I want to believe

Apartment, vacuummed even

Much like the sighting of a UFO, the sasquatch, or Nessie it seems that if I tell someone I'm going to clean my living space I get responses like "Yeah right", "Sure you go on and keep believing that.", "o-kaaay" (said the person as he/she slides across the wall and out of the room).

Granted one of the biggest sceptics would be Zee, my electrocuted lab partner, and room mate of years past. If anyone, he would be the one to not believe or comprehend my saying "I'm going to clean my apartment" as "I'm going to go to sleep" or "I'm going to optimize my hard drive". These are actions I have taken in the past and for Zee are things totally within my grasp of activities.

To pick up a vacuum, mop, broom, wear gloves to scrub tiles, or take a tooth brush (not current) to get guk out from around the sink faucet is rare. Very rare indeed. Zee has seen, first hand, the results of generations of pack rat activites or "saving", as some people like to call it. It's no wonder that his head fills with negativity and nay saying. Cheetahs don't change their spots after all.


bathroom - could be a set for Kubrick's 2001.

Much like the UFO there are times that I will clean (YES CLEAN) but usually it takes place when no one is watching or is present. I must be really bored, I am procrastinating from doing something else, or there's a female involved. The later is a great motivator and as sad as it sounds if it weren't for the opposite sex I'd probably be living my dream as a couch potato.

When your dream is to buy a TV projector to beam on the ceiling to watch movies without getting out of bed, and without leaning at odd angles you know you're taking couch potatoing to new levels. As an aside I haven't figured out the eating thing as I can't eat while lying down. Perhaps if you were in a hospital bed and the ceiling curved so that the image from the LCD projector bolted to your bed was always at a perpendicular axis to your eye line.... obviously you would need a conveyor belt to bring the food from a refridgerated or microwavable area so you wouldn't have to get up.... except to go to the bathroom. There's always the jar option (for doing number 1 at least)... but I digress.

Back to the cleaning entry...
I figured I should really have included a newspaper so you'd know the images were current but if big foot wasn't carrying the paper than why should I pay the dollar to try to convince you the reader.


Shelf organization at it's best.

In case you're wondering why the images are in black and white, the answer is two fold...
a) I wanted to capture the feel of the big foot photos (I suppose I could have shook the camera a bit to give it that blurry feel).
b) my D70, as of today, is in the shop (Nikon) getting it's sensor cleaned so I had to shoot this with the 990. The D70 doesn't take black and white images anyway.

I found out today that normal cleaning of the D70 costs $80. However Nikon (at least Nikon Canada) allows you to get your first cleaning for FREE. Woo Hoo! It's still a trek to get out there but it couldn't have better timing. The turn around time for a cleaning, for a non-NPS owner is 48 hours.

NPS stands for Nikon Professional Services. In order to take part in the NPS program you are required to own two PRO camera bodies and at least two PRO lenses. You also have to have a bunch of tear sheets to be considered for the title. Right now the only PRO digital body is the D2X. yikes.

Back to cleaning the apartment... Just so people don't think I've been possessed by some Molly Maid, my computer desk is still in it's current state of stuff heap-ness. I said I would clean I didn't say it would last more than a day.

It is possible that while visiting Cupcake for christmas she played some christmas music with brain washing encryption giving me urges to neatify my apartment. We'll never know.


Jingle Bells, Apartment Smells,
Make it nice and clean,
Use a scrubber and some soap
vacuum dust that's seen.

repeat first verse

Scrubbing all the surfaces,
making your face seen,
it's not in a mirror,
it's the toilet clean.

Dirt continued

The Toronto Skyline

I'm not really sure what it is but I've become obsessed with the cleaning of things. First the camera, then the bathroom, and now my apartment in general. Cleanliness is a subjective thing. For some, a messy room is a sock on the bed, for others it's the cockroaches complaining there's no room to walk around. My apartment is some where inbetween. Lots of socks, no vermin. I do have a stack of dirty laundry that seems to be growing an an exponential rate. I wonder if they make laundry baskets with wheels?

It's amazing how much junk accumulates on ones desk. CDs, business cards, pens, papers, tiny receipts, elastic bands, dry markers, compact flash containers, compressed air can, batteries, maps (antwerp and Toronto), printer manuals, music CDs, calendar, gum, space invaders peg board, charlie the tuna bobble head, envelopes, post-its, and a Manatee Protection Tip pamphlet. This is just from a precursory look next to my keyboard. Who knows what lurks under the layers of stuff? Oh hey, a waterproof battery container. I was looking for that a while ago. It seems the next thing to organize and clean will be my desk.

