Marinating Ideas

  • Red & Misguided

    Red & Misguided by The Torontonian
    Red & Mis­guid­ed a pho­to by Mauri­cio Alas. A larg­er ver­sion can be seen on Flickr.

    As part of my first set of class­es teach­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, I took my small class through a quick tour of the inner city. Hop­ing the vibrant urban qual­i­ty of Kens­ing­ton Mar­ket and a few graf­fi­ti laden back-alleys to serve as a unusu­al type of inspi­ra­tion for my stu­dents.

    Going through the basics can be fun as you might actu­al­ly remem­ber the ‘WHY’ some­thing is done, which may help, espe­cial­ly if you are a sea­soned pho­tog­ra­ph­er to tweak your style, even if it is tem­porar­i­ly. As once every­thing is mas­tered or any habit becomes sec­ond nature, most of us don’t usu­al­ly revis­it they ‘why’ of doing things because we get com­fort­able and one less thing to wor­ry about on assign­ment. 

    So after a few hours walk­ing the city, they man­aged to take some nice pho­tos and increased their grasp on pho­tog­ra­phy plus hope­ful­ly dis­cov­ered some­thing new about self expres­sion. 

    Now this par­tic­u­lar shot was tak­en in Graf­fi­ti Alley Toron­to using a D700.

  • Mayday, Incoming Puppy Landing!

    On a rainy day, as I stood out­side my sis­ter’s house, “Ter­ry” her hyper­ac­tive dog, decid­ed on a whim that he was going to be a fur­ry rock­et run­ning lit­er­al cir­cles in her yard. Amus­ing? No, not real­ly. Cute? Well, per­haps. After a few drinks.

    Any­way, as he did his rounds and demands for our atten­tion, I thought it would be per­fect to catch him in an action shot to pho­tog­ra­phy what pup­py viva­cious­ness looks at work.

    So with­out fur­ther ado, as he came clos­er towards me and bet­ter than if I had asked him to pose, the pup­py land­ed on the deck. An adorable pic­ture if I say so myself.

    Tak­en with a D700 Nikon 50mm.

  • A Bulb

    A Bulb by The Torontonian
    A Bulb a pho­to by The Toron­ton­ian on Flickr.

    A relax­ing Sun­day walk through Toron­to’s parks can yield awe­some pho­tog­ra­phy. Run­ning dogs, scared wildlife, refresh­ing­ly lus­cious & large botany. At the same time, a tiny lit­tle bulb. Stretch­ing into the sky, just wait­ing for more sun to bloom, can give tell a sto­ry all its own. Sim­ple pho­tog­ra­phy can be as inter­est­ing as major world events if caught at the right moment. Just as loud, flashy sub­jects can be as enter­tain­ing and share a moment of our lives as small, solemn things.

    I am a fan of sim­plic­i­ty as gen­er­al­ly it seems that we tend to like com­plex­i­ty while at the same time com­plain about how com­plex our lives are. Fail­ing to take stock on the fact that we push our­selves into that cor­ner. 

    This was tak­en in Cab­bage Town at the Riverdale farm. Using a Nokia D700 and a sim­ple 50mm 1.8 lense.

  • Just Chillin’

    One of the strange things about lov­ing pho­tog­ra­phy is that you feel naked going any­where with­out a cam­era. As you just nev­er know what mun­dane thing will present itself in front of your lens­es that might be worth catch­ing.

    This cap­ture was tak­en while one my good friends Dmit­ry took me to his friend’s apart­ment to walk her dog. He quite the good friend, isn’t he?

    I enjoy this shot for it’s nat­ur­al and relaxed com­po­si­tion, I like that ‘Sat­ur­day After­noon vibe,’ what do you think? You would think I had them pose this way for me when it fact it was just to relaxed crea­tures laz­ing around. How con­ve­nient, no?

    This shot was tak­en with a D700, with 17–35mm lens­es at f4.5 and 28mm. Mono­chromed dur­ing the work-flow process.