Happy New Year! (and Happy Birthday to Ruby)

Ruby was born one year ago today. We celebrated as we celebrate most every other day by getting "off road" in the Rosedale Valley and then a run with the dogs in a nearby park.

Happy New Year, all!

Merry Christmas

Wherever you find your miracles -- in a lasting lamp, a virgin birth, a fat guy with gifts, human tribalism evaporating -- may they be realized this holiday.

Merry Christmas.

Winter Balcony

In the midst of a medium-sized winter storm today -- glorious. Sadly Ruby is sick with something and lacks even a hint of enthusiasm; sad because she SO loves snow and the deeper the snow the better.

Picked up the camera for the first time in some, some time; blew off the dust, opened the balcony door and grabbed this shot so at least a winter (if not holiday) themed shot was here.

Sigh

So, today's post was supposed to be a thought out lighted photograph of Ruby, her fresh from a professional grooming. Lots of searching for a groomer (new one, that is), lots of discussion both before today's visit and again before the grooming that we are trying to grow Ruby's coat out to full length -- Porties ARE LONG hair dogs, after all and they have glorious coats. And Ruby has the wonderful wavy version of the coats, that's got a nice Rastafarian look about it.

This cut today is worse, at twice the price, than the disaster which was the last grooming. She now looks NOTHING like a Portuguese water dog and the months of growing out are now on some idiot dog salon groomer's floor. I know I'm prone to embellishment but not in this case; nothing at all like a Portuguese water dog. It's one of those dog cuts where one feels bad for the dog. That she is a working dog is even worse as the fraufrau look of her will seem even sillier when she's ass deep in mud and snow and grass roaring through the hills of the Rosedale Valley or having her ass kicked by one of the twice and three times her weight dogs she likes to run with. Ruby has requested the stupid kerchief tied around her neck by the groomer, which we pulled off of her immediately, be tied across her eyes so no one recoginizes her :)

Does customer service and competence exist anywhere anymore? Everything about the cut that is just wrong is precisely what I articulated several times I did not want. Even after the cut I was being told what I really wanted (oh, you don't want your dog's hair to be long").

For my Christian readers, might you say a prayer to St. Roch that Ruby's hair might grow back with some alacrity :)

Lost and Found

I have always been moved during Remembrance Day ceremonies.

First, as a kid because it was a day that was given a sense of profundity like no other in our house -- from the polishing of the service medals the night before, to seeing my father as flag bearer in the parade or hearing him bark orders to the colour party, or stamping his foot with a smack and snapping his hand to his forehead in a salute, to the loud, alcohol fueled Legion blazer wearing vets around our kitchen table later in the day.

As a young adult I kept that profound respect for the day and the tears normally came with The Last Post wavering from the bell of a cold trumpet or the lonely squawk of a piper. Not aware at all where the melancholy came from I cried simply 'cause it was sad.

When my father died, him doing so with some significant sense of relief on my part (the anger and resentment of a "lost boyhood" ran deep) one cold day every year in November became a healing catharsis for me vis a vis my dad. I came to, well not forgive him exactly 'cause it was his job to be my father and he screwed it up royally, but to understand and give him a break, as it were. He died a broken man in many many respects and that the ultimate falling apart essentially took so long is in a convoluted way a testament to the strength he had, as misdirected as that strength was. It was the strength to keep the war at bay for much of his life; to hide it from himself so he would not just collapse in on himself and so that he might spare those around him, perhaps. I believe his war experiene simply caught up to him; its demons consuming him via his reticence and refusal (inability) to do much at all about it. It was during this period of coming to terms with a dead father I didn't "know" but was resentful of, that I often broke down completely during Remembrance Day ceremonies -- weeping, slobbering yes, for the stupidity which are war deaths, but much much more for my father's loss and for my own resulting from his loss.

I have noted over the past few years that while there remains a strong emotional significance of the day for me -- both as a day of remembrance of war sacrifice, generally, but also as a day to connect to the one thing that allows me to hold onto my father in a positive, respectful way -- I have not been emotionally connected in any true sense. This year in fact I found myself feeling as if I was at the service simply because I expected as much of myself and not much else. A bystander with a 3 cent poppy stabbed into my coat near my heart.

Then with the service all but over, from a couple of blocks away (I attended the Soldiers Tower service at UofT) large guns were fired. The concussion was such that even at that distance it felt like a physical push and car alarms went off in a nearby parking lot. What that powerfully violent firing of the howitzers did to me was to "knock the scab off" and I found myself weeping for my father (the wartime and post-war versions) and for those who faced and fired such weaponry in the theatre of conflict, and selfishly for myself mourning the man who should have been busy being my father but wasn't, as I hurried to try and get a photograph of the guns firing.

