Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Some images from Sunday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade here in Toronto. I didn’t mean to take these photos. It’s just that I had to go through the parade to get home and happened to have a camera in my pocket. Incidentally, the parade taught me a valuable lesson. In an attempt to get interesting angles…
I met The Dragon near Parliament & Winchester. He was standing outside with his Timmies and a cigarette. Why The Dragon? He said it was because his mom gave him a crazy-assed name no one could remember or pronounce. He told me the name and he’s right; I couldn’t remember it or pronounce it if…
This is the last installment of a 10-part series of posts featuring photos from Victoria. I began with touristy photos, and end here as far from touristy as you can get — with street photos.
In west Victoria (at Head & Wollaston), there’s a fence painted like a piano keyboard. Must be the home of a music teacher. In light of my earlier post on the importance of the white picket fence in the annals of photography, I thought I add this (ahem) variation on a theme.
Over time, as I do more street photography, I expect I’ll accumulate enough images to mount a credible “Men At Work” series. To be balanced, I should also mount a “Women At Work” series, too, but that will take longer because there seem to be far fewer women who work in open spaces.
At Parliament & Mill Street, at the northwest corner of the distillery district, there’s a wedge-shaped building, and right at the pointy corner of the wedge is a lighting store, and on display in that lighting store is (or was) a mushroom-shaped lamp.
Sometimes, I like simply to go outside and shoot whatever I see. The idea is to be observant in the midst of the ordinary. To be startled by the commonplace.
I was walking down Parliament Street past Regent Park when I heard a voice: Excuse me. Excuse me. May I ask you a question? There was a man sitting on some steps. He held out his hand and asked for money. I gave him a twonie.
Sometimes I wonder what the mannikins think of us as we walk by their windows. I’ve tried to put myself in their position (to empathize, if you like), but store clerks don’t like when I do that.
‘Tis the season for my Christmas stalking i.e. wandering around malls and shops and photographing people as they do whatever they do to mark this time of year.
Cellphones are so ubiquitous, they’re everywhere. In a previous post, I had suggested that cellphone usage isn’t such a big deal; it merely externalizes a mental habit we’ve always practised. I’m not so sure anymore.
A couple years ago, my wife and I sold our house in the suburbs and rented a condo downtown. It was an experiment. We wanted to test a different lifestyle. More evenings out. More amenities. More walking. Less cars. Less big box stores. Less cocooning.
These shots come from the abandoned rail tracks that run northwest by the Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto
One of the brilliant things about street photography is that the backgrounds (streets, buildings, sidewalks) provide long perspectives. Here are a few shots that try to take advantage of that:
Blurring can imply motion, action, chaos; it can produce a mood; it can evoke feelings of nostalgia.