different photos, so there will be five of each in my order of 50. I can't wait to see what they look like (they've been shipped so I'm checking the mailbox)!

As I mentioned, I had a hard time deciding which images to use, and I had to cut my selection time short, because that's the kind of activity with which I could enjoy procrastinating for many hours. I just tried to make them diverse and interesting (and as broadly appealing as possible).

Via Moscova. Milan, Italy. May 13, 2007.

Blackboard with Einstein's handwriting. Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, England. July 11, 2009.

View from the Tararua Wind Farm. Manawatu, New Zealand. February 9, 2010.

Union Station, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. November 26, 2010.

Te Rerenga Wairua (Cape Reinga). Northland, New Zealand. January 19, 2010.

Cafe, Victoria & Albert Museum. London, England. March 7, 2008.

Potato plant, window & sunset. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. August 6, 2007.

Highway, clouds & sunlight. Near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. April 10, 2007.

Queen Elizabeth High School. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. 1996.

Watchers. Roof of the Duomo, Milan, Italy. May 27, 2007.

20 Photographers

2011-04-17T20:37:00.005-04:00

For fun I decided to put together a post about my favourite photographers (a selection of them, anyway). Since there had to be more than 10 (too few!) I decided to make it 20, the next nice round number. What follows is a series of brief comments about some of the photographers whose works have been inspiring to me over the past 15+ years.

Julia Margaret Cameron (England, 11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879). At a time when photography as an art form was still nascent--most photographers were aping the compositional and stylistic features of painting--Cameron's portraits stand out as part of the beginnings of a distinct artistic practice in photography. While some of her work looks more traditional, for me it's her unusual portraits that are the best, for example the one below of mathematician Sir John Herschel; the images look remarkably modern while also evoking something like the aesthetic I associate with Rembrandt, and they stand out in comparison to what was being produced by her contemporaries. In the 19th century it was also extraordinary for a woman to be so encouraged and involved in artistic activity (she was friends with Alfred, Lord Tennyson and he promoted her work).

Alfred Stieglitz (U.S.A., January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946). Stieglitz was an American photographer and critic who founded the first photographic journal, Camera Work, around the turn of the 20th Century, and founded the "Photo-Secession". During his lifetime he was one of the foremost proponents of photography as a distinct art form. I think this is what stands out about him, for me--his untiring advocacy of photography as more than a mere mechanical reproduction of "reality" (a definition that is problematic in many ways). Below is one of the many photographs that Stieglitz took of painter Georgia O'Keefe's hands (O'Keefe was also his lover).

Erich Salomon (Germany, April 28, 1886 – July 7, 1944). Salomon was a pioneer of political photography, helping to pave the way for an important place for photography in the documentation of political events. His pictures are fantastic; when I first came across them I was surprised that I'd never seen them in print before. These are the kinds of photographs that are now known as "candids", or the informal/unplanned shots that contrast with the staged/posed "photo op" pictures produced for the newspapers and magazines and usually taken at formal events. In fact Salomon was also notorious for shooting covertly in situations where cameras would not normally have been allowed. In the photo below, Aristide Briand--Prime Minister of France--points at Salomon, saying "Ah, there he is, the king of the indiscreet!" (Paris, Quai d'Orsay, August 1931).

Man Ray (U.S.A., August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976). One of the first photographers to really make an impression on me, Man Ray was a New Yorker living in Europe who was associated with the Dadaists and the Surrealists in the early part of the 20th century (I've been a fan of Surrealist and Dadaist art since high school). I became aware of his work partly because I accidentally solarised some prints one day in the school darkroom. I discovered Ray's images made from solarised negatives. He also famously created what he called "Rayographs", prints made by placing objects or casting shadows directly onto the photographic paper (rather than exposing and image from a negative). When I visited England in March of 2008 I caught the Duchamp/Man Ray/Picabia exhibition at the Tate Modern, and I got to see some of Ray's other work alongside pieces by his well-known collaborators/contemporaries Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia in a wonderful show that captured something unique about the historical, artistic and social contexts of art of that period.

André Kertész (Hungary, 2 July 1894 – 28 September 1985). Like a number of others on this list, Kertesz was a European-born (Hungarian) emigre to the United States in the 1930s, via France. When first looking at his images I got the sense of a shift in photographic values; the difference between late-19th-century photography and its "modernist" progeny is something like the difference between "Gone with the Wind" and "Citizen Kane", or between Delacroix and Courbet. For me Kertesz's work reflects that kind of shift. I've always loved his composition and use of contrast and light, shifts of focus, and unusual perspective, as well as a knack for "capturing" people candidly (he reminds me of Cartier-Bresson). I agree with his comment that "Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see".

Dorothea Lange (U.S.A., May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) . Like Walker Evans, Lange was an FSA photographer and she created some of the more memorable pictures of the Great Depression in the United States (including the iconic image, "Migrant Mother"). She also produced highly political images of the Japanese internment after Pearl Harbour (the images were banned by the U.S. government).

Weegee (AKA Arthur Fellig; U.S.A., June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968). An early "street photographer", Weegee worked in New York City and produced his most well-known images from the 1930s-50s. Grabbing the photographic moment in its gory and mundane detail, Weegee was often at the scene of a crime before the police arrived, since he was tuned in to their radio system whilst sitting in his car (which had photographic materials stashed in the trunk).

Ansel Adams (U.S.A., February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984). Adams' stunning black and white landscapes picture U.S. geographies in clear, detailed black and white. As an environmentalist his photographs also constituted a significant aspect of his activism. Adams was a master of technique, and wrote a well-known series of instructional books about the photographic process (called The Camera, The Negative and The Print). For my part, I could stare at these pictures for hours, just drinking in the depth and the crispness of the light and shadow, the delicious articulation of every edge.

Walker Evans (U.S.A., November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975). When I look at Evans' work I often feel like we "see with the same eyes"--as if, had I been there, I would have wanted to show the same things. Evans shot moving portraits, and he photographed buildings, signs and street life. Like many of the photographers on this list, Evans combined aesthetics with politics and cultural documentation. His most well-known pictures are from the Great Depression of the 1930s when Evans worked as a photographer with the U.S. Farm Security Adminstration (FSA), staying with sharecropper families and documenting their lives.

Margaret Bourke-White (U.S.A., June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971). Bourke-White's biography reads like a litany of "firsts": she was a highly influential documentary photographer who created images of everything from American industry to the Great Depression to the India-Pakistan violence of the 1940s (she was the first female war correspondent). In the '30s she was the first Western photographer to be allowed into the Soviet Union; she was with U.S. troops when they liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 and she took some of the first pictures of the camps and their survivors. She was also among the first photographers hired by Life magazine after it was founded in the mid-1930s, and the first cover of Life was graced by one of her pictures. Bourke-White's commitment to capturing an image is demonstrated in this incredible shot of her taken on the 61st floor of the Chrysler Building in New York City.

Henri Cartier Bresson (France, August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004). Another hugely influential figure, Cartier-Bresson was, like Man Ray and other photographers of his time, influenced heavily by the Surrealist movement. He was also an early "street photographer" and photojouralist like Weegee and Walker Evans. He went so far as to wrap black tape around his camera in order to reduce its intrusiveness--something I was reminded of when I bought my digital cameras, choosing black/matte designs for the same reason. I appreciate many of his techniques including the avoidance of flash (I never use it myself) and the assumption that photos should be "framed" through the camera and not cropped after shooting. Cartier-Bresson had an eventful life, travelling through and photographing many different countries in Europe and later Asia, and serving with the French army in WW2, as well as spending a long period in a German prison camp. Cartier Bresson's name is often associated with "the decisive moment", a phrase he coined.

Helen Levitt (U.S.A., August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009). Levitt was known for her photographs of street life in New York City, including many shots of children playing. Mentored by Walker Evans, Levitt achieved early success, producing many notable images during the 1930s and 40s. Her pictures show something of the lifestyle of New York's urban working class before such technologies as television, telephones, stereos and computers were installed in every home.

Diane Arbus (U.S.A., March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971). Arbus is frequently associated with people considered "deviant or marginal", though she said herself that she'd hope not to be known in that way. What I find intriguing about her photos is not only what she chooses to shoot, but more the way that she reduces or brings everything to a certain aesthetic in every shot no matter who the subjects happen to be--what I mean is that "normal" people look strange through Arbus' lens; they are on the level with her more unusual subjects.

Richard Avedon (U.S.A, May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004). Like Annie Leibovitz, Avedon is known both for his celebrity portraits and art photography as well as for documentary work. I became particularly interested in his large-format portrait images, the rich depth and detail produced by shooting something up-close with large format film, and also his use of light and shade in portraits such as those below (taken of the Beatles in 1967) and this one of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

Robert Frank (Switzerland, 1924-). Frank was an immigrant to the U.S. from Switzerland (he now lives in Mabou, Cape Breton, and New York City). Considered to be one of the "founders" of street photography (and also influenced by Walker Evans), Frank was an outsider who first came to prominence with his book "The Americans", images taken during his travels around the United States; he also was friends with the beat writers of the 1950s. I loved Frank's work from when I first came across it (I don't remember how, but I was probably 15 or 16). Robert Frank is the only photographer on my list with whom I was lucky enough to have any contact. Not only did I get to see an exhibit of Frank's prints from "The Americans" that also included his negatives and contact sheets; I also saw him speak in person at a small gathering celebrating the exhibit.

Annie Leibovitz (U.S.A., 1949-). Leibovitz worked for Rolling Stone magazine in its early years (in the 1970s and early '80s). This included documenting Nixon's resignation. However, her staged portraits of celebrities are the work for which she's most well-known. Leibovitz's partner was critic Susan Sontag, who authored "On Photography". Below: portrait of sculptor Louise Bourgeois.

Edward Burtynsky (Canada, 1949-). Burtynsky photographs industrial landscapes, although this description feels like an understatement. I've been an admirer of his work ever since I saw the documentary "Manufactured Landscapes". I've always loved taking pictures of industrial scenes, so Burtynsky's work was like a dream come true, large-format and hyper-detailed, generating a mixture of awe and aesthetic enjoyment, in some cases with a kind of horror at the scale of what's being pictured.

Sally Mann (U.S.A., 1951-). Mann is particularly famous (notorious?) for her controversial, beautiful portraits of her children. It's not the controversy that interests me here; that Mann's photos have been called "pornographic" is to me more of a comment about those complaining than about the work itself. I find that for me, all her work evokes a sort of 19th century aesthetic (going back to Julia Margaret Cameron, for example), though Mann didn't start to go after this effect more explicitly until later in her career.

Nan Goldin (U.S.A., 1953-). Goldin shot portraits of friends and lovers in the "underground" LGBTQ scene of Boston in the late 1970s and 80s. Goldin's blurred shots, intimate and often dark yet somehow saturated with colour, depict queer and drug-addicted subjects with whom she often had close relationships, in their own milieux.

Cindy Sherman (U.S.A., 1954-). I always loved her famous "Untitled film stills" series. I often find it more difficult to connect with studio/staged photography, but in Sherman's series I like the stagey-ness, the grainy images that do look like they could have come from someone's 1960s movie, the way Sherman positions herself in the different roles, always also taking on the role of photographer/voyeur into the scene she creates as well as playing "someone else" rather than presenting a generically "true" self-portrait.

Corporal Cuddles (14 December, 2006)

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Liberal Party Rally, Hamilton (April 7, 2010)

2011-04-08T08:19:00.018-04:00

My apologies for the lack of commentary about this event, but I wanted to get the pictures posted as soon as possible so those who were at the event could have a look! Most of these photos are just nice "people shots" as I call them. Like the one below, of a very keen Liberal supporter pre-rally. As you know if you've followed this blog, I love photographing political events and politicians (see previous posts).

Above: The event was packed. It was standing-room only (in fact some people were sitting on the floor).

Above: the set-up. My second time at Liuna Station within 2 weeks.

Above: Organizer Tyler Banham chats with Liberal candidates.

Above: A candidate gets a hug from Iggy.

Above: Waiting patiently to ask a question.

Above: A staffer hard at work, I suspect he was collecting names of people who'd been photographed.

Candidates for Hamilton and area.

The place was so full, people were standing outside and sitting on the floor.

Apparently it took him about 40 minutes to leave the rally. You can see why.

The Liberal bus awaits. Ignatieff was still taking questions at the door of the bus.

This was a very energetic evening. I thought there was a fascinating contrast between this event and the one where I took this other more subdued portrait of Ignatieff.

The Agenda (March 28, 2011)

2011-04-01T13:28:00.000-04:00

This past Monday I had fun going to see a live broadcast of "The Agenda", a current affairs show produced and aired by Ontario's TVO. Ontario will hold a provincial election later this year, so the show has been broadcast from various locations around Ontario, with interviews and panel discussions with provincial politicians and local citizens.

NDP MPP and leader of the provincial NDP, Andrea Horwath (Hamilton Centre), prepares for her interview with Steve Paikin. I really enjoy taking pictures of politicians, as I'm sure some of you have noticed.

The two Teds: Ted McMeekin (centre, MPP for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, Liberal) and Ted Chudleigh (right, MPP for Halton, Progressive Conservative).

Liberal MPP Ted McMeekin receives a spot of make-up.

I quite liked this shot of everyone getting prepped for the show. Host Steve Paikin is fiddling with his jacket while Horwath seems to be composing herself for the camera.

I had a really great spot to the side and behind the panelists in the front row, so I was able to take some interesting pictures while most people's attention was diverted towards the centre of the room (and not at me and my camera).

Paikin gets ready to question the other two members of his panel.

A question and comment from an audience member who attended the workshop the day before, Agenda Camp. Hamilton Mayor Bob Bratina is in the lower right-hand corner here.

Meta-media: I take a photo of someone filming a Twitter feed. Marshall McLuhan, eat your heart out!

While one of the panelists responds to a question, Mr. Paikin looks slightly skeptical and re-scans his notes.

The decor in this room reminded me somewhat of the Chinoiserie in the Royal Pavilion at Brighton (see my past blog post on this for details).

Last note: you can watch this episode online on the TVO web site.

