Let's go fly a kite

Dave and Rebecca on their crack berries.

A few friends of mine met at the Pearl down at the Queen's Quay terminal for dim sum. If you haven't been there I would say that it is one of the best places for dim sum in all of Toronto. It's a bit pricier than other restaurants but if you can afford it it's well worth it. If you do go make sure you order their coconut custard cream dessert rolls. Yummy!

Some stuff I saw before meeting up with Hilary...

Mullet man

Harbourfront fish

I think it was Hilary's idea to go to the islands. I was my idea to fly some kites. The wind was pretty low (maybe 2 to 3 on the beaufort scale). Depending on where we were on the islands the wind went down to a 1. Not too great for kite flying.

We had both brought our bikes and cycled across the island from Wards to Hanlan's Point(the clothing optional beach to be exact - no we didn't get naked). The funny thing is that the sun drenched soccer field on Ward's was probably the best place to fly in terms of wind. As we biked across the islands the wind was either too low or the crowds of people to high.

Part of the fun, for me anyways, was just exploring the islands, eating the food, and seeing what there was to see. Took a few photos of Hilary and various island locations as you can see from the following photos...


Hilary's hot dog from the gravity cafe

Hilary in a giant seat made from a tree stump

The Ward's Island beach

The sucky non visual sound making machine

Between Wards and Centre Island, it's nearer to Centre Island, there's a New Adventures in Sound Art installation. At first look it looks pretty cool. The magic wears off once you try it out. The boxes in front of the peddles are too high for short people to see what's in them and there's no visual reference to see that you're doing anything. This is especially annoying if there's more than one person peddling. Can you even control what's going on? There's no signage to let you know what's happening so it's too obscure for the average Joe to figure it out. Boo, I say.

The pirate ship needs wind

My new pirate ship kite that I picked up at the local drug store for only $20. It's 3D even. Although needs a lot more wind to fly. It never got off the ground for longer than a few minutes.


Hilary's diamond kite takes to the air...

...and water.

My delta kite is lost in the brightness of the sun

The clothing optional beach sign

Biking home past the Gardiner

Running into Hamilton people

Allison and Trevor

I found myself at the Pheasant Plucker this morning for breakfast with Melanie and Nancy. I had the big breakfast which had the usual eggs and meat like things but also came with HAGGIS!!! I've always wanted to try out haggis some where and when I finally did I was disappointed somewhat in that it resembled and tasted like liverwurst. Not that it tasted bad, I like liverwurst, just not something I thought it would taste like. Perhaps it didn't meet up with my exotic food expectations.

It was a day of eating. After consuming the big breakfast I met up with Craig and Leah for Mexican food at the Mex-I-Can restaurant across the street from Melanie's studio. Later on back in Toronto I ended up going to Xelua to meet Darryl to give him a CD of photos from his Zine launch and consume more food. By the end of the day I just wanted to roll into bed and sleep feeling much like a beached whale.


Mary at Mex-I-CAN

In case you're wondering. The photos from hamilton shown here in this entry are the people I happened to bump into while eating said food.


Darryl in the HLAP headquarters

Random Technology and Mask Making

Hilary waiting in front of Rol San.

Met up with Hilary for a dim sum lunch at Rol San. Then, it was off to Best Buy where I took a look at a GPS, the Garmin 250w. It was on sale. I had bought one last week for Marc's birthday, kind of got hooked on it, and thought I'd pick one up for myself. I had asked the person I was dealing with at Best Buy that week what the difference was between the 250w model in the box as opposed to the 250w model in the blister pack. They told me it was the same model and that I could get either one of them.

This week was a bit different. The salesperson said they were both the same but they were sold out of the model in the box. When I went to pick up the 250w in the blister pack it was $40 more. The flyer that I had expired on the 3rd, yesterday. Drat! I checked this week's flyer and it was in there again on sale for $40 lower than the regular price . yea! I showed the ad to the Best Buy person. She scanned in the blister pack and told me it wasn't on sale only the model in the box was on sale. Boo. In the end I didn't pick up the GPS.