So is there a full moon out? What's with this obsession to clean all of the sudden? Your guess is as good as mine.

There's Dirt Everywhere!

An old Mini Located behind the Rhino (resturant/bar on Queen street west).

The Hello software is acting up again and so I've had to resort to using the Blogspot default add a picture icon. As you may have noticed I've been getting behind on the blogging thing. Part of it is do to being busy trying to look for work and the other part is just not going out and taking pictures. WHAT? Not taking pictures? No, hell has not frozen over but my camera has been bugging me a bit with all the dirt that has collected on the sensor. It's annoying to have the odd dirt dot on pictures and the dust specs are so small you can't really see them on the sensor.

In an effort to keep the sensor clean I have been using an air blower with the camera upside down trying to get the dust, dirt, lint, or whatever the stuff is off the sensor and out of the camera body. It got to the point where the little particles became so annoying that I went to the camera store and bought some sensors swabs. Basically little squeegies for you camera.

It seemed to good to be true. For only $30.00 you could get a kit to clean your sensor. The kit contains three squeegies and some fluid that doesn't leave any residue. After reading the instructions about five or six times I gingerly applied the stuff to the sensor. The good news is that it got rid of the big particles of lint, dirt, whatever. The bad news is that it left a bunch of muck on the sensor. No residue my ass. It also did not get rid of the biggest piece of dirt which I think has been welded into place probably by moisture condensation. Also little hairs were left on the sensor from the swab fibres. Thankfully I managed to get the fibres off with the air blower.

I am bringing my camera into Nikon first thing monday which is really what I should have done in the first place. The only thing that stopped me was the turn around time being so slow. They took two months to fix my Nikon 990 and the cost was more than getting another 990 on ebay. If they can't clean it (for a hundred bucks) I'm going to have to look at buying a new sensor. Crap!

The product to be weary of is by American Recorder. It's the digital sensor cleaning kit. In all fairness they do have a warning to use at your own risk. As a user of the product I would like to warn anyone thinking about using it and tell them not to.

Office Mishaps

Bad day at work? Good thing you weren't here.

For some bizarre reason (and maybe to tie this text entry in with the blog picture) I started reading some reports on injuries at work. The most common injury in an office environment is falling. Here are the more common occurances...

- tripping over an open desk or file drawer
- bending while seated in an unstable chair
- tripping over electrical cords or wires
- using a chair or stack of boxes in place of a ladder
- slipping on wet floors
- loose carpeting
- objects stored in halls or walkways
- poor lighting

According to the same report office workers have 2 to 2.5 times the disabling injury rate of falls compared to non-office types. So I guess it pays not to work in an office environment if one wants to improve the odds of not falling and becoming disabled.

So to all you blog readers out there using a tiny table for a ladder/step stool, and you know who you are, stop using the tiny table.

Fun with Photo Shoots

Liz Andrejeva - Model

I've spent the previous few days prepping for today model shoot. Finding a studio space, moving a bunch of gear to the studio location, charging all the batteries I own, cleaning all the camera components. The later taking the most time as I tried to get rid of some dust on the sensor. What a pain that was.

Overall, pretty much everything fell together. After setting a date with the model to shoot I managed to find a make up artist. A Leanna Spina who just happened to be available. A studio space became available and volia instant photoshoot.

I met Leanna a while ago before at one of Darryl's Film Festivals. I'm really not sure what she was doing then but for some reason that fact that she was a make up artist stuck with me. It was later when Amanda recommended her that my brain clicked "Oh yeah, hey, I know her."

The photo shoot lasted about 5 hours with a small break in between. I got a few good shots in but I think my hit to miss ratio could have been better. I suppose that comes with experience.

ADDED NOTE: Oooh, hey, the photo's color scheme works with the new blog interface.

They seem innocent enough

Asha, person of 2, contemplates using her mind control over an unsuspecting adult.

Anyone who has kids will tell you, the single guy, that any kid can break the most determined adult. Even in Star Trek Picard told Riker countless times that kids were not his greatest area of expertise. The captain of a starship, the guy who survived the Borg. Move aside Cardassians, with a kid Picard probably would have said "three lights" within the hour.

How many times have you gone to a restaurant where the kid is running around, throwing food, and screaming like a banshee? For me it seems like a lot.There have been times where I wanted to go over and throttle the kid right after the parent who seemed to not even notice what was going on.

That said today I went over to Cupcakes place to help move some stuff around. They were making room for the new addition (to the family) and were getting the nursery ready for the next incoming. One of the jobs that popped up that wasn't really advertised when the call went out was to entertain the existing kid, Asha.

Moving boxes, taping up walls to paint trim, driving mom to home depot to get paint. These were pretty easy compared to the Kid. Asha, an adorable little person, with a big head and big eyes, like most kids, have a undefined amount of energy. Running back and forth, shaking up and down, squealing with glee, I was amazed that she could still have energy to ask people questions, play, and jump up and down some more.

After reading a tiny 10 page book to her about a mouse on a farm five times I got pretty tired. How do people find energy to entertain kids for so long? Lifting boxes and driving around town didn't seem that bad. Perhaps it's because when you're with kids you always have to be on your feet. They ask you questions you don't know the answers to and if you do you might not really know how to answer them in terms they would understand or that the parents would approve of.

The next time I see some kid in a restaurant that's quietly eating with it's parents, I think I'll tell the parents that they're doing a great job. Then, after leaving the restaurant, I'll be happy to be back to being single with no kids. Aaaah... the quiet.

Egg Sighting

A watched pot... blah blah blah

What a better way to spend a friday the 13th than waking up early and shooting eggs boil. Seeing water frozen in time is always an interesting thing to look at. In this case the pot looks like it was filled with a blob of hair gel.

The reason I was shooting eggs in boiling water was to work in my flash. I wanted to see how it operated under various conditions. What shutter speeds I could use and how fast it took to recharge for the next picture. As far as the subject mattter...I've been thinking about eating an egg salad sandwich for the past few days now.

TIP: Instead of using mayo in your sandwich try using the Lick's Guk.

As I didn't have any mayonnaise in the fridge I used the substance that seemed to resemble it the most (in my fridge) that being GUK. Since I didn't have any Lick's burgers. GUK was tested and came out a winner. Who knew?

Mister Fish

Mister Fish looks at me looking at him

My sleep schedule has finally evened out with me getting up at 4am and going to sleep at 7pm. It's still al little wonky but at least I'm getting the 8 or 9 hours of sleep in a row. The hilight of the day was to visit the friend that has to do taxes and shoot his fish while he sorted through the little pieces of paper.

I'm not really sure what the fish's name is. It's the same fish I shot last March. Last March as well as today I managed to get the name of the fish only to forget it almost instantly. Hey not every day can be packed with action, drama and bikini girls. This year I thought I'd try shooting Mr. Fish with less even lighting to give that more dramatic look.

When you watch movies and you're way down under water with a submarine it's pretty dark. This was the look I was trying to achieve. As the room with the aquarium was pretty well lit I had to use a fast shutter speed to make the aquarium dark. I then used my sb-800 to light the fish from the side. I forgot to bring my flash cables so I used the SB-800 in slave mode while covering the flash on my camera with my hand so you don't get any reflection in the glass.

After a few flashes which would normally stun most fish, I would think, Mister Fish just floated there looking at me (see above picture). As fish don't smile I wonder if he was pissed off, trying to pose, or wondering where the hell the fish food was.

BagelHot Up and Running

Yikes! How much time did I spend working on that?

Yesterday I worked on my web site for 14 hours straight (4am to 6pm). Mainly looking through my insano photo archives for photos to put up. Until I can find better ones the ones posted will have to do.

Well okay not all of my time was working on the web page I spent a few minutes toying with John's online magnet letter board (you can too just click on the following link).

To see the new web site and maybe a few new pictures go to http://www.bagelhot.com/.

NOTE: The web site has not been tested for microsoft explorer so you might get weird results.

It's a New Year!

Toronto Raptors play the Florida Magic at the Air Canada Centre

First I would like to say Happy New Year to all the folk out there reading this. For the last ten days I've been pretty much a hermit staying inside. Partially due to feeling like I was coming down with a flu, partially from not wanting to go out into the grey, cold, weather, and partially due to watching a bunch of TV shows I picked up on boxing day.

Not to say I haven't ventured out at all. I was lucky enough to get invited to Andrew Majtenyi's birthday party at the Air Canada centre where a bunch of us watched a Raptors basketball game. I've also been getting up at weird early hours (from working those weird night hours a few weeks ago). To keep myself occupied I've been going downtown to shoot.


New fallen snow around 5am


Old City Hall


Bay Street (notice the old city hall looks right down this street)