Lounging on the Lawn (July 11, 2009)

2011-03-26T08:47:00.004-04:00

Relaxing in summer on the lawn of Oxford's University Church of St. Mary's, near the Radcliffe Camera. The church also has a café/restaurant (the Vaults and Gardens Cafe) with very good food!

Washington Monuments (March 12-13, 2011).

2011-03-25T09:54:00.003-04:00

On my recent trip to Washington, D.C., I took so many pictures that I couldn't resist posting another series right after the first one. Here is a series showing some of my favourite pictures from the monuments and memorials I saw.

Above: The Lincoln Memorial (1922) at dusk on a Saturday evening. From the front Lincoln's statue is visible even from a distance, a bright white spot seen through the pillars.

Above: At the Lincoln Memorial, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address is carved into the wall on the right-hand side when you walk into the building.

Above: The larger-than-life statue of Lincoln dominates the facade and interior of the Memorial.

Above: Washington Monument in the distance at nightfall, across the Reflecting Pool; taken from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I was keen to stand here and take a photo for obvious reasons :-D

Above: WWII Memorial, looking eerie at night-time. This memorial opened much more recently than I'd thought, in 2004. The design and architecture certainly reflect the period the Memorial is evoking/"remembering".

Above: Shadows looking ghostly on the WWII Memorial at night--an unintentional portrait/self-portrait.

Above: Washington Monument at night. It's slightly out of focus, but I really wanted this shot. The Monument itself was difficult and not very interesting to shoot, but I loved the effect of the lights as other people walked around its base, taking souvenir pictures of each other. Because of the low light I had to try hard to keep the camera stable without flash.

Sometimes a very famous place or thing is made more interesting when you photograph it from a position that takes the focus away from what's familiarly grandiose, or brings something mundane to it, in this case teenagers horsing around after dusk on a warm Saturday night at the park.

Above: These statues are part of the Korean War Veterans' Memorial (1995), West Potomac Park.

Above: Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial (in progress).

Above: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (1997). Sculpture by George Segal depicting a soup kitchen/breadline in the Great Depression. I am a big fan of Segal's work and didn't realise these sculptures were by him as well; I just didn't make the connection, I suppose, though in some ways it was obvious.

Above: Pillars in the FDR Memorial; covered with impressions, including braille. This memorial was truly a contrast to all the others we saw. I was excited to see it, because of its unusual design involving four "rooms" representing Roosevelt's four presidential terms, evoking significant events such as the Great Depression and World War II.

It struck me that the difference between this and the other monuments we saw was like the difference between an art piece and a temple; no imposing facade, no towering statue here, no overwhelming physical evocation of authority other than what stone words could offer (and almost everything famous in Washington has a few famous words carved into it--they love the time-binding medium and all it evokes!). I also loved the inclusion of waterfalls, an interesting contrast to the permanence of the stone and to the formality of the pools and waterworks in the World War II Memorial.

Above: Roosevelt's statue, still much larger than life, feels smaller and more accessible than Lincoln's or Jefferson's. This isn't just because he's seated (in a wheelchair, under that cloak), since Lincoln is seated as well and yet he towers over the crowds on a pedestal. It's mostly because of posture and affect and the fact that's he's on the ground, on the level with his visitors (and his dog, Fala).

I could tell I wasn't going to be able to get a picture of him without others in the frame (though there was polite turn-taking happening). So instead I decided it would be a part of his "portrait" that these people wanted so keenly to be photographed with him.

I thought the use of Roosevelt's 12 years in office as a "time/frame" for depicting other important events in U.S. history--economic disaster and war, significantly--was very effective. The inclusion of representations of "ordinary" people, as well as the statue of Eleanor Roosevelt, made it more complex and moving.

Above: Jefferson Memorial (1943) photographed from near the FDR Memorial. I think the Greek influence is very clear here, as with the Lincoln Memorial.

Above: Jefferson Memorial, interior. To me this looks very Neo-Classical, like a painting by J. L. David containing Jefferson instead of Napolean. And it's again very much like a temple. When you're standing inside, a cool breeze blows off the water bringing the scent of the pines that surround the structure. That under-stated aroma, the crisp freshness of the air, those things contribute to the effect of solitude and contemplation just as much as the tall, tapering columns, the clean white stone and the stark, neat rows of lettering on the walls.

Above: Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Wall (designed by Maya Lin), with Washington Monument reflected. This was a very difficult monument to photograph for a number of reasons. Because of its size and unusual construction, only a panorama would capture the entire piece. Because the black stone is polished to a high sheen, one works with a double image when shooting in daylight and barely any image at all at night (I first saw the Memorial after dark). In particular one needs to be ready to include people in the photos, because it's very tricky to get any shot of this piece without someone else either standing in front of it or reflected back in it, or both.

And lastly, aside from the technical challenges, this Memorial seemed to bear an emotional load that was somehow much heftier than what any of the other monuments conveyed. Perhaps it's the very simplicity of the concept--a black wall, covered with the names of the dead in order of their deaths, representing not only the irreparable mass of lives but also the timespan of the dying, extending in the middle to a towering height and then tapering off mournfully at each end with the impossibly small names and deaths of the first and the last to die.

It's hard to photograph this because of the feeling of improper voyeurism one experiences, picturing these names, real names not symbols of "freedom" and "democracy", and real people reaching out to press their fingers to the graven stone as if the letters carried a trace borne of their permanence. It's almost impossible not to feel the deep ache left by this gash in the ground.

Georgetown (March 10 to 13, 2011)

2011-03-17T19:10:00.023-04:00

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Washington, D.C., for an academic conference (the Georgetown University Roundtable, or GURT). Naturally I was keen to take photos--Georgetown is a pretty picturesque place.

Above: First evening in Georgetown, out for a nice walk to find dinner.

Above: A lovely refurbished house near the university. I remember first seeing large older brick houses when on a trip from New Zealand to Canada, and I've always loved them, particularly those with funky windows and trim like this one.

Above: Something I learned about Americans is that they are obsessed with cupcakes. This line-up is for a very popular cupcake shop. There were also some girls trying to take a photo in front of it, one of those staged pictures where everyone jumps into the air at once. But they were having a really hard time getting the shot due to passing cars, lack of coordination, etc. Eventually they managed to pull it off.

Above: A nice Gothic night-time shot of Georgetown University.

Above: Plenty of original or original-looking detailing on houses in the area, including many old-style wooden front doors.

Above: Lots of lovely townhouses with wrought iron stairs and windows. I think this is part of why Georgetown reminded me of Montreal.

Above: Martin's Tavern. This is a great little pub with excellent food, where John F. Kennedy had a single booth right by the front door; in fact there's a strong history of presidential patronage there. I had the Shepherd's Pie and it was delicious.

Above: Bridge at 26th and M Streets. I had to cross this bridge to get from the hotel to the section of M Street where all the restaurants could be found.

Above: This place (at the corner of 30th and M Streets) made me laugh with its subtitle, "King of Falafel and Cheese Steaks". I didn't really know what a cheese steak was until I looked it up. Turns out I'd actually tried it before, though under a different name. Amusing, since I'd previously had this image of something more like a ham steak but made of cheese.

Above: Beautiful wrought-iron on a window near the university.

Hamilton Health Sciences (February 28, 2011)

2011-03-06T20:38:00.000-05:00

It was definitely a good night for photos last Monday. While I was walking to the bus stop by McMaster Health Sciences, I decided to take some pictures of the hospital. As I've mentioned before in this blog, I love the extremes created by night-time lighting and the unfamiliarity they imbue.

This green was a really eerie colour. "The X-Files" is one of my favourite TV shows, and this picture reminds me of something from one of those government test sites where alien foetuses are suspended in rows of dimly-lit glass tanks.

Something ghostly about this. It's probably an elevator shaft and/or a stairwell, but the effect is again altered by the pale fuzzed glow from what looks like bright florescent light, pushing up against the glass. It reminds me of driving though Hamilton's east end late at night, seeing the industrial areas lit up bright and somehow completely different, mysterious and enthralling, nothing like the grey jumble revealed in daylight.

I thought this one (above) looked like a spine--a very cybernetic, exoskeletal spine.

The hospital towering like some industrial monstrosity from a Terry Gilliam movie--slabs of concrete that have that weathered staining around the edges, dim yellow light in the windows and the brightness above. I think it's the visibility of what appear to be structural bits of metal, that makes those elevator shafts seem so nakedly mechanical.

I really wanted to show the way that hanging stringy stuff, whatever it was, was lit up like a cobweb by the blue-green light next to it; and I wanted the tree shadow in there as well. The darkness with this combination of different kinds of artificial light, inside and outside, and the glass walls--those things are all adding to the effect. The orange glow in the foreground is partly cast by the lamp near the road where I'm standing.

I liked how it was hard to see anything on the wall around those windows. And you can't see anything inside, either; just this suggestion of activity signalled by the different kinds of light in each room and by the positions of the window shades.

Again with the eerie green light. Strange for that to be coming from a hospital--I suppose that's what I find a bit creepy about it. The fact that the place looks like a big industrial compound, and that I have a bad impression of hospitals being factories where doctors treat patients like objects to be processed.

McMaster Ice Pond (February 28, 2011)

2011-03-01T10:55:00.000-05:00

Some images of the campus I took last night on the way home from McMaster University. The buildings you can see are mostly Engineering-related.

We had a bit of a thaw over a couple of days, so a lot of snow and ice melted, forming some very waterlogged ground in the green space at the centre of the campus. I became interested in the way the light was shining off the water (which was rapidly turning to ice) in the gathering darkness.

Christchurch (2001, 2010)

2011-03-01T09:00:00.009-05:00

A week ago Christchurch, New Zealand, was hit by the second massive earthquake in under six months. By now most people have had a look at the news coverage, which at this point it mostly about the rising count of the dead and the tireless efforts, both by locals and from international contributors, to sort out the mess and help people start getting on with their lives.

I'm fortunate not to have had any family or friends in Christchurch at the time of the quake. Still I'm sending out my best wishes and hopes for those who were affected by this (including friends of friends).

Above: One of Christchurch's little throwbacks to the "Old Country"--an Avon River with little boats ready for punting, close to the downtown centre.

I couldn't watch the videos, because it was like seeing my worst childhood nightmare come true. I still remember the Civil Defense pamphlets and the earthquake drills in school (get under the desk, get under the doorway). Kiwis know they walk on unstable ground--we know what we live with, but it's still a terrible shock when this happens (not for 80 years has New Zealand seen this kind of damage). I remember as a child waking in the middle of the night to the steady vibration of tremors and waiting to see if it would stop; I was lucky and it always did.

Above: Inside at the Botanical Gardens. Aside for the obvious and awful loss of human lives, I shudder to think what irreparable damage may have been done to structures like these and to the overall cultural infrastructure of the city, which will probably be the last thing to regenerate. So many historic buildings, which in New Zealand is actually a pretty rare thing in an urban area.

City centre, Cathedral Square. I expect the building you see here is no longer standing.

Above: Christchurch's iconic Cathedral in the centre of downtown. The spire at left crumbled and collapsed during the earthquake. Rescuers have been unable to enter the Cathedral so far, given the instability of the walls, but they believe about 20 people to have been inside when the spire came down. This is the most recognisable building in the city, so its collapse has a symbolic weight beyond the physical damage.

Above: A bit of a classic sight--the Wizard of New Zealand in Cathedral Square (I took this in January, 2001). He survived the earthquake and is now leaving Christchurch, since his public stage has been destroyed.

Above: Dandelion fountains near City Hall. For some reason these always remind me of my childhood in the 1980s, though I don't recall whether we had any the same in the area where I grew up. I had seen many pictures of them though, and I was pleased to take photos of my own (this was February, 2010).

Arts centre, across from the Canterbury Museum (February, 2010). Not much hope that these old buildings have survived.

I remember going into this quad to look around while waiting to meet up with a friend by the Botanical Gardens across the street. A man was letting his little son run around the place. His son, who was still quite young (under five I think), had developmental problems--possibly Down's Syndrome, I can't quite recall. We got into a discussion about politics, class, education and funding of the school system; I remember asking him about the decile rankings of schools. It was surprisingly easy conversation between two people who'd only met five minutes before. I remember thinking how much I liked the frankness and friendliness of the people and the place--not just Christchurch but the whole country--it was one small memorable moment among many in that action-packed trip, but it stood out.

I hope he and his family are OK.

Terry Fallis @ Ron Joyce Centre (February 24, 2011)

2011-02-24T21:07:00.002-05:00

Today I was lucky enough to catch a talk by author and PR practitioner Terry Fallis at McMaster's Ron Joyce Centre in Burlington. Introduced by Master's of Communication Management program director Dr. Terry Flynn, Mr. Fallis discussed his experiences using social media (primarily podcasting) to find a market for his self-published first novel, "The Best Laid Plans". He also touched on the implications of social media for public relations practitioners.

Below: Preparing to speak to students of Communication Management.

Mr. Fallis won the Stephen Leacock Medal for "The Best Laid Plans" in 2008, and just last month for the same novel he also won the national "Canada Reads" contest run by the CBC. He's since had a sequel published, "The High Road".

I always enjoy taking pictures of people "performing" (to me, public speaking is always performing, just as much as acting or singing would be). Below: This particular speaker used a lot of hand gestures (as I know I do too), so I tried to capture that in the pictures. I'm not sure exactly what's being referenced in the one below, but it looks significant!

Below: a rapt audience (the rest of the class is out of view).

Below: This was one of my two favourite pictures from the talk. I love how the camera just focussed on his hand (also the microphone), I think that happened because I moved the camera and it didn't have time to re-focus on his face. A great effect though.

Below: This was my other favourite picture. I'm not quite sure why, it just has a nice feeling to it.

More hand gestures--I had quite a few more shots like that, they turned out surprisingly well. I decided not to go overboard and post a whole slew of them here. Taking photos like these reminds me of the 30-second gesture drawings we used to do as warm-ups in figure-drawing class at NSCAD. The photos turn out like those drawings did: many of them slightly "off", some that look pretty good, and maybe a few that "catch" something really interesting.