A little about the GPS. My Telus cell phone has a GPS in it. It costs $10 a month to use it. Not that I get lost much and as I usually have a map on me you might ask, "Why in the world do you want a GPS?". Yes, It's true, the GPS does tell you where you are. Want street you're on, how fast you're moving, and the direction you're pointing. It also can tell you where the closest gas station is, where the nearest theatre is, and give you a constantly updated route to a destination (including directions to a postal code).

"So why not just use you call phone?"

As it turns out the cell phone GPS does not work once you go over the border to the States due to roaming fees and a different network. What good is that then? I want a GPS not a CPS (Canadian Positioning System). Plus an on going charge of $10 would buy me a substandard GPS in two years as opposed to just buying a real one. Yes it's that kind of logic that keeps me up at night.

In the end I couldn't justify an impulse purchase for $260.00. It'll be compass and maps for me for the next little while. Hilary on the other hand bought a 2 gig shuffle.


Hilary's newly acquired shuffle.


Adam and Jay

On the way to Hamilton I bumped into Adam and Jay. They were taking the subway and had gotten into the same car as me. Just another random occurrence of bumping into people I know. According to my friends this happens a lot to me. What's a lot?

Meanwhile in Hamilton I got stuck outside Melanie's studio. Melanie wasn't there yet and Jackie didn't hear the door bell ring (if it did ring - supposedly it's a bit wonky). So while waiting for Melanie to arrive I walked over to the nearby parking lot and walked up to the top floor to shoot the sunset. It kept me busy for about 20 minutes before going back to the studio where I bumped into Lydia calling up to Jackie on her cell phone.


Sunset over Hamilton

The masks were made out of strips of cheese cloth and plaster bought in a ready to go roll. All you had to do was cut out the strips, add water, and plop them onto a petroleum jelly coated face. The petroleum jelly would ensure that when the mask was removed (once it was dry) your eyebrows (and any other facial hair) remained intact to your face.


Jackie gets her face plastered


Me in Plaster (Photo by Melanie Gillis)

The plaster took about 15 minutes to dry before you could remove it. Add to that time the application of putting the strips on you were there in the same position for about half an hour. It was pretty relaxing having people work on your face while you leaned back. Except when plaster seemed to gravitate toward my closed eyes the whole process was quite relaxing.


Lydia checks for unsymmetrical imperfections in her mask

Once the plaster had more time to dry (off your face) some of us added more plaster to make the shell a bit more durable and smooth. Jackie, Amanda, and Lydia also started painting their creations. By this point I was just happy to take photos and dint' want to get my hands dirty again.


Amanda's red painted hands

It was almost 3am when we decided to call it a night on the mask making. Amanda's hands had red painted all over them that reassembled dried blood. We tried photographing the hands for prosperity. The lighting was odd. I figured out it was some of the studio's light seeping into the photo. I turned the lamp off which solved the lighting problem but that put us in complete darkness and I couldn't focus. This is where a small flash light would have helped. Above is the blurry hand photo.


"That's not Kleenex."

As a final note... on the way to Melanie's in Lydia's car I found this package that at first thought was kleenex. I thought I'd share as the writing on it gave us in the back seat (Amanda and me) a few chuckles. I think it was the usage of the word "sneaky". Maybe we were just tired by that point.

Day of the Foodies

Emmanuel meets me at the Varsity theatre to see Hancock.

Another day of sleep. I woke up in the afternoon and found myself chatting to Emmanuel through facebook. As a spontaneous "Let's do something" move I suggested we go see Hancock. that movie was entertaining with a part that surprised even me. That's all I'm going to say. Well that and that it doesn't have your typical hollywood ending. Okay I've said too much.

After the movie we decided to go for sushi. We walked over to the Bloor Sushi on Bloor near Brunswick. It was packed with a dense line crammed in the door way. I offered up a roti place, the Roti Palace to be exact. I was surprised to find out Emmanuel, a foodie, had not been there before.


