After the Yellow Hand Chairs, I switched from my EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 to my Diana+ 38mm plastic lomography lens. That lens loves bright sunlight and the colour red, so it is great for street shooting on a sunny afternoon. It puts a soft glow around brightly lit things, like a normal lens smeared with vaseline – it’s really fun! Since I know my shots aren’t going to be super sharp, I stop worrying about it and shoot for colour and composition without worrying about too much precision. Also good for social, street photography, since you don’t have to concentrate quite as much.

We met Iven in Trinity Bellwoods park after being attracted by the beautiful music he was creating on his Hang.

You can visit Iven at his own website and find out more about his fascinating musical instrument, the Hang.

It was a beautiful day and a great photo walk and super fun to meet Nick!

Queen W Slideshow

Upon our return to the dock where we planned to make sunset skyline photos, we once again encountered an odd fellow who had introduced himself to us at the Toronto dock side while we awaited the ferry to the island. One of our members, Annelies, took the opportunity to photograph him, and so did I as he proceeded to light a bonfire on the beach as we departed. All in all, a fun evening out was had by all, and we capped it off with some beer and pub food at a Firkin back in the city!

Toronto Island Slideshow

The sky was simply awesome. The concrete supports for the bridge carrying Dundas street over the railway featured plenty of graffiti. North along the Railpath, several industrial buildings and the whimsical industrial metal sculptures offered appealing architectural subjects. That was only the beginning!

We slowly moved along the Railpath with Meghan, Roman and Ted gaining close up vantage points to photograph the bridge graffiti. Further along, various buildings in the Nestle facility attracted attention from several club members. To the west, the dramatic skies hovered over more open views of the railway and some of the buildings on the west side.

As we continued towards Bloor St, a large open lot beckoned. Distant buildings and an old smokestack made for some great vistas. Too bad about the fence that blocked the view. Kristen and I found one solution to that problem!

We lost Neil, Virginia and Suzanne just before Bloor St, but not until after saying hi to some other Railpath visitors – both dogs and people! At Bloor, we enjoyed some views to the east along Bloor from the Railpath overpass bridge. Then we said goodbye to Meghan and Patricia.

Down to just Roman, Kristen and I, we carried on north up the Railpath past the GO transit station. Making it as far as the Wallace St foot bridge (over 100 years old according to Kristen!) led to a strange encounter. Out attention was attracted upon hearing a man’s urgent shouts of “Whoa, whoa, WHOA!” We witnessed a minor collision between a vehicle and 2 cyclists. As we found out from the man who had been involved, everyone turned out to be okay, since, by some coincidence, I actually knew the man who had been involved.

After that conversation, Kristen headed home and Roman and I crossed the bridge to turn back south and finish the day at Dundas West Station. All in all, a great way to spend my birthday!!

We’ll start our walk at the current south end of the path, located at Dundas and Sterling. Here is a Google Map of the intersection.

Here is a Google Street View of the intersection the entrance is just to the left in this image which shows the path leading down to the Railpath itself as it was under construction last summer. Click on the little square icon in the top right corner of the Street View to view it full screen. You can then pan around and zoom to get a sense of the area.

So, to get there, either head west on the Dundas streetcar, pass Lansdowne, and get off at the Sterling stop or, from the subway, take the Lansdowne bus south and get off at College and walk west, up onto the bridge until you get to Sterling. We’ll gather at the northwest corner of Sterling and Dundas, before heading down the path.

The Community Bicycle Network has a more complete map of the Railpath on their Railpath website. There is also a website administered by Friends of West Toronto Railpath. They have a Flickr photostream with photos of the railpath.

The group, consisting of Patricia, Ivan, Roman and I, eventually gathered at about 6pm near Yorkville and Hazelton Avenue. I had to take my boys to the doctor first (luckily the office is in Yorkville) so I was delayed in joining the group at the original meeting place, the parkette at the corner of Bellair and Cumberland. Once I joined them, I discovered the group was well engaged in exploring the several sculptures adorning the wide sidewalks along Hazelton.

We meandered along Hazelton until we reached the end of the commercial area. Backtracking, we then stolled along Scollard Street and enjoyed several more opportunities to shoot architecture, sculpture and urban landscapes. Once we hit Bay Street, we turned north and entered a grassy parkette on the west side. It was here we encountered an French bull dog – quite a character – out for an evening walk. Several of us enjoyed getting shots of this charming and very obliging subject. Once that episode had come to a close, we were getting hungry and split up.

Meanwhile, I had come up with the extended plan to try to catch the sunset from the section of Bloor Street between Castle Frank station and Parliament Street that overlooks the Rosedale Valley. Roman had decided to join me, so we grabbed a quick pizza slice and then hopped on the subway for a quick ride over to Castle Frank. We made it in time and I set up my tripod facing west up the valley as you can see from the HDR I made from the view. Hope you like it!

I’ve set up the site with two main Flickr plugins, Slickr-Flickr and oEmbed for BuddyPress. Let’s deal with oEmbed first. WordPress natively incorporates a very cool and powerful URL embedding feature. Simply by adding an URL to a resource on a qualified website, a blogger using WordPress can embed content into their blog posts with no further effort required. Many sites are supported, including:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• DailyMotion
• blip.tv
• Flickr (both videos and images)
• Viddler
• Hulu
• Qik
• Revision3
• Scribd
• Photobucket
• PollDaddy
• Google Video
• WordPress.tv (only VideoPress-type videos for the time being)

So, yeah, but you’re probably thinking that you’re not a blogger, at least on this site, so how does that help? Well, thanks to oEmbed for BuddyPress, the URL embedding feature is extended to the forums functionality provided by BuddyPress. That means that you can write up a forum post and, simply by including the URL to an image you’ve posted in Flickr, it will appear inline in your forum post! Neat, eh? You can also post a link to your Flickr photo set within your forum post. So, for example, you can upload your sets from photo walks, then pick your favourite one, write a forum post here on Toronto Shooters Club and include that favourite photo and link to the whole set so we can all go see your great photos!

One very important thing – Flickr shows the URL for photos at the bottom of photo pages in two ways; first, as HTML code to put into a web page; like this:

However, neither of those work for oEmbed. Instead, cut and paste the URL from the address bar of your browser when you are on the page where your photo is displayed by itself – Flickr calls this the “Flickr Photo Download” page (here is an example) in the page title that appears at the top of your browser window or in your browser tabs. You will see this page and be able to pick different sizes of your image after clicking on the All Sizes button above your photo when browsing through your sets. The link will have your Flickr username in it and it will look something like this:

I know, all that sounds complicated, but in practice it’s really easy. Just do these steps:

1. Upload your photos to Flickr
2. Organize them into a set
3. Pick the one you want to show in your forum post
4. Make sure you are on the “Flickr Photo Download” page showing a particular size of your photo
5. Copy the URL from your browser’s address bar
6. Come back to the Toronto Shooters Club site where you are posting a message in a forum
7. Paste the URL from step 5 into your post on a line by itself

Not that bad, right? Roman started a forum topic called “Linking TSC Flickr Pool pics to TSC site” in the General Club Group and asked about this. I wrote a reply and included an embedded Flickr photo of some green spring plants. You can see the forum post in the General Club Group.

Meanwhile, there is also Slickr Flickr. This one is almost all automatic, there is very little for you to do. Slickr Flickr is behind the slideshow of recent Club photos in the Club Flickr photo pool that appears in the blog post at the very top of the Home page for the website and behind the gallery of 10 thumbnails that appears in the righthand sidebar on the site. Club photos automatically appear in the slideshow and gallery as long as you do three things:

1. Join the Toronto Shooters Club group on Flickr – I’ve set that up so that I have to authorize you, it’s not instantaneous
2. Once I’ve authorized you in the group and you upload your photos into your own Flickr sets, you just tag your photos with the tag: torontoshootersclub <- all one lower case word - and then
3. Add them to the Toronto Shooters Club group

Now, that’s much easier, right?