Feet (Part 1) 2000-2010

2011-02-23T10:25:00.002-05:00

By the river. Ottawa, Ontario. April 2000. I went to visit Ottawa for the first time, with my friend Lucas from Halifax, and took this picture as we were sitting by the bridge closest to Parliament Hill. It's the first picture I can find that involves my feet, and I think I took it because we were having short rest/observation stop and I was fiddling with my camera. Those sneakers were always incredibly bouncy, due to their thick soles.

Zines. Hamilton, Ontario. March 31st, 2003. My mother gave me those sheepskin slippers which were from New Zealand; I wore them until they couldn't really be worn any more. Spread out in front of me are zine-making materials. This was the last zine I made before going back to university (McMaster) in May 2003. The spray bottle of water in the left upper corner was a tool to keep the cat from rolling around on my project-in-progress ("cat discipline").

Highway to Guelph. Ontario. May, 2005. Just a spring airing, a country drive with D.D. though I'd never visited Guelph before so I was quite interested to see the place.

Cooling off. Lake Tekapo, Mackenzie Country. New Zealand. February 4th, 2010. We (our Stray bus) visited this lake on the way up to Christchurch, to take a look at the Church of the Good Shepherd which is perched iconically on the shore. I waded into the clear, cold water and watched some ducks gliding past a little way off, oblivious to my presence. It was completely peaceful in spite of the tourists milling around the church behind me.

Longitude zero (Greenwich Meridian). Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England. March 15, 2008. Here I am standing with, literally, one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one foot in the western one. It's hard not to be struck by the arbitrariness of the line, which, though so solid looking, has actually been moved about quite a bit over time. History is a funny thing.

Full Moon, Bay & Front Streets (February 16, 2011)

2011-02-19T09:05:00.000-05:00

Downtown Toronto, in the financial district across from Union Station.

Grass Shadow (May 25, 2010)

2011-02-17T19:37:00.005-05:00

I like pictures that disorient.

This one is tricky to untangle, but as the one who took the picture, I get the pleasure of revealing the answer to a bit of a visual riddle. The photo was taken at Eglinton West subway station in Toronto, which has glass walls along the platform. I think it was later in the afternoon, and the sun was slanting at an angle that cast the plants' shadows against the glass. It's an unusual visual effect, probably because you can see both the shadows and the plants themselves behind them, and there is a thin layer of dust on the outside of the glass that is lit up by the sun, creating extra contrast.*

The ghosts of grasses.

*The "look" in this picture always reminds me of the video for "Go!" by Lemon Jelly.

Snowpocalypse (February 1, 2010)

2011-02-02T12:31:00.000-05:00

For those who were bundled up inside last night, toasting their toes by a fire or a heating vent, you'll be pleased to note that I was in fact outside with a waterproof camera, taking pictures of the nasty snowstorm that hit sometime after 9pm.

We all knew it was coming of course, thanks to many media warnings; so most people were tucked away safely by the time the snow actually arrived. I, on the other hand, had been hanging out at a friend's place until about 10:45 PM; by the time I got outside the snow and wind had picked up, making things less than pleasant for my trip home by public transportation. The upside was the pictures, which turned out quite nicely given that I wasn't willing to go out of my way to capture any special effects or locations.

10:47 PM: Queen at George Street between King West & Main West, looking east towards Hess Street.

Queen Street north of Main West, looking towards King West: The castle-like structure seen through the trees is the Scottish Rite building.

Streetlamp on Queen Street, north of Main Street West.

Main Street West at the corner of Queen South: GO buses and city buses (Hamilton Street Railway) kept running, thankfully; it didn't take me too long to get home.

Queen Street South at Main, facing Southwest: A strong wind was whipping up the hill here. I was glad I'd bothered to bring a hat.

10:53 PM: Waiting for the bus on Main Street West at Hess; south side, looking West.

11:11 PM: Main East at Emerald, south side facing west. The wind was whipping eddies of powdery snow across the ground--like water across a river bed, or sand in a desert storm--which were illuminated in this picture by the car headlights.

Parking lot, Emerald Street at Main East: walking towards the alley, the sky's lit up by lights bouncing off the clouds and the flying snow. Cloudy, snowy nights in the city are always eerily bright in this way, as the electric glow of human activity is amplified umpteen thousand times in miniature by whirling airborne reflective flakes.

Because We Like It (April, 2000)

2011-01-08T09:24:00.012-05:00

The pictures below are from a Concordia Fine Arts year-end off-campus Ceramics show, "C'est Rare, Cerart". The piece is called "Because We Like It", and it's a collaboration between me and my friend Garnet Muething.

Above: The "lichens" look like they've been glazed with Cranberry Rust, and the bowl at left was glazed with a layer of matte white with the rim dipped in Cranberry Rust.

The "collaboration" was not a strictly pre-planned one. Garnet and I had met and become friends because we were both take ceramics courses; she was a level ahead of me, and thus had more technical privileges (such as being allowed to make her own glazes). So at some point she offered to split a batch of porcelain with me, and so I got my first opportunity to work with something other than stoneware or earthenware. Garnet was using a special stoneware recipe as well as making her own porcelain.

Above: The lichens have been dunked in a grey-"hazel" glaze made by Garnet, possible with rims in Cranberry Rust. The bowl on the left was glazed matte white and the rim was dipped in "Raisin", a dark bluish-purple glaze made by our co-student Geneviève. It was part of the Cone 11 firing, hence the extreme effects.

We ended up making the clay, bisque firing our porcelain pieces, and then using the same glazes together (several of which were glazes Garnet had made), so although our pieces were for two separate projects, we eventually got the idea of combining them into a third different project and proposing it for the year-end exhibition. These pictures show parts of what we came up with, which we called "Because We Like It". I liked Garnet's project names--she had another one called "You Know You Want To", as I recall.

These lichens were dipped in matte white and then Cranberry Rust; the bowl is a Celadon, oxidation-fired (hence yellow, not green).

All my bowls and (I think) all Garnet's lichens--the name she gave to the little tube-like, organic-looking sculptures--were made with "sculpture" porcelain. We made this in large batches and stored it in our lockers until it ran out and a new batch had to be made. There's a long story here about me accidentally discovering that porcelain improves with fermentation (something the ancient Chinese already knew), but I'll save it for another blog post ;-)

Above: A Hazel bowl with clear blue inside. fired to Cone 9; Garnet's lichens are Hazel, possibly dipped with Cranberry Rust rims.

Porcelain is a clay that can be fired to very high temperatures without melting (though it does "vitrify"). So the glazes we used were for high-firing, and the highest temperature we were permitted to fire to was Cone 9, around 1,280 degrees C (pyrometric cones, designed to melt at certain temperatures, are placed inside the kiln and used to determine when the correct firing temperature has been reached).

Glazes when fired to high temperatures "behave" in a much less stable way than when fired to a lower level. This means that glaze effects are much more difficult to predict than they would be at a lower cone (04, for example, is a low firing temperature appropriate for terra-cotta, around 1,060 degrees C.). It's also harder to achieve "warm" colours (red, yellow, orange) at high temperatures, and to produce "bright" colours in general. That's why the brightly-coloured pottery you see in many stores is likely to be less durable--because it probably wasn't fired to a high temperature.

A nice view of my best "exploding star effect" bowl (Cone 11 firing). The lichens have Cranberry Rust (red ones on the right) and the Hazel/clear blue combo (at left).

Ceramic pieces are usually fired twice when they're glazed, as I explained in this post. After these pieces went through the bisque firing, they were dunked in one or more liquid glazes--many of the interesting effects come from combinations of glazes rather than one glaze on its own (though there can be considerable variation even with one glaze, especially in a reduction firing).

Above: dark clear blue bowl at left, with a Celadon (oxidation-fired) bowl on the right, filled with Hazel/clear blue lichens. The lichens on the left are dipped in another of Garnet's glazes, called "Mustard", with Cranberry Rust (I think; it's hard to tell).

One of the glaze firings went over-temperature by what looked like at least a full cone, but since the third cone was almost fully melted I assumed the firing had reached the equivalent of Cone 11, about 1,315 degrees C. (insert Spinal Tap jokes here). Fortunately for Garnet, none of her work was in that firing. I'll never forget the process of unloading the kiln, during which I learned a new French swearword (uttered by one of the other students when he saw the mess-!). The glazes had run all over the kiln shelves and in spite of kiln-wash, a lot of the pieces had fused themselves to the shelves, which of course had to be cleaned.

Yet from this spectacular screw-up came some of my most interesting and beautiful pieces, which I never would have achieved otherwise since the temperature limit was technically Cone 9. Because the glazes over-melted, they ran together/blended in unique ways according to the types of glazes and the shapes of the bowls to which they'd been applied. And in spite of my sloppy throwing technique, none of my bowls collapsed from the heat.

All three bowls visible in the picture above came out of the Cone 11 firing. At the back, the blue bowl was dunked first in matte white then edged with a clear dark blue glaze. The middle bowl was matte white with a Cranberry Rust rim (compare it to the other one above, with the same glaze combo; which was fired to regular Cone 9. Quite the contrast!). At the front is a bowl dipped in Garnet's Hazel glaze, edged with what could be Geneviève's Raisin or Cranberry Rust (again, it's hard to tell). The lichens in the centre are all fired to Cone 9 with Cranberry Rust; those at left were Hazel with dark clear blue.

That white/orange "starburst" bowl, one of the best from the firing, had attached itself solidly to the kiln shelf; I remember feeling afraid that I'd lose it (i.e. it would have to be broken off the shelf in chunks). Then a fellow student took the shelf, put her foot on it, grabbed the bowl and yanked it off in one piece--taking a chunk of kiln-shelf with it! I had to use a grinding wheel on it for about half an hour before the bottom of the bowl was flat again. Good times.

Development! 2: Commute (February 2007)

2011-01-04T09:14:00.003-05:00

For twelve months during my Master's degree, I commuted from Hamilton to North York, in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I took the #47 Go bus which travels along the "express" highway, 407. During the same period I also bought my first digital camera, and the many hours I spent rolling along through this landscape were just as often employed in photographing as they were in chewing through my course readings in linguistics.

The day I took these pictures, it looks like I took the 11AM bus from the Hamilton GO Station scheduled to arrive at York around 12:45PM, probably for a class at 1:30PM.

11:36AM: Carpool lot, Burlington, near Highway 407 & Dundas.

The pictures I took during this time were grouped in my mind with another set of images taken several years earlier, which I'd called "Development!"--they were taken in housing developments around the Hamilton/Burlington/Oakville area. I'm both fascinated and repulsed by what I call "cookie-cutter housing"; these kinds of buildings were the impetus for the original "Development!" project. The contemporary "row-houses" seen in the picture above lack all the charm of their distant ancestors in the city of London, England (for example). Somehow I doubt that in 100 years they'll have become any more appealing; in fact given the low quality of construction, they probably won't even be standing.

11:37AM: Carpool lot, Burlington.

This lot is the first of three we at which the bus stops. The second one is at Highway 407 and Bronte Road, and the last one is by 407 and Trafalgar Road in Oakville. I always found these lots very isolated, oddly located (for the convenience of the highway and the bus, not of travellers) and quite lonely-looking. I often saw people waiting late at night in the cold, and thought I'd prefer not to be in that situation.

11:54AM: Heading east, Highway 403, bound for Square One in Mississauga.

This is a detour that makes up for about 20 minutes of the bus route. And Square One is a strange outpost, like an groundlocked spaceport in a bad sci-fi movie, a cluster of faux-futuristic towers housing goodness knows what--perhaps the ubiquitous superficially lavish condos or office space well under the Toronto Downtown price--dotted around the large mall that doubles as a transit terminal.

12:11PM: Towards Bramalea.

My impressions at the time: "Canada—in some ways only this part of it, but to me, every part of it—is an amplified landscape: everything built bigger, split apart, fragmented and not made for human feet to traverse—now I know that part is Southern Ontario specifically, this GTA area as the real example. Southern Ontario’s sprawl. Highways, office towers, endless rows of identical houses separated by grassy spaces that hold massive pylons. It all marches off towards the horizon. And it all repeats, with the systematicity of technological reproduction."

12:12PM: I think this is the turning onto Dixie Road at the 407.

That sense of "amplification" that I wrote about at the time, during the trips I took, came from the impression of space taken for granted, assumed to continue without obstacle. It makes me think now of the differences between cities built on islands and peninsulas, and those like Toronto, Los Angeles, Atlanta, even London--that just keep expanding like little universes.

12:13PM: Another shot from the same position. Something dusty blue yet crisp about the light on super-cold days like this one, which was probably why I was taking so many pictures.

I've written here before about the contrast between the physical spaces of habitation in which I've spent my life--how when it was new to me, Canada was a simple hugeness, an incomprehensibly exaggerated version of what I had known previously. Even now, that early dim formation stays with me as a kind of rough schema that's been much worked-over and complicated over time, like an evolving collage of experiences and memories. The cities and highways are only a small part of that, but the impression is one of weird extremes of quirkiness and sameness.

12:23PM: Heading away from the stop at Bramalea, the last stop before York.

Sometimes on this bus ride, which I now make once or twice a week, I think about the space taken up by highways and roads and the way that space is in some sense nullified by its purpose, as space to be crossed only--or to be used for traversing space itself--not to be dwelt on or dallied in. There's no attempt to integrate these roads into a living space. In fact it's more the opposite--they are designed to segregate and to aid segregation (something I mentioned here as well), pushed out as far as possible from the places where people make their homes, ironically used as conduits for the passage to sub-/ex-urban retreat.

Cathedral Grove (February, 2002)

2010-12-22T16:32:00.001-05:00

These pictures were taken on a trip to British Columbia (Vancouver Island). I visited in mid-February 2002; haven't been able to return since then, but would certainly like to have another visit at some point.

Above: heading through MacMillan Provincial Park on the way to Tofino. I spent the whole time on Vancouver Island, most of it in Victoria.

Within the forest; Cathedral Grove is a stand of ancient Douglas Fir in MacMillan Provincial Park.