Emmanuel with a freshly made goat roti.

Located at 744 Bathurst (M5S 2R6), it's a restaurant that's been there for as long as I can remember, which is another reason I can't believe Emmanuel had never been there before. Also it's probably one of my favorite roti places in all of Toronto coming in close to Island Foods.

It's all about the shell. There are some places that have been recommended to me and while the innards of the roti are good the shell is hard. The shell should be freshly made and soft. Good enough to eat all by itself. The Caribbean Roti Palace delivers.

Much later on that night while working I found myself going out for a stroll to the local subway sandwich store. Feeling a bit peckish I noticed the sign in the window. Lobster sandwich!!! For some reason the subway near me doesn't serve a seafood sub. Usually comprised with mayo and that fake crab meat, abalone.


The lobster sandwich!

The price for the lobster sandwich was pretty steep. At 16.98 for a foot long sub I thought it would be really good. My stomach started rumbling and before my brain could question what was going on I was in the store ordering the thing on Italian herbs and cheese bread.


My lobster sandwich!

Eating the sub was disappointing. The lobster had no real chunks to it. It was more like eating flaked tuna. In fact it kind of tasted a bit like tuna. While filling, I felt the sandwich was pretty unsatisfying.


Lobster sandwich cross section up close

Strolling round on Canada Day

The church sign board at Bloor and Avenue Road

Went to see a documentary called "Encounters At the End of the World" with some friends in the afternoon. Before that I was sleeping. Been getting a lot of sleep in the day time lately. The movie was about a guy taking a trip down to Antarctica, interviewing the people working there, and seeing what there was to see. Overall the movie was quite interesting and even had humorous moments thrown in. I'd love to go down there just to take photos of Shackeltons old cabin. Then again my camera would probably freeze at those temperatures.


Adam, Chris, Anya, and Albert

After the movie we wondered around yorkville and passed some fans of the Jonas Brothers. A group of teenage girls sporting various teen magazines and hovering around the hotel in hopes of a glimpse or autograph.

We eventually disbanded at Indigo. Adam and I met up with Jay and the three of us ate and met some other people to go see the Ontario Place fireworks from just south of High Park.


If the subject is still, move the camera.


Shot sans tripod


Fireworks set off on the beach

High Dynamic Range

Drenched from the evenings down pour of rain

My morning started off with me waking up around 4:30am. It's kind of shocking as my alarm clock wasn't on. I just woke up. It was raining a few hours, maybe minutes earlier. The street was still damp. Since I was up I decided to hike over to the park at the end of the street in my slippers with my tripod slung over my shoulder and my camera in my hand.


Catching the sun rise on the petals

I took a few photos of plant life and the sun started coming up. Shot a few more photos and decided to continue my photography back in the back yard of where I live. The condensation of morning dew on the car looked interesting so I set up the tripod to try to shoot a HDR photo. About half way in Pumpkin jumped up onto the hood. I took a few photos of the cat, waited for him to get bored and leave (I didn't have a pork chop dangling around my neck so I figure the cat would get bored quickly). He did and wandered off to sniff some plant life.


Spikey flora


Pumpkin getting in the way of my HDR shoot

I started from the beginning with my reframed shot of the car in the drive way. The results follow...


High Dynamic Range Photos

HDR, or High Dynamic Range is a method of shooting photos that captures just that, a large range of light going from really dark to really light, more so than your eye can detect without adjustment and what your computer display can show

Take a look at the following photos. The first one is exposed for sunlight bouncing the wall. It's really bright compared to the other things in the photo so if it's properly exposed everything else falls to darkness.


The wall properly exposed.


The sky properly exposed

Now let's say we expose from something less bright like the sky. We see more of the car but the wall starts to go to white, it's becoming over exposed.


The car properly exposed

Next we'll try to shoot the car with the proper exposure. Notice now that the sky and the wall are completely washed out.



The resulting HDR file with the light range squished into visible space.