Lest we forget.

Hanger on

There area always those who, thankfully, buck the trends; stick around longer than they might otherwise be expected to, while others have drifted on at the hint of the first breeze...

Mind(s)

Sadly, it's been ages since I've taken what I consider a photograph (versus pointing the camera and hitting the shutter for a snapshot or two; the shot posted here qualifying for the latter).

Out of desperation at not actually taking a photograph I've thought about in advance of the shutter release I was playing with the features of the D3 the other day. One of those features being multiple exposures -- in the old days you simply didn't advance the film and shot again (many cameras configured to prevent you from doing just that then).

Anyway I wasn't (I thought) feeling particularly akin to what this double shot captured, but apparently a photo is closer to truth than my conscious assessment of my own mental state...

Can it be?

My political cynicism is not absolute; I voted in the recent federal election, after all, something resembling hope (or a want to punish a shark eyed idiot, perhaps) drove me to the polls despite a surface belief nothing would change.

One thing is surely true of me, the me of the last decade or so, and that would be my Political disinterest.

So it was with some surprise that this morning -- having purposefully not followed the results last night -- that my chest tightened, a catch in my throat appeared along with tears this morning when I saw the headlines in the paper boxes during Ruby's walk: A man of colour, an African American was President elect.

Holy fucking hell.

We'll see if change will result -- an America as envisoned by Jefferson come true, again -- or if the System (the ruling class) simply has a darker face. But the result is amazing (even if symbolic) change enough this morning.

A black man in a white house. There is reason for faith after all.

Glitter Nurse

The health care system could use a little more glitter, me thinks.

Church Street, Halloween, 2008.

boo

Pinhead. Church Street, Toronto, Halloween, 2008

Kris Knight

A not very good at all photograph (too lazy to change lenses, line up the lines, light properly) of a remarkably rendered water colour: "Sad Eyes" by Kris Knight.

You can see more of his work at his website krisknight.com in the "archive" section, which takes you to his flicker account.

This is a small painting in size; magnificently huge in result.

Autumn and Winter (or the dead enjoy the splendor of fall)

Toronto Necropolis cemetery

Autumn Morning

Rosedale Valley, Toronto

A little crisper in higher res, but I'm too cheap to pay for hosting files that large here :)

But, of course, post burial resurrection has gotta be muddy

Daniel Barkley's "Lazarus"

Big in size (35x50 inches), acrylic on canvas, 2001. Until very recently owned by someone else, who is moving and just doesn't have space for many of his larger works. I can't believe this painting now lives with me and resides right now hung behind my office chair.

It remains in tight running for the best painting Mr. Barkley has done to date, and that's saying a lot as the guy has some talent...

Photographed in a dark room with my computer monitor providing illumination. I cranked the ISO as one is able to do on the D3 and shot it handheld.

Bail Out

For some context around the link I'm blogging here, all I can say about the US government's move to "bail out" banks and other financial institutions to the tune of several hundreds of billions of dollars (all the while the rhetoric claiming it's to protect the little guy, or in the parlance of Idiot Pallin, Joe Sixpack) is that if you've got several hundreds of billions to spend put it in a big bag and if the greed brings down the money lenders and their casino, er, stock exchanges, use all that cash to feed your people until the rich get back on their feet.

$700 billion. For banks. Almost enough to make a fellow a libertarian. Or really, quite enough to make US libertarians socialists...

Bye Vash

My glamorous pal, Vash is moving to Vancouver -- moving back, really, as she's lived theresabouts before.

Finally got my butt to the far north (Markham) to take her family's portrait. This shot was the first one fired as we were playing around testing the lighting. This is Vashti's best Vogue cover pose. Her dad was hilarious in his absolute refusal to smile in any of the shots -- I'm not kidding, he refused to smile, on principle of some sort, or just being a dad.

It has been a major dream of Vash's to appear on this internationally read blog :) It's the least I could do as a going away gift.

Bye Vashoooooo!

fire shadow

Playing with artificial light and getting the flash off the camera. Two strobes used here -- main light a Speedlight SB 900 through an umbrella; coloured light added by an SB 800 through a snoot and red gel.

The subject is General whatshisname from Chinese antiquity.