One of the things I liked about the place, aesthetically, was the contrast between the brightness of the red wood and the moist green of the moss, which seemed to be growing everywhere. To me it looks like a kind of radioactive glow haloing the trunks and branches of the trees.

Anti-litigation talismans.

I can't remember why these logs were lying around. I think they may have been trees that died and fell, and were chopped up in order to get them out of the way.

Wooden paths were built above the forest floor.

I always loved the effect created by mist and distance. I can tell that's what I was trying to show in this picture, but at the time I was shooting everything with a 35mm SLR that lacked a telephoto lens, so I did what I could (and felt frustrated!).

Bird Watching (December 9, 2010)

2010-12-13T19:57:00.005-05:00

My cats are obsessed with windows, and they're particularly riveted when squirrels, birds, or other moving objects are within the field of vision provided by the glass sliding door that opens on to the back deck. Distance doesn't seem to be much of a factor: if it moves, especially if it moves and looks like another animal, they're at the window in a trice (unless they're in a deep sleep).

In this picture Mr. Darcy's attention is locked on the large flock of birds perched in the trees that stand on either side of the driveway. The birds were making quite a bit of flustered, twittery noise, so of course my cats were going wild over the scene, with their little feet up against the glass and chattering frustratedly to themselves.

Cross & Water (February 4, 2010)

2010-11-20T13:21:00.009-05:00

Taken from the front window of the Church of the Good Shepherd, on Lake Tekapo in the Mackenzie Country, South Island.

Mountain View (November 13, 2010)

2010-11-13T17:08:00.004-05:00

I had a nice autumn walk up on Mont-Royal today, and took this picture when I got to the terrasse at the top. There was an interesting mist hanging in the air, it must be something in the weather because there was heavy fog in Hamilton yesterday, and lighter fog hanging over Toronto when I got there in the afternoon.

Iron Man (July 6, 2009)

2010-11-07T16:08:00.000-05:00

Iron Man statue by the spire of Exeter College Chapel, Oxford. I shot this picture from the street below (Broad Street), on my way to Mansfield College with my luggage.

I remember that I was "looking up" (at towers, roofs, architecture) because the buildings are so lovely in Oxford, it's hard to keep one's eyes on the ground. And there he was, this inconspicuous fellow, seemingly staring out over the main street, preparing for some moment perhaps (ready to leap into flight?) or merely surveying the terrain with a strange confidence.

Once again I'd taken a picture of an art piece without ever bothering to check out (afterwards) exactly what the piece was. In this case it hardly took any work to discover the statue is a sculpture by Antony Gormley, and it was only brought to its current position on 15 February, 2009 (so about 6 months before I saw it). The statue is apparently seven feet tall and weighs half a tonne, and is part of a series entitled Another Time II.

Beach Hut at Brighton (March 14, 2008)

2010-11-05T21:50:00.039-04:00

The picture above was taken from just near the edge of the garden at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. I quite like the way it feels "of the time", i.e. early 19th century.

The Pavilion was built for George the Prince of Wales (son of "mad" king George III), who later became the Prince Regent in 1811 (and in 1820, George IV). Its development spanned a period of about 35 years (1787 to 1823), and the building evolved over time from a farmhouse into the palatial Eastern Dream (hallucination, more like) that you can see today, refurbished, if you're lucky enough to visit. Its external style is what's called Indo-Saracenic Revival architecture, a late-19th-century mash-up reminiscent of Indian and some Islamic architecture (cusped arches and Russian-style onion domes liberally deployed), blended with a dash of the various British styles favoured at the time.

The Prince Regent's fetish for the exotic extended to the interior of the Pavilion as well. He was obsessed with a decorative trend known as chinoiserie, which is the primary theme of the Pavilion's interior decor; as the name indicates, this style was a kind of Western mimicry of the Vague Far East. Amusingly, George himself had never travelled further east than Germany; apparently he preferred to import the imagined Orient into his ornate banqueting and music rooms.

Unfortunately photography was not allowed inside the building, so I wasn't able to capture any of the stunning interiors (including details such as wooden stair railings carved to look like bamboo, and a large chandelier festooned with snarling dragons and apparently carried by one larger dragon who seems to hover on the ceiling).

The Prince himself didn't exactly have a spotless public image. He was often criticised as being a decadent wastrel, lavishing money on booze, parties, and mistresses; his penchant for a luxurious and hedonistic lifestyle led him into massive debt, in spite of the generous allowance provided him. Undoubtedly, the palace in trendy Brighton wouldn't have helped with this impression. Political cartoons depicting the Prince are on public display on the wall in the hallway leading to what is now the Royal Pavilion Tea Room on the building's second level.

The Prince's character and reputation are well-known enough to have been referenced in the Richard Curtis series Blackadder III starring Hugh Laurie as the Prince and Rowan Atkinson at his servant, who in the first episode instructs the Prince to "take out the plans for that beach hut at Brighton."

The Beauty on the Water (May 22, 2007, 8:12am)

2010-10-25T11:08:00.009-04:00

At Menaggio, Lago di Como, in Italy.

I remember I woke up very early, at five-something, and I was sleeping in a top bunk at the hostel where we stayed. I think I had a sore back and couldn't easily get back to sleep. I peeked out the window at that time and the view was even more surreal and stunning, but I didn't to make too much noise getting out my camera (and risk waking up anyone else) so I must have dozed off again instead. When I woke up later I did pull out the camera and this was the picture I took.

I love the way so many of the pictures I took at Como demonstrate a kind of reduced/minimalised colour palette; in this photo you can see it in the top half of the picture where what looks like a slight mist seems to to flatten the hills, the chalk-blue sky, and the grey-teal of the water. It's subdued in a way that highlights the sun tripping across the lake, like a handful of glitter tossed across the water, somehow catching the first sun before anything else even though the rays are already beaming down from on high.

Signs of Montréal (August, 2005)

2010-10-24T19:35:00.012-04:00

I've always really enjoyed looking at signs, at boring at that may seem. It's like my supermarket fetish, where every time I go overseas I look forward to seeing what's available in the average local grocer... food touristing. Except with signs you get this impression of whatever was thought to convey a particular message most effectively--generally in a simple graphic without words.

Here, I've posted several signs from Montréal--none of which counts as exotic since I looked at them regularly during the three years I spent living there. They never stopped seeming a bit surreal, though, especially the one I called Electrocution Man:

What always "got" me about Electrocution Man, whom I saw almost every day (a copy of this sign was in the Métro Mont-Royal, near where I lived), was that his designers hadn't been content to zap him through the torso with what appears to be a large ragged edged weapon of some sort; oh no. They gave him a face (zoom in!), a face that has a remarkable amount of expressive power for such a crude rendering in plastic profile; and that leaning posture only adds to the effect. Shudder.

The sign above--"Danger"--was attached to one of the old buildings belonging to McGill, near the downtown foot of Mont-Royal (I think this might be 3674 des Pins Ouest). In case you're wondering, that's not a little man walking under a strangely sloping tree that happens to be dripping on his head and casting a shadow to the east. In fact it's a warning that large, sodden piles of snow barbed with icicles may slide down the overhanging roof and onto your head... so don't walk this way. Creative!

Lastly, "Prudence! Ne prenez pas de chance" was at Métro Université de Montréal, if memory serves. I thought it was a funny and appropriate message... "it's better to be waiting for the next bus than for an ambulance"! Since in the past I'd seen people literally bowling over other passengers in their haste to reach the bus/subway platform, I've often wondered if the signs have had any effect.

...Shepherd's Warning (October 12, 2010)

2010-10-12T10:00:00.004-04:00

7:20am today, on the way to the pool.

Rem(a)inders (January 26, 2010)

2010-10-10T08:02:00.001-04:00

More relating to my fascination with (in this case, spontaneous) public art: these pictures were taken during a bus ride up the West Coast of the South Island, at Bruce Bay.

They look like Inuksuks...

Below, one made from a ponga log with flax binding, echoing some strange creature dressed in elaborate jewelry:

I'm apparently not the only one who's wondered how this project began. It's quite a striking feature on the beach if you're driving along past it. I think I am even more fascinated because I love to build these kinds of objects myself--when I was a child, I loved making things out of sand, even hanging out in the sand pit at school with the boys, playing with my Playmobil trucks and digging little tunnels through which they could drive. If there was a stream nearby, I liked to paddle in and build a dam or a series of water-courses. And I also collected beach-objects, which is probably why I love these little sculptures so.

Fragile toi toi stalks are incorporated into the design above; and below, a gnarled piece of driftwood resembles a hand clutching at a white stone...

And here is a short video of the beach and stone sculptures, taken a month or so after I was there.

Street Corner Pre-Apocalypse (December 12, 2009)

2010-10-05T21:33:00.000-04:00

I have a deep fondness for extreme lighting conditions. This bank of clouds was about to block out the late afternoon sun as I was on my way home from my TA position, for which I was working near this corner at Jane and Finch in Toronto.

The lives of furniture (January 2, 2008)

2010-10-02T21:41:00.005-04:00

Visible but not explicit, requiring explanation,
A mystery extending beyond memory, these legends
Long considered not worth telling: the silence of objects,
Their mute encounters.
An evocation of small injustices
Abstract, delicate and beautiful
Like lacework with no discernible pattern.

Autumn (October 14, 2009)

2010-10-02T09:41:00.007-04:00

Rerasons why Autumn is my favourite season in Canada: visiting Montréal at the right time of year pretty much sums it all up. This picture was a lovely moment, standing on the terrasse at sundown looking out over the city, the layered view with the bushel of turning leaves beneath the copper-roofed university buildings, the thicket of towered office buildings, and in the distance--a clear view to the horizon punctuated by other "mountains" (glacial formations). The image feels as crisp as the evening air at dusk.

Supercrawl Streetscape (September 25, 2010)

2010-09-26T22:00:00.010-04:00

I went out to the Hamilton Supercrawl last night with friends, and took quite a few pictures--I was really enjoying the new camera's capacity to take pictures in the dark. I had taken quite a few of them with black and white in mind rather than colour, and I thought I would post some of the ones I converted.

Supercrawl is the larger manifestation of Hamilton's monthly James Street North Art Crawl, an event held on the second Friday of every month.

I liked the autumnal look of this picture (above). It's actually a shot of two friends walking ahead of the rest of the group. Inside that tent (at right) were many delights including clothing, jewelry, second-hand books, artworks, and cupcakes and coffee.

All the galleries along James Street North have their doors open wide.

The evening was very well attended. At 9:30pm the street was still busy and the coffee shops, bars and galleries were packed.

I like shooting pictures at night because you can't quite tell what the camera will do, how much it will "capture" and how--it reminds me of the way glazes behave at very high firing temperatures (though perhaps a bit more predictable!). I also like then having the photos in black and white, because there's a shift in one's entire perception of the image. Different things stand out, certain elements are reduced or less differentiated while others become more central and/or acceptable as elements of the composition, like the blurs in the pictures above and below.

Aside from unexpected smudges, I enjoy the fuzzed, intense look that streetlamps and other light sources take on when exposed for longer periods--and the strange shifts of focus that occur as the camera tries to make sense of the extreme visual conditions.

The picture above is one of those shots that for some reason really appeals to me, though I can't figure out exactly why--something compositional, and related to the focus on the two people in the left-hand, middle third of the frame.

Apparently Supercrawl attracted 20,000+ visitors this year, running from 1pm to 11pm with several chunks of James Street North fenced off from the usual vehicular traffic. It's great to see this kind of event bringing such a lively turnout to Hamilton's downtown.

The Moon Tonight (September 21, 2010)

2010-09-21T21:16:00.004-04:00

This evening we're having an Extreme Moon Moment here, with the moon swollen to its full size and bright light a dimmed sun against the night sky. Naturally I had to take some pictures from my back deck.

One interesting thing is that I couldn't get the shot I wanted, in the moment, from my new digital camera. I decided to cheat and pull out the old one, which still works but inconsistently (hence my decision to replace it). While the new camera is amazing at making the most of available light even in the dark, this tendency actually has a sad effect on certain kinds of night shots. It over-exposed the moon pictures, showing not the pearly bright against dark but rather what looked almost like full sunlight. I wasn't able to produce the shot below with my newer camera, but captured it with the older one:

Cows of Milan (May 16, 2007)

2010-09-17T10:30:00.018-04:00

These six pictures are of a series of sculptures in Milan, more of the entertaining public art that seemed to pop up thought the city (when I was visiting, at least). Without knowing what the actual project is about or what's it's called, I've been calling it "Cows of Milan". For this blog post I sought to find out, at last, what these cows were all about--and whether they had any relationship to Toronto's Moose in the City.

Cow #1: "Zebra". Artist: Selection SRL. Undetermined location, but almost certainly in or just outside the Galleria Vittoria Emanuele which leads from the Piazza Duomo to the Piazza della Scala and contains some of the most high-end boutiques in the city. The day I took these photos would have been the first time I went walking around the city on my own--I started at Piazza Duomo, a pretty obvious choice, and was drawn into the Galleria since it is the most impressive-looking thing in the square (aside from the Duomo itself).

Cow #2: "Muuusica" Outside La Scala (Piazza della Scala). Artist: Terrakuarello. I was surprised and very pleased to discover this second cow, outside the famous La Scala opera house--fittingly decorated with little people singing. At this point I realised there was a theme going, and I started looking for more cows along the way.

Cow #3 "Hot Milk". Artist: Marijana Savic. I'm not sure the exact location, but it was somewhere around Piazza Cordusio--I was walking toward the Castello Sforzesco and I went along Via Dante, shooting a photo on that corner right before I took this one.

What my online research tells me is that these cows were part of something called CowParade. It was, and is, a kind of art-show-plus-philanthropy event, and it has "travelled" through over 70 cities worldwide. New cows are create by a new set of artists in each city; the cows would stay in place for several months before being auctioned off for charity. It's a pretty novel and amusing idea, probably owing its success to the creativity and humour generated by the chosen motif and also to the public element of the project, which takes away the exclusionary aspect of "philanthropy"--in a sense sharing the good cause with everyone (even those who cannot afford to donate or purchase).

