Coffee Lover

Wandered down to Queen Street West for the first time in months on this glorious Sunday afternoon and decided to do some street shooting. This gentleman was sitting on the stoop of a walk-up enjoying a cup of coffee from the franchise next door.

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

Dreaming

Multiple exposure using the coloured flash on a Holga 120 CFN

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.

Cyclist on Queen Street West

One of the challenges of street photography is getting your camera settings right. This isn't always possible, especially if you're paying attention to one thing and something entirely different but much more interesting suddenly happens in your peripheral vision. You may find yourself swinging around and going from photographing a still life to capturing motion and there's not enough time to adjust. So you point the camera, press the shutter button and hope for the best.

Welcome to the Porta-Mall (Buskerfest '08)

I'm getting that sense of déjà vu: that been there, done that, bought the overpriced t-shirt feeling that hits when I find myself in shopping malls or when I’m driving past the umpteenth complex of big box stores that dot the 401. It’s not a comfortable or comforting thought: I’m being sold the same old junk by the same people, except that I’m not in a shopping centre: I’m out on Toronto’s Front Street ostensibly enjoying Buskerfest, a four-day-long public festival dedicated to street performers from around the world.



Sure, the whole thing receives massive corporate sponsorship. There are bank and TV network logos plastered everywhere. And I can live with that. After all, I’m savvy enough to see past the barrage of advertising and I do ascribe to the notion that the wealthiest segments of our society (be they individuals or corporations) should pay to bring art to the masses. But I can’t see the artists for the all the junk for sale. For every performance space there are at least a dozen merchandise tents. Buskerfest, it seems, is not so much an festival of the arts as it is an open air shopping mall.



And just as your typical mall has a standard set of vendors hawking a standard set of wares, Buskerfest features the stalwarts of the urban street fair scene. Here’s your purveyor of mass-produced African sculptures. There, there and there are your sellers of “handmade” jewellery assembled with store-bought beads and baubles. Walk half a block for crappy five-dollar sun glasses. Stop at the corner for made-in-China hempware that has nothing to do with sustainable development. You get the picture. Food and merchandise vendors line either side of the street and the bulk of pedestrian traffic on the closed-off thoroughfare gravitates to these tents. Sadly, it seems, the urge to shop is far greater in most people than the desire to witness a performance.

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.

Summer Dress

Taking a cue from The Sartorialist, I snapped this passer-by in a breezy summer dress. It takes a great deal of self-confidence to pull off this look and this has left me wondering whether the clothes make the person or vice-versa. How do you feel about your clothes? Does your wardrobe boost your confidence level or does your innate sense of self-worth shine through no matter what you're wearing? Do the clothes make you? The other way around? Or a little of both?

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.

Dandelion Puff

I bought a set of diopter filters (aka the poor photographer's macro) on Craigslist today and went out to have some fun. The thing with diopters, as opposed to real macro lenses, is that they create extremely shallow depth of field, that is a very small front-to-back distance within which things stay in focus. This poses both technical and artistic challenges and one has to be very patient and creative in selecting those elements of the image that will be in focus and those that will not.

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.

Elsha Leventis - Eye to Eye Variations on a Theme Parts I & II

Elsha Leventis is a Toronto painter and art therapist who is currently exhibiting at the Red Eye Gallery in the Case Goods Building, as well as at the second floor of Balzac's Café (both of which are located in Toronto's historic Distillery District - 55 Mill Street). Her most recent work is a series of abstract oil paintings on Mylar and glass inspired by the physiognomy of the human eye. Her work is mesmerizing. The application of oils to Mylar enables Leventis to create rich and inviting organic textures that draw in the viewer and invite closer attention.

If you're in the Queen City, I urge you to check out her work.

Click here for the exhibit schedule and here for Leventis's site.

LuminaT0 Flowers

Leaving the studio in the late evening, I discovered that the Distillery District had been transformed into a giant audiovisual installation, featuring projections on the sides of of the walls buildings, which were illuminated by rows of LEDs casting colourful light upward and causing the flowerboxes in the edifices along the main stretch to look like this: