Marinating Ideas

  • ¡Sí!

    ¡Sí! by The Torontonian
    ¡Sí! a pho­to by Mauri­cio Alas.

    For 5 years, I have been run­ning Toron­to’s largest and longest run­ning Span­ish Speak­ing Group: Speak Span­ish To Me. It has been a great adven­ture and I have meet lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of peo­ple as they come and go on their jour­ney to expand their hori­zons and learn a new lan­guage. A won­der­ful and roman­tic lan­guage, if I may add. 😛

    Always in a friend­ly and relaxed envi­ron­ment, the group has grown for a few mem­bers to over 1300+! I can­not deny that I am proud to run and host such a suc­cess­ful endeav­our. And to help social­ize and min­gle with like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als.

    I can also say I have meet a lot of kind and won­der­ful peo­ple. A few of who I can now be lucky to call friends.

    Also, we have had many, many sil­ly sit­u­a­tions where we have, in a moment of com­rade­ship teased the heck out of each oth­er. Like this moment for exam­ple, Roger, one our reg­u­lar mem­bers decides to show us the true ‘prop­er’ way to adver­tise our group to the mass­es. Ha.

    Thanks Roger.

    This shot was tak­en with a D700 with a 50mm lens­es. I am sure pret­ty high ISO. 😛

  • Searching For Timmy

    Short­ly after seat­ing for a few min­utes on a rock in the mid­dle of a stream, a began to toss a few rocks into the water, hop­ing for a nice cap­ture [Ravine Zen]. All of the sud­den, most like­ly due the noise of me toss­ing rocks, a Labrador Retriev­er splashed into the water try­ing to get at me. This was very fun­ny, as not only was the riv­er quite deep between us but it was hor­ri­bly cold and I do not think the dog real­ized this when jump­ing in. How­ev­er while it hes­i­tat­ed whether to go after me (to play, I am sure) or return­ing to it’s mas­ter who at this point was scream­ing at it loud­ly to return, it allowed me to get this great cap­ture. Sec­ond lat­er, the dog along with his jog­ging mas­ter we gone.

    Look­ing at the shot dur­ing my work­flow, the musi­cal score of Lassie just kept pop­ping in my head, since the palette and colour scheme do noth­ing but remind me of that old TV series. As the fear­less and ever loy­al dog searched for help for good old Tim­my who had ful­filled his week­ly con­tract by duti­ful­ly fall­en into yet anoth­er well.

    Tak­en with a D700, 50mm at what I think was f1.8.

  • Ravine Zen

    Recent­ly, I had been wait­ing for some surgery. True, it is not the one thing one usu­al­ly waits for and although not fatal it does mean going to a hos­pi­tal and get­ting mild­ly cut open. Not 1960’s style where they would cut you like a roast. No, in fact quite the oppo­site. Very minor. In at 7:30am and out by noon. Is it seri­ous? Some­what.

    Either way, since it is still a bit stress­ful, I found myself tak­ing a long stroll by my hood’s parks. You know, to think, relax and get my mind off nee­dles and doc­tors. I took my cam­era and sim­ply try to let nature speak to me. Since it is still quite cold out­side, it real­ly did­n’t tell me much except per­haps to get my ass indoors.

    How­ev­er before that desire got to strong, i decid­ed to exter­nal­ize the zen vibe I was try­ing to achieve inter­nal­ly. So I walked to the creek at the bot­tom of the park and sim­ply sat on one of the rocks and let a few min­utes pass me by. Noth­ing hap­pened, except for the stream­ing sound of the water from a near­by water­fall.

    Then, decid­ing to take my zen in to my own hands, I fished a rock from the cold creek and tossed it as far as I could with­out trip­ping. I snapped this shot right before it hit the water. Yes, it remind­ed me of what I was try­ing to achieve.

    A few days lat­er, I am writ­ing this as I am on painkillers. “Ouch.” Damn… they haven’t kicked in yet.

    Pho­to was tak­en, with a Nikon D700, 50mm @ 1.8f

  • Firenze & Sunset

    While trav­el­ling in the North of Italy, one of the key cities to vis­it was of course, Flo­rence. The old town of the city, like most ‘old towns’ seemed to cater to tourists but with a twist. Although Firen­ze was guilty of the same, it was not like oth­er cities, where their core is utter­ly shock-full of ‘tourist stores,’ sell­ing noth­ing more than trin­kets and cheap “I was in Roma” t‑shirts.

    Their core is full of clas­sic archi­tec­ture, church­es and muse­ums but meters away you have vibrant, if posh stores. Name brand stores, shoul­der to shoul­der to cafe’s, pubs, 1950’s inspired cafes. All while peo­ple go to the near­by gro­cery store along with church goers, hard­ly a tourist store to be found. This is a neigh­bor­hood, an actu­al func­tion­ing part of the city, not just a tourist trap. Like say, Nia­gara Falls.

    The city is full of beau­ty, of his­to­ry, a sin­gle vis­it does not do it jus­tice.

    This pho­to­graph was tak­en from the Piaz­za Michelan­ge­lo, atop a hill which over­looks the city. Pho­tos from his view­point abound how­ev­er, I specif­i­cal­ly wait­ed until sun­set to make my way (on foot, no less, for that extra added touch of adven­ture) here, in order to catch some­thing a lit­tle more mun­dane than this gor­geous city dur­ing mid­day. 🙂

    Cap­ture was tak­en with a D700, ISO 200Nikon 17–50, 35mm (for focus) @ f/4.0 Tri­pod