Cow #4 "Mucca Urbana", Via Dante. Artist: Birgitta Latis.

Via Dante is a relatively long, straight stretch of street (for downtown Milan), accommodating pedestrians and bikes, though I wasn't clear about the rules for cars. I think this is why there were several cows placed along it (#3, 4 and 5 on this list)--a spacious thoroughfare lined with interesting shops, offices, cafés and restaurants.

Cow #5: A roll in the hay... or rather, "Felicity", Via Dante. Artist: Rafaella Cosco. I love this one in particular because a happy cow is a cute cow, obviously. She looks like she's wiggling her legs about and smiling with glee.

Toronto's Moose project is, as it turns out, a spin-off of the Cow idea. Since Toronto wasn't one of the cities included in the CowParade project (Sydney, Australia and Auckland, NZ did participate), I suppose they felt they should come up with some other (more Canadian?) idea for themselves. Halifax did the same, replacing cows with Lobsters, and Hamilton, Ontario, had a similar project involving doors (I'm not quite sure how that happened).

Cow #6: "Ecow", found outside the Palazzo dell'Arte in Parco Sempione. Artists: Matteo Thun & Antonio Rodriguez. Apparently there was at least one other cow in that area, but I didn't know it at the time and sadly I missed out.

CowParade Milano ran from 14 April to 17 June 2007. It included 100 artsy cows placed all over the city, only seven of which I saw (the one missing from my photos here is a cow I spotted at the airport, on my way back to Canada). A helpful directory of the Milano cows, with their names and pictures, is provided here.

A Privileged View (January 30 & 31, 2010)

2010-09-12T11:07:00.008-04:00

This picture, which I took in January in New Zealand, cycled by in my wallpaper backdrops the other day; I am struck by it every time. I think it's probably that it looks like a scene from The Lord of the Rings, and was indeed taken in a forest where a number of segments of those movies were filmed. I suppose it's the evergreens framing that mountain in the distance; you could be peering out from the thickness of Fangorn--looking to spot the next roving band of orcs. Like in the photo below, which was taken on the Te Anau-Milford highway on the way to Milford Sound; it would have seemed fitting if a white horse had appeared in the distance, galloping along the line where the forest meets the grass.

In reality how those films were made was of course a combination of "straight shooting" (heh) and the of collaging different shots taken from here and there to create the right look for the locations described in the books. Isengard is an example--what I didn't know what that the mountains in the picture below (another I took in Mt. Aspiring National Park) were used as the backdrop for Saruman's stronghold--while the foreground, including the river you can see here, was replaced with Orthanc and its surroundings.

I think having grown up in New Zealand it wasn't much of a leap for me to associate the familiarities of our landscape with the one described by Tolkien...the translation into film was only the last and more specific step of that imaginative process, which is probably why--no matter how much I dislike some aspects of them--I'll always love those movies.

Favourite Field (Summer, 2000)

2010-09-10T20:27:00.004-04:00

After the past few harried weeks, I've had little energy to post in my picture blog--so today I'm going to put up some photos of something nice and restful. It's a fairly good precursor to next week's back-to-class madness as well (though most universities started again this week, ours begins a week later due to religious holidays).

The pictures were taken in a field on Mont-Royal, a somewhat secluded spot where I used to enjoy sitting quietly with a book, enjoying the sound of the breeze ruffling the trees behind me, which screened me out of view of those walking up the Chemin Olmstead. With this path that (still) leads down through the trees that look tunnel-like, I've always liked how this spot is tucked away just beyond range of notice.

They don't mow the grass too often here--there's no real reason to, of course. Though there are people walking through (the path into the field leads, eventually, down one side of Mont-Royal) you can sink into the long grass and be ignored. I sometimes stopped here on the way to my dishwashing shift, if I felt like walking all the way to work. Once I and a friend had a small pre-noon (pre-work) picnic there, which consisted of a bottle of red wine drunk from inappropriate cups.

Above: a blooming muddle of plant life in the long grass of the field. Alongside daisies, those red things are seed pods from dock plants, or so I was taught when I saw them as a child in New Zealand. We used to feed them, dried out, to our pet birds. The leaves in the picture below belong to the same kind of plant, I think.

Below: thistle plants. The are odd-looking things, their spindly necks topped with bulbous buds that look for all the world, as they open, like droopy purple-dyed punks letting their hair grow out. I remember having fun with focus when taking some of these pictures, using a wide aperture because of the light and then playing with the extremes produced by limited depth of field.

I love coming to this field near afternoon twilight--I still do this now when I visit Montreal. In the summer the light bathes you indirectly, reflected back against the sky, from beyond the crest of Mont-Royal. In a few of these pictures it's faintly warm orange. Near dusk you can hear the complementary thrumming notes of traffic (which sounds distant, but isn't) and warm-weather insects. It's one of the best places from which to experience the feeling of being both within, and apart from, the murmuring heart of the city.

Silver lining (August 30, 2010)

2010-09-01T19:11:00.006-04:00

I've been out of commission for the past week or so due to moving house, and a delay in getting the Internet connection hooked up at the new place. I wanted to post something quickly now that I have everything sorted at home (including wireless--finally!).

I took this picture the other day from the bus window on Highway 407, on the #47 GO bus from Hamilton to York University. I love it when the clouds look like this--crystal clear with that perfect edge of light--and these ones have a lovely misty aura through which the sun shines as if through morning fog. You can also see the "rays" of light as they shine around the cloud and create lines against the darker blue of the sky. This looks even more dramatic since the clouds are dark grey, rather than white. A striking effect, as if the sun is exploding from behind the clouds (as in one of those old medieval woodcuts).

Pictures like this also remind me of a lovely Simon & Garfunkel song.

Kittenlick (January 8, 2010)

2010-08-22T13:34:00.001-04:00

There is really no excuse for this slice of gratuitous cuteness. I use it as the background picture on my iPod Touch.

Having these two around actually had me wonder why some cats clean each other. After all, cats have the capacity to clean themselves, and usually they don't need help (from people or from other cats).

One person I asked mentioned that it was a behaviour signalling the "dominance" of one cat over the other (i.e. the one doing the cleaning was expressing dominance over the one being cleaned). Some cursory Internet research tells me that in fact mutual grooming is usually a form of bonding between cats, where there is already close relationship; one site stated that "many times, if there is an age difference between the two cats, the older one will "mother" the younger one (even if the older is a male), and groom it as a protection tool. If they are the same age, it's more directly related to bonding". So grooming is seen as a form of "cat communication" that tells us the cats are getting along (no surprises there).

These two big babies were born in the same litter. Bingley's been cleaning Darcy since they were quite small, as the video below demonstrates--they were under three months old when it was recorded.

Michigan (March, 2004)

2010-08-20T18:17:00.010-04:00

These are some fleeting impressions from the first trip I ever took across the land border between the United States and Canada. I actually haven't done it since, that's how keen I am (though I've had to pass through a lot of U.S. airports--never fun). I wasn't able to take many photos on this trip, equipped only with my somewhat bulky Minolta, and 400-speed film (which was more limited than my current digital camera in terms of what it could "capture").

I've written before about the weirdness of crossing a border where obvious boundaries are missing. The US-Canada border is odd because it's used by citizens on both sides for casual, evening long trips as well as for longer stays or journeys through the U.S. to some other destination. So it feels like a slightly scruffy bus station, except for the cubicles and the questioning, the fingerprinting and photographing. "Security" also takes time; our entire bus had to empty, and everyone went through the same procedure with variations--including being asked the same set of questions by two border cops standing about 10 feet apart. Hopefully that wasn't supposed to be a "grilling"; if so, they were slacking a bit.

To me, Michigan looked a lot like Ontario--but as John Travolta notes in "Pulp Fiction", "it's the little differences" that suddenly jolt you with the reminder that you're not in Canada. And when you didn't grow up with the "Elephant Next Door", including shopping trips across the border (in Canada this is taken for granted), it's surreal even just visiting. Some of the things I failed to photograph include the roadside billboards replete with crazy advertisments for Christianity, and America. I expected those--but only in the sense that I had an unreasonable expectation of the U.S. living up to the naive impression I had of it at the time. It did and it didn't, as usual.

Sometimes I wonder if I could even have a "normal" view of this place, the image of which has been repeated or echoed around the world for so long and in so many ways (yet always, somehow, the same way). The further you are from it, the more exaggerated that image becomes--but you have an image, no matter where you are: everyone knows what America looks like. I think of it this way because of having grown up in a place quite isolated from anything other than the inflated-by-distance, TV-show/movie world that was projected out to us, quite distinct from "real" life and "real" place as we experienced it in our small corner of the globe.

All my pictures of Detroit were taken from the windows of moving vehicles (you can see the flecks of dust on the windscreen, like little chunks of debris floating in the sky). It seems appropriate somehow. The pictures from previous posts are more interesting, but these ones reflect other aspects the impression I formed of the place, showing the glimpses of mundane things that caught my interest. Lots of highways, endless highways cutting across all the things that stand still and don't move and creating a kind of alternate, parallel dimension (things that move--the very space of movement itself, with no other purpose--and things that don't). I remember thinking about that as I watched the houses and farms and trees and small, low-quality local back-country restaurants flick by.

In the picture above you can see the sign directing drivers to downtown Flint, Michigan. That's another of those places that I've heard of but never visited (thanks, Michael Moore). The novelty of this kind of thing never wears off for me, perhaps because I don't do a huge amount of travelling. There's just something interesting about seeing mundane road signs pointing you to locations with names as familiar as that of your own town or city. In fact Saginaw also falls into that category for me--the name can never be separated from this fantastic song, which is probably one of my all-time favourites. I remember having it stuck in my head for hours during this trip.

Speaking of travelling--I'm moving in about a week, and finding the organising is tiring me out. Please excuse the uninspired quality of today's commentary! Writing this post also makes me wish I had taken a lot more pictures on the Michigan trip (it was only a few days and I was working with films--so I suppose it makes sense). Sadface.

Waterfall (August, 2004)

2010-08-14T20:25:00.001-04:00

One of many things not widely known about the city of Hamilton, Ontario, is that is sits snugly in the curve of a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, the Niagara Escarpment. An escarpment is a geographic feature involving a sharp drop in the elevation of relatively flat land, forming a kind of "step" that can look like a cliff extending over a long distance. The Niagara Escarpment is very lengthy, winding its way through four U.S. states and through Ontario between (and also through) the Great Lakes Ontario, Erie, and Huron.

On a satellite image of Hamilton the Escarpment is clearly visible as a dark green thread that snakes from Grimsby in the east, through Stoney Creek and the centre of Hamilton (dividing the "mountain" area from downtown), then west into the valley that separates Ancaster and Dundas. It then travels north toward Georgian Bay on Lake Huron, eventually turning south and ending up on the east side of Lake Michigan.

Close to this conservation area, Hamilton is linked in to the walking and hiking trails that follow the Escarpment, most notably the Bruce Trail and the Rail Trails; the nearby Dundas Valley is also easily accessible (via the trails or by car). On the steep incline where the Escarpment drops off, a line of waterfalls marks its path--and a number of attractive falls are in the Hamilton-Ancaster-Dundas area.

I actually worked for the Hamilton Region Conservation Authority in August-September 2003, so I helped with some of the photography in their brochures. I also ended up unwittingly making an appearance in the "Waterfalls brochure" (which, by the way, took endless amounts of revision work for some reason), sitting at the bottom of Webster's Falls in my orange hat. Thankfully that little piece of PR doesn't seem to be in circulation now--on the web at least--though it was kicking around for quite a while.

It seems almost appropriate that I should have ended up in that brochure, since I've always loved waterfalls--all forms of moving or running water actually. Growing up in New Zealand, I always wanted to play in whatever creek or stream was nearby. Our house in Feilding had a small stream running just behind the fence marking the back edge of the garden; I used to make dams and other waterworks by piling up rocks in the stream-bed.

I'm not sure if the waterfall pictured here has been named. It wasn't readily accessible; I seem to remember something about climbing through a hole in a chain-link fence. I took these pictures with my Minolta SLR, so I must have had fun carrying it in there. Then there was no path, you had to walk alongside the stream and then into/across the water to reach the dry rocks over by the falls, and there was slippery green slime on the red streambed rocks (as you can see in the photos).

I was fascinated by the small boulder (below) that appears poised on the edge of the falls. I wondered what kept it in place--sheer weight, perhaps, or some nook in which it was perched securely? Was it leaning heavily against the rock behind it? At the time I wasn't willing to climb up the side of the waterfall with my camera hanging around my neck, which was probably a reasonable judgment. I could see it was possible though, since there were a few other people also nosing around the area and they had gone further up towards the head of the falls.

I remember crouching to take the picture below, thinking that the backlighting from the sky and trees would probably cause the (reflected-light, automatic) light meter to over-compensate and under-expose the shadowed areas on the right-hand side of the frame. I must have been lucky though--I have a "textured white" (technically a grey-blue) in the sky and visible detail in the shadows.

Remembering that moment makes me realise (again) how different it is to shoot with digital cameras vs. on film, since there was and is no "instant replay" feature. You have to take several shots at different exposure times and apertures and angles, with the number of shots determined by the importance of getting the photo right. Only after negatives and prints have been processed do the final results show up. But there can be equal amounts of serendipity both ways (digital or not) and that's one of the things I enjoy about photography.

Post-Storm (February 7, 2008)

2010-08-12T10:08:00.019-04:00

Snow--it's a Canadian obsession. That sounds like a stereotype, and of course it is, but then again why not? Extreme winter weather of various kinds is a fact of life, and since I've lived in Canada--and I've lived in four different cities--snow's become an obsession for me, too, one of the organising themes in seasonal life. How much is it supposed to snow tonight? Have the roads been cleared this morning? What kinds of transit and traffic delays are there? Will I have to shovel three days in a row? How much ice is on the sidewalk? Will school be closed today? And so on. When I was in high school in Nova Scotia, the other kids knew almost nothing about New Zealand but their first question was often "does it snow there?" Ever since that time, snow--along with Tim Horton's, hockey, and a school year starting in September--has been a significantly "Canadian" thing to me.*

There's even an etiquette that goes along with Winter Weather, involving such details as who should step to the side when two people are walking toward each other on an un-shovelled footpath.