Still

I went in search of the heron I've seen at the Brickworks ponds the last few times I"ve been there. Each time, dog in tow, camera a couple kms away at home, a small heron has stood happily 10 feet away pulling fish out of the pond. This time, no dog, with camera, I see a heron, this one a big one ("blue" likely), but at the same time that three other photographers see it, perched beautifully on a railing facing into early sun. All three other photographers find it importnt to exclaim to each other that they've spotted the BIRD which promptly drags itself airborne and is away -- leaving me with several blurry too distant shots; the others struggling to get their lens caps off.

It was the stilless day I've experienced in a very long time so at least this spiderweb sat still for its photograph. Without absolutely any wind, of course, my macro lens was at home, such is my luck.

Don't you wish you could flap your wings and fly

I am of the camp that aeronautic photographs should be close and tight enough that you can see terrified body lice clinging to the nose hairs of the fighter pilots, or at least be able to count rivet heads on the tail (of the plane, not the pilot).

Since I don't have a 600mm lens you'll have to settle for these, which I find interesting for reasons beyond they're ships of the air in flight.

The two eras of flight formation is a CF-18 (Canada's current fighter jet) with a Spitfire (Britain's fighter of WWII). The jet is dragging its ass like that to keep it's air speed such that its propped ancestor can keep up.

Then we have two water bomers -- make wet not war. The plane is the CL-415, the only plane in the world that can scoop up water and then drop it (on forest fires). There was a pair of them and it's amazing how agile they are even with full tanks. They fill damn fast too -- doing so many times today.

The chopper is a Eurcopter EC-130 which carries (and fills from lakes) a 900 litre bucket for fighting fires.

It was too damn (gloriously) hot and too bright to stick around for the Snowbirds. Hilariously, twice two large formations of Canada Geese flew by about 30 inches off the water and the crowd applauded them as if part of the show :)

Technical Difficulties Originate at the Network

A message very similar to that used to appear on our television screen when I was a kid -- talk about passing the buck.

In any event either blogger or jpgmag has a glitch that now has, if you see an earlier posting below, made disappear the link to the sword swallower shots. In their absence I repost one of my favourites from the series, here.

Pretty Busker

This guy and others were hanging from big balloons doing acrobatic stuff. I just missed the show as he was lowered upside down back to the ground, hanging from a trail of red fabric.

Thought his powder smudge on the nose was cute.

Death of An Angel

A fellow photographer (another Steve) asked that I try this shot in b&w and also suggested the title, which I like as it was that juxtaposition I saw when framing the shot -- the wings (e.g angel) and the old testament violence of the sword...

Anyway, both work I think, although I'm still a bit tenuous with the b&w conversion decisions.

Too Lazy to Post Here, As Well

Please visit here for the other Buskerfest shots:

Toronto Buskerfest 2008

1) Some guy on stilts
2) The Space Cowboy -- a sword swallower who also juggles, which is what he's preparing for here; having a flaming torch thrown to him to juggle along with a couple of sharp objects while blindfolded AND maintaining balance atop a 3 metre unicycle.

I'll post the sword swallowing shots later.

Graffiti

The fiery stuff on a wall next to a parking lot on Queen West. The devil in a back alley nearby. The water from across the street on the wall of a car wash -- marketing not graffiti precisely speaking.

It Just Does Not Get Any Better Than This. Period.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w9F7zf_2mM&feature=related

Don't worry I'm not going to get in the habit of blogging links to youtube, but this has to be shared with those who will not have heard this song or these two singing it (KK wrote it, of course, he being one of the best song writers on the planet) through some misguided idea that C&W music is inferior.

And, sorry, you'll have to cut and paste the URL as blogger refuses to work with Apple or some such technie annoyance.

Moped Heads

Window transparencies, across from Moss Park; an empty retail space.

Electric Blue Flower

This blue's gotta be only more shocking in the rain...

When In Doubt Go to Dog Photos

Ruby asks, "Do you really need ANOTHER photo of me?"

Just one more Wakestock 2008 shot

I love how this guy seems to be jettisoning fuel from his board prior to a rough landing :)

Get me outta here!

Ruby shows her displeasure with veterinary science's lack of creativity in keeping her from her stitches..

The hood came off today, seconds after this shot was taken; the stitches about 30 minutes later. A very ugly scar -- she has already asked about canine plastic surgery...

More Wakestock

Smokin' Crack at Wakestock 2008

Ahem...

Anatomy of a Fall

Wakestock 2008. Toronto Island

(Just a reminder that a click will give you a larger image)

Kid, board, levitation

At the exit from the Island ferry terminal.