Posts Tagged ‘Toronto’

Trying out my new Olympus PEN E-PL5 camera body with the f1.8 45mm portrait lens I picked up from Downtown Camera during Boxing Week. Here’s a shot I took while passing through Nathan Phillips Square earlier today:

Zamboni Clearing the Ice at Nathan Philips Square

Traveled downtown with Annie and together we watched a bunch of busker acts, including a magician, puppeteer and a fire juggler.

Street Magician at Buskerfest

Puppeteer at Buskerfest

Fire Guy at Buskerfest

Fire Guy #2

Got invited by my step-Father-in-Law to join him at the St. Patrick’s Day parade today. Who doesn’t like a parade? So I went down and joined him, finding a decent spot on Yonge Street just up from Queen and took all of the following shots:

County Down Flag Bearer

St. Patrick Banner

St. Michael’s Drummers

People Waving on a Float

Pair of Belgian Horses Pulling a Float

Musical Performers on a Float

Mayor Rob Ford

Kiss Me I’m Irish Tie

Irish Flag Glasses

Irish Flag Bearer

Irish Dancers

Irish County Flag Bearers

Green Hula Hooper

Flag Bearer at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade

Fisherman on a Float

Fiddler and Bagpiper

David Roy at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade

I put in a request to the Toronto Fire Department for permission to take pictures from the top of the local Firehall’s tower adjacent to Queen and Woodbine in order to take panoramic shots of the local area. This is for a future story in the BTRA newsletter that compares the modern view against that of a panoramic set of shots taken from the Firehall tower shortly after it was built in 1905.

Here are a couple of panoramic views showing the view east from the tower looking towards downtown via Queen Street East:

East Panorama from The Beaches Firehall Tower 1

East Panorama from The Beaches Firehall Tower 2

Compare these to the view from the same vantage point from over a hundred years ago, from a panorama I stitched together taken from shots taken in the tower circa 1905 that were in the Toronto Municipal Archives. You can see the old Woodbine Racetrack, and muddier-looking Queen Street stretching off into a much smaller downtown Toronto core.

East and South Panorama from Beaches Firehall Tower circa 1905

I also took some panoramic shots directly to the south, east and north. Here’s a panoramic shot looking southward:

South Panorama from The Beaches Firehall Tower

Looking westward:

West Panorama from The Beaches Firehall Tower

And looking Northward:

North Panorama from The Beaches Firehall Tower

Unfortunately all of these shots suffer from too many darn trees in the way to properly see the houses and buildings properly. Will have to see if I can request to go up the tower again sometime after the leaves are off of the trees.

I was shown around by local Fireman Mr. Lalonde, who is also an amateur historian who has done a lot of research on the background of the Beaches Firehall. Here he is pointing out some old signatures on the old wooden box that once protected the original clock’s escapement mechanism, with signatures (primarily) of the fireman who worked at the station dating back to the 1910s:

Mr. Lalonde Pointing at Some of the Old Fireman’s Signatures

Firehall Signatures 1

Firehall Signatures 2 (from the 1910s and Later)

One of the more poignant ones was of the fireman who were here at the firehall on 9/11:

Firehall Signatures 3: Firemen Present at the Beaches Firehall on 9/11

Headed downtown soon after sunset this evening to catch this year’s Nuit Blanche outdoor art festival. I took a selection of lenses with me, but in the end I only ended up using two of my fast lenses: my wide-angle 25mm lens and my 50-300mm telephoto.