These pictures were taken in the early morning, which is why the light looks blue-ish and slightly dim. The snow had hardly stirred since it fell the night before. I always love going out right after a storm, whether in the middle of the night or as in this case, just after dawn (which of course comes later in the winter). The best snow is of the kind you can see here, the very fluffy and damp variety that sticks well to objects and to itself, forming piles perched on power lines, fences and other narrow areas (like the bike pictured above). This kind of snow is perfect for rolling into snowballs and for building snow-sculptures of all kinds, since it "packs" perfectly and stays in shape.

I think this is the kind of snow I always imagined as archetypal, as a child growing up in an area where snow falls only a couple of times in a century.

The nicest thing about snow before it's sullied is that it's easier to enjoy it: there's no slush yet, because the temperature may not have dropped low enough and because there's no salt on the roads and the footpaths. Not enough cars have driven by to create the churned, soupy and gritty muck that pools in the gutters after rush hour on mornings like the one pictured here. The footpaths are easily navigable because the snow hasn't yet been squashed into a slippery, lumpy sheet by the pressure of many feet taking the easiest path through. And everything looks somehow cleaner, and fresh, and there's an air of the fairytale-eque as if each house might be made of ginger-bread beneath its snowy mantle.

The other thing is that the weather is usually quite lovely right at this time, right before the snow melts or freezes to ice, when the air is just so--slightly damp and hovering around zero. There's often no wind, and it's the perfect time for a crunchy stroll after being cooped up during a storm.

This is snow showing some of its best effects, when it's fallen upon itself time and time again and slowly eroded the forms of what lies beneath it, creating mysterious lumps and bumps and also practical problems for the uninitiated--such as mis-guessing where the concrete edge of the gutter might be, and slipping or jolting forward onto the road. It brings a kind of equalising effect, bridging the fir tree and the power line, like the same batch of icing spread over many differently-shaped cookies.

*Yes, I'm well aware that snow does not play the same role in, say, Vancouver, as it does in Montreal. And yet there is still a kind of amusing regional dynamic that emerges, with those living on the West Coast always keen to announce the arrival of daffodils in March, knowing all the while that in Ottawa, an ice storm might have hit the night before. Another example of this is the way in which Toronto was mocked throughout the rest of the country for calling in the army to clear snow after a series of severe storms.

Sidetracked: "Star Trek Plot" Taxonomy.

2010-08-08T19:49:00.006-04:00

I recently decided it was time for a bit of 'cultural education' in the form of a "Star Trek: Original Series" marathon. While I'd seen snippets of various episodes, I realised I had never seen a whole lot of them in sequence, so I didn't actually have much sense of what the show was like back in the 60s--and I found myself curious.

[Below: The Pilot episode (later re-worked into "The Menagerie" Parts I & II) with Captain Christopher Pike instead of Kirk, was just dreadful--unless you like very silly, shiny costumes and terrible dialogue. Wait...]

One thing I've noticed so far is the quality of the show--given what else was on the Box in the 1960s, this is pretty good stuff. There's a reason it gained more than a 'cult' following; the show provides (particularly in retrospect) some rather interesting social commentary, and it was progressive for its time, something that shows up if you compare the Pilot first (all-white/anglo-American cast) and then the actual show (African-American and Asian characters, and later even Chekov, who is Soviet/Russian).

In spite of the overall sexism that echoes what was acceptable in the day, there are also more roles for women on the show (compare it to the sitcoms of the 50s and 60s, e.g.), and there are obvious references to race/racism in the dynamic between Spock as 'alien' and the rest of the 'human' crew.

I've also realised that in spite of the creativity of the writers, once you watch enough episodes, certain plot elements start to repeat themselves regularly. In fact after enough repetition they can be easily isolated, and a taxonomy created... and for 'fun', this is what I decided to do. Bear in mind that the result below can also be applied to Star Trek: The Next Generation and possibly other series of Star Trek. Now go ahead--plot your own episode!

[Below: Another shot from the Pilot episode, which features the 'seductive woman', 'SOS leads to trap' and 'aliens experiment on crew' plots.]

First up: plot elements involving 'outside' factors. Because where would we be without external (beyond the ship) 'stimulus' to jolt the plot into life? The list includes...

...Seductive [alien] woman/women [with green or otherwise strange-looking skin; see picture above].
...Mysterious SOS or summons from [distant] ship/planet.
...Uber-intelligent, unemotional aliens perform [psychological/physical] experiments on captive crew member/s.
...Political conflict [often involving the Neutral Zone].
...'Mad scientist' character.
...Conflict [with aliens] caused by communicative incompatibilities.
...Away team mission to unfamiliar planet or ship.
...Tricky strangers with [fake] Irish accents.
...Strange [contagious] substance/disease/creature brought on board by unwitting crew member/s.
...Death of a 'Red Shirt' [often combined with 'away mission to unfamiliar planet'].
...[Malicious] alien or force that can appear in any form.

[Below: A fruitful combination, 'Mad Scientist' plus 'Androids' in "What are Little Girls Made of".]

Plot elements involving/originating with 'insiders' or people on crew: these aspects of the storyline are drawn from and focus on the internal conflicts of the show's regular characters, their romances and dramas, their histories and the ongoing struggles they face within the context they're "written in to" on the show. These include...

...Something shady returns from a crew member's past to haunt him/her.
...Crew member/s suffer psychological/emotional tension or breakdown.
...Philosophical or psychological Dilemma involving Human Nature [includes instances where Logic falls short and Spock learns a lesson].

[Below: Spock experiences a logic FAIL in "The Galileo Seven", prompting the usual snarking disagreements from ship's doctor "Bones" McCoy.]

...Romance--between crew members or between one of the crew and an 'outsider'.
...Ethical dilemma re: violation of the Prime Directive.
...Major alteration to crew member/s' character [can happen to one person or to everyone on the ship/a planet].

[Below--Sulu gets Wild'n'Crazy in "The Naked Time", after an infection spreads through the ship causing personality changes to the crew.]

'Scientific' or technical plot elements: I thought it was fair to present these as a separate category; Star Trek is all about the 'science' in 'science fiction' (the Enterprise is on an exploratory mission, after all), and many books have been written about the "physics of Star Trek" and so on. Some examples of how this works in the plot...

...Urgent technical issue/s with the ship [e.g. something involving lithium/dilithium crystals].
...Transporter malfunction.
...Tachyons.
...Mysterious loss of power or one of the ship's crucial functions.
..Pick up or drop-off of scientific crew [science mission].
...Time travel [including plots where crew members find themselves stuck in some version of an era in Earth's past].
...Asteroid belt or other zone of mysterious/anomalous Space Effects.
...Androids, robots or other intelligent [and often Evil] machines.

[Below: The show's first Pissy Romulan, in the excellent episode "Balance of Terror". The character is played by Mark Lenard, who ironically goes on to play Spock's Vulcan father Sarek, a role he reprised many times in the decades that followed.]

Most of these themes carry over quite a bit into ST:TNG--for instance, there is a whole series of episodes involving Troi being taken over or manipulated somehow by a mysterious force or magnetic character, a variation on a theme described above; and Will "Action Man" Riker takes over the 'womaniser' role previously occupied by Kirk, while Data replaces Spock as logician and there are lots of 'Human Nature vs. Machine' plots there.

[Below: Part of the charm of the Original Series was the amusing chemistry between Captain Kirk (Shatner) and Mr. Spock (Nimoy)--a dynamic totally absent from the relationship between Spock and Captain Pike in the Pilot episode, but immediately noticeable in the first episodes of the actual show.]

There--that's my nerd-out humour moment of the month... grin. Back to ST:OS; what with about 25 episodes in each of the three seasons, I have quite a bit to get through; we'll have to see if the taxonomy holds up.

Post-Script: After watching a full season, I think I'd have to add two more plot options to this mix. One is "someone other than Kirk has control of the ship." Another could be "new alien friends are not what they seem".

King's Demonstration (January 27, 1998)

2010-08-07T10:53:00.005-04:00

These pictures were taken at a Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) protest in Halifax, Nova Scotia (here is another from the same set). I'm not sure what paper I used, but they were all scanned in from 8x10" prints I made myself. This was during my second semester at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), my first-ever year at university. Yes--this makes me feel...old.

I think this was the first occasion on which I was able to walk into a crowd of people and take as many pictures as I wanted without worrying about whether people would be annoyed or angered by it. Since it was an "event" and the crowd was the spectacle, photography was natural as a part of things (there were also many art students). This was in the days before everyone had a digicam the size of a packet of cigarettes, but there were still a lot of cameras. I would have been shooting with 35mm black and white film, probably my old friend Agfapan APX 400 (judging by the graininess), a film that has apparently been discontinued now. Sniff.

Below is a picture of several friends from NSCAD enjoying the scene in the courtyard at King's--I recall that our ceramics professor, Walter Ostrom, came to the demonstration (we were all skipping his class that afternoon, so it was just as well). I did get one picture of him but I over-exposed it and couldn't get prints to turn out. A number of us were taking photography as well, conveniently enough. That's Jason on the left, Carrie in the middle with the camera, and Christine to her right. I like the composition in this one, though it was probably mostly accidental.

Below is a great shot of Juliet--who was living in the King's residences--with her home-made sign, suggesting that 100% tax might cover all the costs of free tertiary education for Canadian students. I appreciate the sentiment, but unfortunately we'll need to find some other ways of covering it (and hopefully they won't involve massive tuition increases; therein lies the dilemma, and the issue that prompted this protest).

I really enjoyed shooting pictures at this demonstration, and since that time these kinds of events have always my favourite way of getting interesting shots of people without them noticing. Almost all the pictures I took during Gerard Kennedy's last campaign were of the same kind, and they are some of the best pictures I've taken. It's not about 'catching' people off-guard; I'm more concerned with showing the 'feeling' of a context, conveying the engagement of people with their surroundings and with whatever they happen to be doing at the time. Then you end up with a completely different kind of 'portrait', one that's almost impossible to achieve when someone sees a camera and turns to respond to it in some way.

Horse on the River (April, 2000)

2010-08-03T07:18:00.002-04:00

There's really no reason to post this; it could have been one of those moments when I "saw" something that wasn't really there, but when I look again now I can still see a leaping white horse in this foam floating down the Ottawa river. It doesn't have a tail, but--it's there, honest.

This was taken on the bridge from Ottawa over to Hull, Quebec.

Flames in the Air (February 2nd, 2008)

2010-07-31T21:53:00.045-04:00

These pictures were taken at a mid-winter fire sculpture exhibition--the Nights of Fire--at Nathan Philips Square in Toronto. The sculptures were created by the French "fire art troupe" Cie Carabosse. The show involved 1500 individually-lit clay pots which burned for a period of about three hours in the early-evening winter darkness.

One thing I loved about the look of this show, and the pictures I was able to take, was the contrast not only between light and darkness but also between the fire in the air and the ice of winter on the ground. And of course as I have mentioned in previous blog posts, I have pyromaniacal tendencies--so there was a special lure here for me.

Though the sculptures were of many different shapes and sizes, I liked best one particular, relatively simple spherical piece (see below). I'm not sure if it was the size and shape of it or the placement at the front of the Square, but I loved the way this piece looked from a distance as one approached the main area of the exhibit or "fire garden". And I wasn't the only one--people seemed drawn to the piece, and indeed there was something both welcoming and hypnotic about the globe of tiny pots, flowering flame.

Why do I enjoy fire so much? Well--I've always felt that there's something 'primal' about fires, and particularly the act of gathering as a group around the fire, which conjures up the state of human existence as it was until very recent times. The several millennia of recorded human history--and the few million years we took to progress to record-keeping--are really just a spark in the long, dark corridor of the aeons, wherein even the earth's several billion orbits around the sun are reduced to a few scratches in the grand cosmic tally-count. Until a short while ago much of humanity still sat literally huddled around flames that brought vital sustenance; and today we continue to rely heavily on technologies that duplicate the functions of fire. Rubbing my hands in front of the flames, I'm reminded of all this.

So fire has had an important role in human society and culture more or less from the beginning. Testament to its importance are the many human myths and legends involving the 'discovery', or indeed the theft, of fire (usually from a god or supernatural figure--as in the Maori myth in which Maui, the 'trickster'/demi-god, steals fire from his grandmother Mahuika). Fire also plays an important role in religious or sacred rituals around the world--even in their modern-day, areligious incarnations--often signifying celebratory purification and rebirth.

Above: As onlookers, to me it seemed as if we were indulging in an age-old flirtation with controlled danger. This is another of the seductions of fire--it seems like a living thing, in fact it even breathes, sucking oxygen from the air as it burns. But while these things help to explain the fascination that fire holds (for me and for many others), it's partly the element of unpredictability, of the unexplained itself, that makes fire worth watching.

The picture above shows a kind of brazier, in this case it looked like charcoal burning in an upright metal vessel. I really like the effect of the light (sparks) in the picture. Another version of this technology is the censer, which you may recognise if you have visited a Catholic church for Mass; it holds hot charcoal on which incense or frankincense is burned.

Below: fire lights the way, as well as providing functional heat.

That we see fire as both a technology and a force of nature (often characterised in the past as one of the fundamental 'elements' of life) is also a tension that shows in the stories we tell; it represents something that is part of the natural world, but which has the potential to be 'summoned' to perform for our benefit. The lessons learned in our stories are often similar: while we may feel we have 'control' of fire, we should always remember that fire has a 'will' of its own, and that mastery of it can only ever be temporary, even though it appears to do our bidding from time to time.

McMaster at Night (July 23, 2010)

2010-07-28T17:42:00.004-04:00

I thought I might quickly post some pictures I took last Friday night while travelling home from the LACUS conference at McMaster. I'm having fun with the new camera and its light-sensitivity in dark situations.