In the converted HDR image you can now see detail in both the wall and the car. I have taken the light values from the HDR file and squished them into a range that the display (in this case computer monitor) can show.

Shooting HDR photos with a normal camera requires that you shoot a number of photos at different exposures from the same angle and that your subject is not moving. Well the subject can be moving but you might have odd results. The photos are then combined (perhaps in photoshop) and viola, a single HDR file is made.

Dumpling City

Ding Tai Fung (located at 3235 Hwy. 7 E. near Woodbine in Markham), it's a bit of a haul to get out there but it's easier for Zee, Juley and the kids as it's closer to where they live. While I don't consider it dim sum by traditional standards (they don't have the shrimp dumplings) it's a nice change from the standard dim sum we've had in the last few years, plus the dumplings with soup in them are addictive.


Zee and his girls Madison and Michaela

I'm always amazed at how big the kids are each time we see them and what they're doing. Michaela, Zee's older of the two, has quite the expressive face and is pretty entertaining to watch.

School Yard Scramble

Reffrey Dollmer does lunges

This week in Hamilton the HCRG put on their first themed roller derby, the School Yard Scramble. Sporting short shorts, knee or thigh high socks, pony tails, short skirts, and handle bar moustaches... wha?

Out of the three teams, The Hamilton Harlots, the Steel Town Tanks girls and the Deathrow Dames, two teams were created using random picking. The two resulting teams being the Hopscotch hooligans (white) and the Teeter Slaughters (black).

The first period seemed like a normal game devoid of big hits. Imants, one of the spectators thought it was because none of the skaters wanted to do any harm to fellow team players. The second and third periods felt more like a harlem globe trotter game missing the Sweet Georgia Brown soundtrack. Despite the fake fights ensuing and the fake hits, Punchy still got a real dislocated shoulder, and Beater Parker a leg injury.


Miss Carriage flies over Tropi-kill Punch

The final score was 84 Hopscotch hooligans to 63 Teeter Slaughters.

Look Up, Look Down

Ants in the nearby park.

There are a lot of people, especially in Toronto1, that go places in automatic mode. That's to say they don't look up, down or around at things. They're in zombie mode from start point A to destination point B. I thought at first that it was a big city thing. Don't make eye contact, you might actually have to talk to someone.

That idea went away when I travelled to London, UK. People there seemed to look around making eye contact. Perhaps it was just me, as a tourist you tend to look around more. Kind of like a child seeing the world for the first time. After a while things start to look the same, maybe even repetitive and maybe even not interesting anymore. Perhaps the reason we don't look around anymore is because we expect to see the same stuff. Our brain thinks "yeah, it's that building again" and get we get lazy, we don't look up. Then the odd day does come and the ice cream store that used to be that building has been torn down and now condos have taken it's place. Then we say "When did that happen?" or "How long has that condo been there?".

Another example of this is watching kids on the moving subway look out the front car onto the tracks zooming toward them. It seems they can look for hours. Meanwhile the adult sitting next to them is sleeping through the trip. The adult doesn't see the extra service holes, exits to the street. It all seems like the same concrete passing by.

As a photographer shooting for a while this can be quite demanding. What do you shoot if you've shot it all before? I've even talked to photographers that don't want to shoot _____ anymore because it's all been done (by someone else even). Kind of sad really. I suppose the trick is to find that angle you haven't shot yet. It might be the same pose but a different person, or the same neighborhood, another sports game, or another similar event.

So today with not much to do I wandered around the neighbourhood to see what interesting photos I could find. Forcing myself to look at the familiar and trying to find a different way of capturing the moment. There were two things I noticed right off the bat. A bunch of ants swarming around on some pavement and a cat in the drive way.

The ants were in a large dense cluster that tapered off in a 30cm radius. I wondered if someone had dropped something sweet (like pop or ice cream). At closer inspection you could see the queen ant nearby. What was going on there?

The cat in the drive way was Felix observing his world from the cellar window. I've taken a photo of him before but this time he had his paws out and not just his head. He had the same stunned look though.


Felix, the cat next door.