Waist-level shot of dogs walking their humans along Toronto's Cherry Beach.

Drama

It's a bit of a cliché but this frame from a British crime drama--captured as I was testing a recently acquired lens--caught my eye for the way the scanlines frame the protgonist, who seems to be making an impassioned plea of some sort.

See, Spot, Run

The family dog snapped on a pedestrian walkway in one of Toronto's ravine parks. The angles and textures of the walkway and overpass provided an interesting opportunity to play with composition but were not interesting subjects in and of themselves.

Having a Ball

This fellow isn't afraid of the cold and in moments, he'll jump into the freezing waters of Lake Ontario to retrieve a tennis ball thrown by his owner.

The Old and the New

Once upon a time, Levi's were the dress uniform of the working poor. These days they're just another luxury item sold through a chain of brand-specific stores in shopping malls around the world. The image below, snapped just west of Toronto's Eaton Centre (a shopping complex that spans an entire city block) shows the contrast between the old and the new. The ad on the side of the bus shelter romances affluent buyers with a nostalgic and highly-glamourized image of a working man (playing on the iconography of Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire) while the stolen shopping cart containing a homeless person's possessions reveals the reality of urban poverty today.

Summer Games

And I don't mean the Beijing Olympics (which are nothing more than a two week infomercial for pharmaceuticals and crappy consumer goods) but the games people play in towns and cities around the world. In most places, the game of choice is soccer, which is ever more popular in North America. The pictures below were taken in a nearby park. The second one features players who have repurposed the outfield of a baseball diamond as there is no soccer pitch at this facility. These images are meant to convey the joy of play which is sadly absent in the increasingly commercialized and ever less meaningful Olympics.

Stock Photograph?

Although this is a candid shot, it looks staged to my eyes. Perhaps it's the upward tilt of the woman's head and her wide smile. Commercial photography, especially stock photography, has a distinct vocabulary and simulations of the expression on this woman's face have become part of a visual vernacular exhorting us to buy things we don't really need. Simultaneously, this shot conveys one of the great benefits of digital photography: the ability to instantaneously view a shot and to share it with others has made the art a far less solitary pursuit than it once was.

Cop Daddy

Continuing with the fetish theme, here's an older gent dressed up in a stylized police uniform. Notions of power and submission to authority are key components of fetish roleplaying. Perhaps by relegating power to the controlled abstracted environment of fantasy it becomes easier to deal with abuses of power and consequent feelings of helplessness they generate in the real world.

Leather Daddy at the Fetish Fair

One of the admirable things about the leather community is that there is far less age-based discrimination than in other gay subcultures. This picture was taken Sunday afternoon at the Church Street Fetish Fair, here in Toronto.

Dashboard Hula Girl

I rendered the following image in black and white because if I'd left it in tacky colours, the image looked way to fake. Anyhow, just enjoy this cheesy dashboard ornament for what it is.

Mill Wheel

I love playing with texture and depth of field to create abstract compositions. Here's a shot of a mill wheel on display in Toronto's Distillery District (just steps away from my studio).

King Street Subway Entrance

The comings and goings at the entrance to the King Street subway station as a Streetcar arrives. One of the advantages of working weekends is reduced congestion on public transit. Were this a weekday afternoon, there would be five times more people in this shot.

Ghosts of the Distillery District

Okay, they're not really ghosts, but people in motion that travelled across the frame while I was taking an extended nightitime exposure. The Victorian allure of the Distillery District adds an extra air of Holmesian mystery. I can hear the hound of the Baskervilles howling in the background. Unfortunately, I didn't bring along my camera today to capture the area after the thunderstorm.

Enza Supermodel

Enza "Supermodel" Anderson was this year's grand marshall at the Pride Parade, among her many accomplishments, she has run for public office, coming in second in the Toronto Mayoralty race in 2000. In 2002, she tried to run for the leadership of the right-wing Canadian Alliance Party, but failed to raise the necessary $25,000. She also writes the On the Move person-on-the-street column for the Toronto edition of the Metro daily paper, in which she profiles a different random Torontonian every day. As always, she looked fabulous performing her duties as this year's honoree.

iPod Silent Dance at Dundas Square

Last night, at the stroke of midnight, Toronto's Dundas Square was transformed into a silent dance hall as dozens of revellers donned earbuds and headphones and danced to the beat of their favourite music at Toronto's first Silent Dance Party, held in conjunction with the city-wide Luminato festival. Under a canopy of lit balloons, the joyous party was as strangely compelling tableau for its silence and the sight of various dancers, each one moving to a different rhythm.

Die Yuppie Scum

Attitude at its finest!

Out on the Street

Two friends chat while waiting for the light to change at the corner of Church and Wellesley

Moleskines and Lamy Alum Fountain Pen

Two Moleskine agendas (repurposed as notebooks) and a Lamy Alum Fountain Pen make for the ultimate creativity kit when it comes to writing (at least for me).