I missed most of an attractive sunset because I was sitting inside, but caught the dregs of it in a few pictures (above, looking towards the Burke Science Building; and below, a closer shot of some of the trees in the centre of the first picture). It was actually darker than it looks to have been, but the camera has a tendency to maximise whatever light is available, so I may create some custom settings for these kinds of situations. Over-exposure changes the quality and colour of the light.

I like playing with night-time shots, particularly those that look interesting because only a fragment of something is visible due to the extremes of light and shade (usually from an artificial light source, but I'm a fan of the moon and of candle-light as well). Above is a picture of one of the lamps across from the bus stop by the Divinity College; I was quite happy with the way the branches were illuminated and then fade into nothing. Below is a shot of the Mills Memorial (social sciences and humanities) library, or rather the outline created by the light pouring through the windows of the "learning commons".

Above: a McMaster student (probably) waits for the #5 bus to downtown Hamilton, by the Divinity College. At this time on a Friday night (about 9:30pm), buses don't run as frequently. I was lucky that one arrived not long after I got to the bus stop. Below: I quite liked this picture of the outside of the McMaster Art Gallery (the Student Centre is in the background), the way the lit part of the frame forms a kind of diamond shape with the four round bright lights balanced by the horizontal and vertical weights of the stairs and the windows on the front of the gallery building.

The last picture, below, is taken not at McMaster but on James Street South as I walked towards the GO Train station. Hamilton has some nice-looking churches, and though I didn't catch the name of this one, it is easy enough to spot in daylight. In this photo I used the streetlamp like a sun, allowing its rays to bleed into the other part of the frame and giving the appearance of the lamp lighting up the church spire. Which of course it wasn't doing--there are lights on/below the church itself--but the lamp did cast its light on the tree, which is actually in the foreground of the picture and not up against the spire. All in all it's quite the optical illusion; the more I look, the more deceptive it becomes.

New Camera (July, 2010)

2010-07-17T11:29:00.022-04:00

Hot, humid weather continues here in Toronto, most unpleasant. It was during the last very humid spell not long ago that my digital camera began to act up. I suspected it was faltering when I was in New Zealand, attempting to take a picture at Kaikoura Beach. When I opened the lens cover, the camera simply refused to focus. It was infuriating, and the problem has returned periodically since then. In June, I decided it was time at last to replace it, since the humidity and heat seemed to be having even more of an effect on the technical problems. I decided to upgrade to a more recent version the same camera, since this one has been very study over the almost four years (12,000+ pictures) that I've been using it.

The camera I chose was the DSC-TX5. Sony now has a number of cameras in the Cyber-Shot line, and though this one was not the most high-end of them, it looked closest to what I had had until now and it was the only one advertised as shock-proof, water-proof, dust-proof, and probably nuclear-fallout-proof as well (and yes--it is supposed to handle the heat well). It had fairly solid reviews online since its release in April of this year. I tended to trust these reviews, since when I compared what was said with what I knew about my Cyber-Shot DSC-T10, I found it aligned with my own experience.

Above: Descending into the Queen subway station, I decided to test both the camera's power-on time and its performance in a low-light, no-flash situation, because I'd noticed in the reviews that there was emphasis on its improved low-light capacity. For the picture, I was halfway up the escalator by the time I looked down and decided I liked the view. Fortunately the camera handled things well, I snapped it open and got the shot within a few seconds and there were no problems with blurring or over/under-exposure.

Above: Mr. Darcy, helping me to test the camera's macro function with some close-up cat shots. Though this is not the best of them in terms of technicalities, it's certainly the most amusing one.

So far I've noticed there are also some things missing with this camera--like a black and white option. I'm getting used to working without it, which could be a good thing since I've been told that the image quality decreases when you shoot in black and white. Instead, I was advised to use image editing software to change pictures to black and white after downloading them onto my computer. This way the images retain more visual information.

Above: Inside the Bloor Cinema near Bloor and Bathurst, Toronto. This was a more extreme experiment to test low-light performance and to put the wide angle to use; I love the picture, which was taken just before the showing of "The Maltese Falcon" that I attended with my friend Joanne, who was in for the day from Hamilton. To me the curtains look like glowing embers in a fireplace.

Yesterday I went in to Hamilton to see a few friends, look for apartments and watch "The Girl Who Played with Fire", the new film version of the Steig Larsson novel. After the movie, which I saw with my friend Alex Sévigny, we went for a country drive during which I took some nice pictures of the farmland around Ancaster and Dundas, bathed in crepuscular summer light. It was nice to get to try out the camera in a non-urban environment.

Above: A shot I took from the car window. The function I was putting to use was a kind of spot focusing, which can be done using the touch-screen by touching the past of the screen where you want the camera to focus. This is really useful when shooting from a moving vehicle because it prevents the camera from re-focussing on objects in the foreground or in other parts of the frame. I quite like the blurring of the grass in the lower part of the image.

Above: Here I was trying to capture the quality of the light in the mildly humid summer evening. I also had to see what the camera could do when pointed directly into the sun (if you've looked through my past posts, you'll notice I love sunlight shots and my last camera did very well with them). Trivia: those splotches of light in the foreground are called "circles of confusion". Which will also be the name of my first band, if I ever form one.

After our drive, we went to Alex's place and (of all things) had cigars and cognac, on the back porch. Usually a bit too grown-up for me, this time I enjoyed feeling like W.C. Fields (stogies!). Alex's cat, Gigi, joined us--a treat, since usually she is a lot shyer than my cats. She usually runs away when I am visiting, or observes from a discreet distance.

Above: Gigi--she has such a tiny, delicately-designed little face, with large eyes. It took her a little while to warm up to me, but once we started getting better acquainted I was lucky to catch her in a split second of stillness; she looks quite charmingly posed.

Sidetracked: The Polaris Prize Long List, 2010.

2010-07-11T19:55:00.029-04:00

My picks for this year's Polaris prize. This has nothing to do with my regular blog posts--nor with my predictions for who the winner will be, since I really have no idea; it just reflects what I liked out of the music they chose this year. Since last year's crop was quite bountiful (I discovered some artists I really enjoyed), I thought I would plunder the spoils again--with overwhelming results. For most of these artists I only listened to one or two tracks to get a 'taste', but I've described below what I heard and why I liked it. I've listed the artists only--specific albums nominated can be found here. I also linked through to their MySpace pages, where you can listen to free music, and to LastFM where you can find more info on the artists and their discographies.

Bahamas: I am just a sucker for folky guitar. Reminds me of Andrew Bird but less produced and softer/more mellow, with a slight bluegrass twang. I found myself nodding along and allowing several tracks to play out. (@LastFM)

Basia Bulat: Classified as "folk/melodramatic", she reminds me of one of the singers in The Be Good Tanyas but with more vibrato, a very unique voice worth listening to--could be as unique as Neko Case and Joanna Newsom, she certainly draws appropriately on some country/bluegrass influences that remind me of those two artists. Nice fiddle, stand-up bass and acoustic guitar, and banjo. (@LastFM)

Brasstronaut: "Mt. Chimaera" is the album. I'm not sure how this can be classified, other than under "Awesome Album Titles". It's relatively mellow, with some acoustic instrumentation, but not actually laid-back--a weird combination of 60s psychedelia and New Weird America (think Devendra Banhart, but maybe more intense); vocals reminiscent of The Byrds, instrumentation that echoes Ida--without being emo. Could be classified as "indie rock" but with many more 'layers' that usual in that genre. (@LastFM)

Broken Social Scene: I usually like their stuff, so I'm happy to give the new album a listen. Sounds fairly good so far. (@LastFM)

By Divine Right: The first tracks I heard show obvious influences from 1960s folk and psychedelic rock (the electric guitar, vocals, strings, and bass patterns), reminds me of the Byrds, echoes of The Pretty Things' one psychedelic album ("SF Sorrow") and Cream--and of course later Beatles albums. I'm also reminded of Beck, who shows some of those influences as well in most of his albums. (@LastFM)

Caribou: Caribou is always good, I have all his albums (back from when he was called "Manitoba", even). This is perky yet gentle electronica, a more melodic, compact variant on genres like glitch and ambient. Reminds me of Four Tet and Plaid, but more often with vocals. (@LastFM)

Crystal Castles: Self-classified on MySpace as "Thrash", these guys have been touted locally as a popular "electro" group (not usually a good sign--in Toronto) so I felt it was my obligation to listen to a few tracks, in spite of receiving a poor first impression some time ago. It sounds like a mash-up of Goth, Epic House, some early 80s electro, disco-a-la-Scissor Sisters/Donna Summer, and the occasional crap track that really does sound "Thrash"-esque. I'm willing to give them another chance--in spite of the fact that they only provide 30-second soundbytes on their MySpace profile (snots). (@LastFM)

Amelia Curran: One of those female singer-songwriters who plays the guitar--and I am a sucker for that, so you've been warned. There's also accordion, and a song about Montreal, again with echoes of folk, bluegrass and 'traditional' music from the southern U.S. (@LastFM)

Fred Fortin: For some reason, there's a lot of folk in here this year. A guy, a guitar, and songs in French--I liked it. Then again, my French isn't good enough to tell me whether the lyrics are any good, so take that with a chunk of salt. (@LastFM)

Hannah Georgas: Sounds like Emily Haines, with less electro: a bit indie-twee ("Her voice, bittersweet yet as spunky as an indie film heroine, will make you swoon as she sings about love, language and awkward situations"--um yeah). Still, I'm trying not to let all that get in the way of listening to the album, since it sounds like it might be pretty good. Another artist on this year's list also had a Haines-type voice (though much more cutesy--too much for me), it must be a trend. (@LastFM)

Dan Mangan: Reminds me of The Weakerthans, but more folky. The are echoes of Ida in some of the instrumentation. Yes, so it's yet another folk-esque entry, but it's apparently been that kind of a year; more reminders Andrew Bird and Devendra Banhart, with a bit of Wilco (the lyrics are not syrupy-sweet, that's for sure). Bonus: has a song called "The Indie Queens Are Waiting". (@LastFM)

Misteur Valaire: It's great to see an album here that doesn't fit into one of three or four categories (e.g. "Indie Rock", "Punk", "Folk") and... the first track to which I listened contained theramin samples. As for the rest of it, I'm not quite sure how to describe it, though I was somehow reminded of Xploding Plastix--and then there was something that sounded like video games, the theme to an 80s action TV show, and funky 70s electro-disco. And that was all within one track, I'm telling you. It must be a win. (@LastFM)

The New Pornographers: I've always felt myself to be somewhat on the fence about these guys, always found them harder to like than Broken Social Scene, for example; but I think they're starting to win me over. (@LastFM)

Radio Radio: Funk, disco (e.g. Bee Gees), hip-hop, all en Francais code-switched with English. Definitely invites a closer listen, as it were. Reminds me a bit of TTC--almost inevitably.

Justin Rutledge: Oddly low-key, new/indie-country style, and believe me it is bizarre to find myself liking country music. I could get into this though--in spite of the fact that his MySpace photo was a picture of him with Dolly Parton. I'm not sure of what it's reminiscent since I don't know the genre very well at all. (@LastFM)

The Slew: The classification provided on this MySpace page is "Rock/Psychedelic/Blues" and their location is listed as Seattle, I'm assuming they are somehow actually Canadian since they have received a Polaris nomination. I find classification difficult here--it's certainly not "just" rock/blues, there seems to be some creative sampling and scratching going on. When I saw that Kid Koala was a member of this apparent collective/group (along with three others I've never heard of), I realised where that sound might be coming from. So there is a heavy mashing of rock and glitch, which could be strangely effective. (@LastFM)

South Rakkas Crew: It's hard to resist a group who'll name their album "The Stimulus Package". Though I don't normally listen to dancehall-influenced stuff, this has heavy layers of production, many influences playing together at once (as you may have noticed, I always find that interesting) including reggae, ska, some forms of electronica (probably drum'n'bass/jungle among others--I hear some of that in the bass). I'd have to be in the right mood to listen to this, but I think there's room for it in my (admittedly over-burdened and eclectic) collection. (@LastFM)

You Say Party! We Say Die!: I already have one album ("Lose All Time") by these guys and I have always felt surprised that I liked it. In terms of the new stuff, though I try not to be too influenced by track names, "Laura Palmer's Prom"--which came complete with Badalamenti-esque synth strings--was temptingly referential. It's squarely in the indie-rock genre, evolving positively in the direction of the kind of dark synth-tinged stuff that The Knife do so well (see the song "Dark Days" in particular), with hints of Controller.Controller. (@LastFM)

Young Galaxy: Last FM description includes the terms "indie/dream pop" and "shoegaze", and mentions Galaxie 500 and Stars as similar-sounding groups. I think all that is fair enough, and of course there's something a bit more original coming through as well; the languidness of Galaxie 500 is brought to a more upbeat and melodic yet similarly intense sound here, and Stars would sound a lot lighter in comparison. In some ways I'm even reminded of again The Knife (certainly not a bad thing!), partly because of the female vocal and also some of the beats and instrumentation. I'm definitely going to be listening to the whole album. (@LastFM)

The Polaris Prize short list was announced on July 6th; artists from this lists who made it to the "final round" are Broken Social Scene, Radio Radio, Caribou, and Dan Mangan. See, I told you I have no ability to "pick a winner" on this list (last year I swore up and down that it had to be K'naan, and I still swear that it should have been. I hate punk, and the prize went to a punk band).

VIA (July, 1997)

2010-07-11T09:13:00.001-04:00

I love trains and train travel, as I've discussed before in this blog.

The pictures in this post were taken on the VIA Rail Ocean train, which runs between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Montréal, Québec. These pictures were taken on my second train trip along that route (the same summer I graduated from high school!), and I travelled with Lucas on both of those trips. The first train trip was epic, and I think I'll tell the story here since I don't have any photos to show from that experience.

Above: A pillow by the window in a "lower berth", VIA Rail Ocean train.