I headed to the TIFF first, where I saw “Cent une tueries de zombies”, a looped compilation film showing 101 instances of zombies meeting oblivion. Fun, but it didn’t make for great photography so I ventured back outside and headed for the CBC building where I took in Skylum:

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2012: Skylum

Then up to Metro Hall where I caught the artists putting together “Throw Up”:

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2012: Throw Up

Then over to David Pecaut Square to see the crowds taking in “Lifecycles”. I took a number of shots, but the one I liked the most was this one of a couple watching “the grass grow” as someone in the crowd put it:

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2012: Couple Watching “Lifecycles”

Walked toward Roy Thomson Hall where I saw the installation “High Water”. Took many photos of it but few came out the way I hoped. The one I like the most conveys what I think was the right sense of poignancy intended:

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2012: Detail from “High Water”

After that was the crowd favourite “Green Invaders”. Lots of fun:

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2012: Green Invaders

I also liked the collection of neon lighting thrown together in what was called “Invisible Streams: As Above, So Below”:

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2012: Invisible Spaces: As Above So Below

Then up Yonge Street where there wasn’t too much in the way of art installations between King and Richmond — save for this one:

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2012: Crowd at “Button Happy”

…so I doubled-back and went up Bay Street where I caught the edges of the crowded “Fun House”, which included this guy who was gobsmacked by something:

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2012: Gobsmacked

I concluded the night by checking out some of the installation at Nathan Phillips Square, including “World Without Sun”:

Nuit Blanche Toronto 2012: World Without Sun

I then hopped on a streetcar heading east and feeling tired and not wanting to face more crowds, went home.

Went down to the Royal Ontario Museum today with the girls, mainly to see the David Hockney Fresh Flowers show on there, but of course there was the little matter of a Santa Claus Parade that happened to be going by the museum…

Both of my girls are old enough that they don’t find the idea of the Santa Claus Parade much of a thrill, but we did manage to see some of it. Most of the pictures I ended up taking were from the second floor of the ROM, by one of the windows in the dinosaur gallery. None of the pics are as nice as sharp as I would like as a result, since I was shooting through glass, but there’s enough here to give you a sense of the parade from our vantage point.

My favourite shots involved the crowd’s reaction to what was going by, like this close-up of a group of kids with their parents on top of the Gardiner Ceramic Museum across the street from the ROM:

Toronto Santa Claus Parade 03a - Close-up of Crowd on Top of the Gardiner Ceramic Museum

Here are all of the rest of the better shots that came out:

This year I discovered that there was going to be a “pumpkin parade” in the east of the city, much closer to where we live than in Sorauren Park in the West End of Toronto where we have gone in the past.

This was the second annual event for East Lynn, and while the park is smaller than Sorauren there was a very good turnout and so plenty of Jack-o’-lanterns to see. I brought along my camera with it’s fastest lens and a tripod.

There was nothing as spectacular as the “pumpkin killer” or “pumpkin crocodile” that we saw at last year’s pumpkin parade in the West End, but there were a few stand-out carved jack-o-lanterns here too, so as this one of a bat which had been carved into the pumpkin:

East Lynn Park Pumpkin Parade: Carved Bat

Another one which got a lot of notice was this “Jack-O-Layton”, a tribute to the late Jack Layton:

East Lynn Park Pumpkin Parade: Jack-O-Layton

Here’s a selection of some of the other carved pumpkins that were on display:

Took the girls down to see some of this year’s Nuit Blanche late last night. We headed down to Nathan Phillips Square and basically roamed around the area and saw (and heard) what we could see.

Here’s a couple of my favorite shots from the evening:

Nuit Blanche: Cardiac Combustion Chamber 1

While you can’t really see it in this shot so much, the drummer was playing within an “exploded” car (think the technical drawing version of “exploded”), with all of its parts suspended by wires, providing enough space for the percussion equipment.

Was annoyed by another photographer who waded in past the crowd barrier and took close-up shots of the drummer. In so doing he managed to become a largely blobby blur in most of my shots, and worse, encouraged others to do the same. So this shot and one other were the best I could do.

I also like this shot of a kid pointing at something while visiting the sound+light display that accompanied the Chevy Volt ad display:

Nuit Blanche: Volt Promo Tent 1

Many more shots were taken, the rest of which you can see below:

Vanessa joined me for a trip downtown to see this year’s Word on the Street festival in Queen’s Park circle. Gotta love a city that devotes a day-long festival to all things book-ish. 😉

Word on the Street: Robert J. Sawyer Autographing a Book for a Fan

Word on the Street: Kids Checking Out Graphic Novels

Word on the Street: More Nouns!