The trip usually takes about 20 hours, with 26 (potential) stops along the way (many are by request only). The train travels roughly north-west from Halifax to Amherst, and into New Brunswick via Sackville and Moncton. It works its way up to Chaleur Bay and passes through Bathurst and Campbelltown before heading into Québec at Matapédia, turning south-west at Mont-Joli and following the St. Laurent all the way to Montréal. The reason the train travels so far north is so that it can connect with another VIA train that goes up into the Gaspé Peninsula (Parc National de la Gaspésie).

Below: Photographing from the back window of the train, in the caboose lounge. The lounge was only accessible once we had upgraded our tickets.

The VIA Ocean to Montréal had been the first real train trip I'd taken--during the previous winter, when I'd been to visit a high-school friend in Toronto. That turned out to be a trip and a half for a variety of reasons, among them being my illness--I'd has a pretty serious 'flu shortly before I was scheduled to leave, and the doctor was warning my mother that it might not be best for me to travel at all. I remember I was adamant, and I'm sure I was insufferable about it, too--a good strategy for a teenager, since it makes one's guardians glad to see one leave the house (and in this case, the province).

The trip was during March Break of my last year in high school. Unfortunately, what happened is that we managed to get caught in what may well have been the biggest snowstorm of that winter. The train's regular schedule takes it through an afternoon and overnight, and I remember how slowly that night passed. The further north we progressed, the worse the snow was and the more the train was bogged down with mechanical problems. I had been living in Canada for under three years at that point, and I think this was my first experience of extreme Maritime weather--it made an impression.

During the night the train stopped often, far more often than usually necessary--and a number of times for what seemed like (and actually was) hours. At the time it was hard to figure out what was going on from our position, though the conductors were very helpful and informative. We were told later that the train had had to stop twice to have the engine replaced, due to ice caking on the electronics. While the snow that covered the tracks could be pushed out of the way by the plough on the front of the train, it was the ice and snow driven directly into the engine by the wind that created the real problems. The snowbanks at the sides of the track grew ever-higher as we travelled north towards the border of Québec and New Brunswick.

Above: a picture taken from the "observation deck" in the caboose, from the landscape this looks like somewhere near the Bay of Fundy.

At that time there were fewer people taking the long-distance trains, and even if your ticket was economy class you could usually pay an extra fee in cash and upgrade to a berth overnight (if berths were not sold out). Because I was still evidently unwell, we were given some priority and able to upgrade so that we had (the equivalent of) a bed in the train. I remember that as I lay there, I could see nothing from the window but the pale streaks of snowflakes flitting by as they were lit up periodically by the yellow-orange station lights and the white-grey streetlamps of the sleeping towns. There was a lot of darkness, muffled darkness made somehow tamer by the submission of the landscape to snow.

When morning came, the snow had left a magical white wasteland that magnified the early view of the fields of riverside Québec that had opened up around us overnight, the new landscape now sliding by smoothly, the lights of distant houses gradually blinking off as the sun rose. Signs were now in French, something I had only glimpsed briefly several years before on a family drive through from Ontario to Nova Scotia. I experienced for the first time the feeling of living in a small country that somehow lay within another, vaster one. In New Zealand, which I knew better, I felt the opposite way--so much variation within such a small space, rolling by within a period of a few hours' travel, a thousand tiny landscapes. In Canada, the land continues on in great swathes of sameness, often beautiful sameness but still (to my eyes) a great series of homogeneities.

Below: crossing the river at Miramichi, New Brunswick. I love the darkness at the edges of this picture.

Even upon reaching Montréal after about 12 hours' delay, I had another train to catch--on to Toronto, a further 6 hours to downtown's Union Station. I remember how considerate the VIA staff were in allowing passengers to use their cell phones; I had been able to call my friend and keep her updated about my progress later in the trip, so that she and her father were waiting for me when I arrived in Toronto at around midnight the day after I'd left.

Below: inside the caboose lounge, looking up towards with observation deck. I like the many small clocks set to display different times in various cities around the world.

In the end, the complicating events of the first trip gave us the means to travel again to Montréal in July of 1997. VIA Rail, as well as providing the best possible service under the circumstances, also supplied us with an amount of credit that covered most of the fare for a return trip. We decided that since the trip came practically free, we'd go for only a single day (not even wasting money on accommodation!). The train schedule worked well, since we'd be arriving at 8am and leaving around 8pm.

That trip--pictured here--went much more smoothly, which was fortunate for us given the time constraints. We spent a really enjoyable day in Montréal, and the train left on schedule for Halifax that evening. I have this memory of buying my Minolta SLR camera on that trip--the previous camera was a Pentax that was actually stolen from me while I was at school--but then I'm not sure how I would have ended up shooting these pictures. I can't think of any other time when I could have bought it, though (I know I bought it in Montréal, at CamTec Photo I think), so it's possible that I borrowed one for the first part of the trip.

Above: Montréal's downtown, seen in the early morning from a rail bridge spanning the St. Laurent river. I love this moment, the feeling of the bridge ties clacking under my feet and the big river below and the first sight of the city, with a whole exciting day ahead to explore: every time I visit I feel the same sense of exhilaration.

Obviously the Great Snow Storm of '07 didn't put me off further train travel (I also travelled shortly after the Great Ice Storm of '08, a year later). I've made the Ocean trip a number of times since then, though not for a long time now--my last trip was in 2000, from Montréal to Halifax and back. These days I tend to stick to the Toronto-Montréal train that runs along the Québec City-Windsor eastern "Corridor". I still hope for another train trip to the East Coast at some point.

Hot (July 7, 2010)

2010-07-07T19:15:00.004-04:00

We're in the middle of a heat wave, here in Toronto. It's extremely unpleasant. I've been somewhat concerned about the cats, since the dehumidifier I bought seems to pump out hot air and there's only so much the floor fan can do. This evening I found them stretched out, stupefied, on the bathroom floor--where the tiles provide a relative respite from the suffocating heat (often they wrap themselves around the base of the toilet). The only comfortable place for me is standing between two fans, seemingly weak streams of moving air hitting me from two directions.

The temperature on the Weather Network is deceptive; it claims this "feels like 43", but it really feels like 50. Just sitting in my chair I feel as if dribbles of perspiration are running down my legs--and perhaps they really are. I consume gallons of water and juice, and it leaks out slowly through my pores, covering me with a permanent sheen and causing ambient cat fur to adhere to my skin.

For the past couple of days it's been impossible to work at home, so I've haunted the local Starbucks (for shame!), which seems to have unlimited free wireless and a table placed conveniently next to an outlet. Today I spent four hours there with my laptop, enjoying the Germany-Spain football match (quite satisfied with the result) and completing notes for a paper for publication.

Giant Floating Naked Man (May 16, 2007)

2010-07-06T16:21:00.024-04:00

These pictures were taken on my first solo stroll through Milan. I had the luck to encounter some very interesting public art during my explorations--well, either I was lucky or Milan is just an artsy place, and I'm inclined to believe the latter.

I ended up at Parco Sempione, the park that opens out behind the Castello Sforzesco. Walking out into the park I turned to the right, following signs that seemed to lead to a public aquarium; but I wandered down the wrong path and ended up over next to the Arena Civica Gianni Brera. Soon I saw something unusual that seemed to be hovering just above the trees, and I made my ways towards it:

I admit it was a bit startling, seeing this large pink nude fellow simply drifting calmly in the gentle breeze. It certainly seemed, from a distance especially, that he wasn't held in place at all--just lolling randomly, though bobbing a bit as the tension on his tethering cables occasionally dragged him down slightly.

I found it strange (for some reason) that he wasn't making any sound. This was the first time I remembered the video function on my camera and put it to work. I lay back on the grass and pointed it into the air, and managed to capture something of the real-life effect:

The only sounds come from the birds, the breeze, and the quiet thrum of traffic (though a there is the loudly distinctive sound of an Italian ambulance blaring by in the background).

Here is a close-up shot, showing the, er, anatomical detail of the piece. I was impressed by the way the skin had been articulated, wrinkles and all; he even had stubble on his chin.

My timing was fortuitous. As I sat watching, the floating body began to bob and sink gently, and I realised they were 'reeling him in'. I had a pretty good view of the process from where I was sitting nearby, on a small knoll. I noticed that many of the cables hanging from him were designed to keep him weighted down in a certain more-or-less horizontal position--most of them didn't reach to the ground.

I enjoyed sitting in the sun, watching this spectacle unfold before me...

Of course I was keen to find out what this art piece was and who the artist might have been, but then never got around to finding out--until I set out to write this blog post. The first link in English was unexpectedly provided by FOX News, where the piece was described as "a [70-foot-long] balloon self-portrait by Polish artist Pawel Althamer". The piece was part of a show being held in the Palazzina Appiani, the building that can be seen in the background in my last photo above.

That's probably the most creative (and certainly the most eye-catching) self-portrait I've ever seen.

"this is not true" (June 22, 2010)

2010-06-25T06:14:00.002-04:00

I found this posted around Queen Street West and Bathurst. Quite enjoyed it.

Update: it seems that the links to civil rights for activists that I posted in the previous entry are now more or less useless, since police have been given new authority to make arrests in or near the G20 "security zone", so that means bad news for anyone "who refuses to identify themselves or agree to a police search".

Mayor David Miller is also chiming in on the stupidity of the decision to hold the G20 downtown. He says he's not blaming the Prime Minister; if that comment is sincere, I suggest he takes a look at the riding map I linked to in my last post.

Police (City) State (June 23, 2010)

2010-06-24T15:24:00.037-04:00

If you're unfortunate enough to be living in Toronto right now, you'd also have to be living under a rock not to know that a major gathering of political leaders is taking place this coming weekend. Yes, the G20 is coming to town, and as a consequence a lot of other regular city dwellers are being advised to either get out (if possible) or hunker down. Those of us with Internet connections are also receiving regular updates on how the summit will (negatively) affect our daily lives.

Above: portable barriers were stacked on many street corners in the downtown area.

Thankfully, the Internet snarks have been out in force, eagerly documenting the various varieties of "FAIL" that have been committed directly and indirectly by the federal government (let's face it: they did the planning. it's a fair cop--pardon the pun).

Above: on Front Street, what appears to be a surveillance device--or possibly a Claes Oldenburg interpretation of the CN Tower.

These include--to list only the most obvious--the now-infamous "Fake Lake", the fence, the hyperbolic trajectory of security costs, the obvious lack of discussion on certain key areas of policy, and the ridiculous decision to locate the summit in the heart of Toronto's downtown--one that will undoubtedly generate more unexpected costs for the city (though it will have no impact on current Conservative support in Toronto, as this helpful map, by Nick Boragina, shows).

Above: at Front Street and Blue Jays Way, the sculpted baseball fans on the Rogers Centre appear to be mocking Stephen Harper's security arrangements.

Meanwhile, some people are still arguing that the G20 will bring in tourist revenue. Not likely, but perhaps businesses can recoup some of their costs via the seething horde of journalists that will descend upon the area over the next few days. There are also plenty of cop-and-doughnut-shop jokes to be made here.

The photos in this post were taken yesterday as I biked around the downtown perimeters, checking out the fence and taking a look at the rumoured masses of police just hanging out in random downtown areas. It's not every day the city goes into lockdown (thankfully), and I had to satisfy my curiosity and try to grab a few souvenir pictures.

Below: corner of Windsor & Wellington Streets.

It's clear why some folks have coined the name "Torontonamo Bay", while even the mainstream media are describing the arrangements as "Fortress Toronto". And yet I've heard numerous anecdotal reports of areas where security arrangements were obviously bound to fail.

Above: "free media"...

Below: A stereotypical target is shielded by the fence.

Of course, another thing that we're expected to expect during these kinds of events is activism--or as it's usually described, "protest".

While biking back uptown from the security fence, I encountered this march (below) moving slowly along College Street. In these pictures, protesters outside the University of Toronto decry environmental abuse by corporations and G20 governments. The U of T has been shut down for the duration of the summit, after being designated as a corral for protests (the original site had been Trinity Bellwoods Park, much further West on Queen Street).

There's been a predictable amount of media coverage whipping up--as per usual--a discursive frenzy over the expected Violence of Protesters; in many news articles the implicit connections are made between security procedures and 'precautions', activist events, and arrests that have been made for unrelated, illegal activity.

Of course, "if it bleeds, it leads", and nowhere is that clearer than in mainstream reporting of anti-Capitalist/anti-globalisation activism. This is important because it is a part of the complex of factors involved in representation of political agendas, and affects the potential interpretations of wider audiences (and, I would argue, their receptivity to new or different political ideas).

Along with an overwhelming (and visible) police presence; physical barriers such as fences, roadblocks and check-points; and the presence of weapons such as water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets, fear-mongering media coverage helps to construct a situation in which legal and legitimate dissent is seen as a 'threat' (to property, especially, and more abstractly--to a way of life or to 'order, to one's political values, to the regular functioning of the city, and so on). Violence is so expected that it's framed as (or implied to be) somehow 'different' when a protest is 'peaceful'.

Interested in photographing the G20 summit this weekend? Here are some tips for photographers regarding the legal technicalities; it's important to know your rights if you're planning to go into and area that is heavily policed, and where photographers are already known to have been harassed by security forces (I was lucky--I only felt myself on the receiving end of suspicious glances). You should also know your rights if you participate in any kind of protest/demonstration or action.

If you're looking for more information about activist events, and/or for some alternative/independent coverage of the events, check out the G8/G20 Toronto Community Mobilization page, and the Toronto Media Co-op; there's also an interesting guide to the G20 for activists. You can check out--and post to--the Twittersphere, where the hashtags #G20 and #G20report are the best with which to label your summit-related tweets, though with the latter tag you'll want to stick to serious comments relating to police action, security, and information relating to activist events (take a look at other tweets to get a sense of what's appropriate); and you can also send your feedback to well-known local blog, Torontoist.

Look Busy (June 7, 2010)

2010-06-19T18:51:00.002-04:00

Pasted to the outside wall of the former Big Bop building at Queen Street West and Bathurst. I took this recently while out for a walk. For me there's something hilarious about this guy (in particular) thinking that looking 'busy' is going to somehow get him off the hook with Jesus. I get the sense that the speech-bubble was added after the skeleton figure, although I could be wrong.