If you’ve realized that I haven’t thoroughly explained how to arrange everything at Flickr, that’s because Flickr has tons of awesome help resources, far better than anything I could come up with. Just visit Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/help/ to find out whatever you need to know. Or, you can always ask me in person to give you a hand.

Let me know if you have any more questions!!

The Necropolis is a fascinating place, full of history, emotion, and a rich visual combination of natural and hand-made elements. Buildings dominate the entrance, and include such diverse textures as stained glass, iron work, rough and smooth stone work, and carved and painted wooden forms. These artifacts of human activity are contrasted by organic features and the photo walk was well timed with beautiful magnolia blossoms and the earliest delicate foliage making their spring appearances.

Further into the city of the dead, neat pathways thread their way through various sections of burial grounds. A large variety of monuments, many of them very large and impressive, offered a number of photographic opportunities. Still other organic subjects were interspersed; from large scale magnolia trees in full bloom to tiny squill, mushrooms and other tiny blossoms. In springtime, there is a sense of renewal and new life, a strong counterpoint to the weight of history and death that the grave markers convey. It would be interesting to go back and explore on a stormy fall day; I have not doubt there would be a moody, gothic atmosphere under those conditions at that time of year – a great inspiration for some richly textured photos.

Monday, April 19th, the group will be heading out for the third photo walk this spring to explore the Toronto Necropolis. The Necropolis is located between Bayview Ave to the east and Cabbagetown to the west and between Rosedale Valley Road to the north and Carlton Street to the south. Winchester Street separates the Necropolis to the north from Riverdale Farm to the south. We’ll meet at 5:45pm at the entrance to the Necropolis on Winchester Street.

Here is a map:

Here are some directions:

Exit DVP at Bayview Avenue South. Procced to River Street. Turn right (west) on Gerrard Street East to Sumach Street. Turn right again (north) on Sumach Street to Winchester Street. The Necropolis is on the left.

Exit Gardiner Expressway at Jarvis Street. Go north on Jarvis Street. Turn right (east) on Gerrard Street. Turn left (north) on Sumach Street (sign-posted) and right (east) on Winchester Street.

From Danforth Avenue, go west on Prince Edward Viaduct towards Bloor Street East, keep left and turn left onto Parliament Street (first lights after Castle Frank Road/Subway Station). Proceed south on Parliament to Winchester, turn left onto Winchester and proceed to the end of the street. The Necropolis is on the left.

Exit Bayview Avenue Extension at River Street. Turn right (west) on Gerrard Street East to Sumach Street. Turn right again (north) on Sumach Street to Winchester Street. The Necropolis is on the left.

By Public Transit TTC
From Castle Frank Subway Station, get on Parliament bus and get off at Winchester. Walk east to the end of the street. The Necropolis is on the left.

From College or Queens Park Subway Station, hop onto the eastbound streetcar and get off at Sumach Street, east of Parliament. Walk north to Winchester Street then turn right and walk east along Winchester to the end of the street. The Necropolis is on the left.

Once into the wooded ravine trail, photo opportunities presented themselves immediately and we all had our cameras ready and shooting. Slanting early evening sunlight filtered through the sparse foliage of early spring, making for some medium contrast, softly lit scenes. Initially, natural subjects plus some scenes with walking, cycling or jogging folk were plentiful. A bit later, some early spring wildflowers and urban features like rusty fences presented some shallow depth of field, closer up compositional opportunities.

Coming around the bend adjacent to the one of the Don Valley highway system ramps, the group had the chance to capture some views of urban features, including highways, apartments, lighting, wiring, fences and highway maintenance structures. A little further on, dramatic skies featuring jet trails and cloud formations presented themselves. This gave rise to the first of several discussions of settings and exposure principles.

Pressing on, we passed through a more heavily wooded path and soon approached the Brick Works site. The brick buildings, paver stone walkways, ponds and various types of birds and vegatation provided so many possibilities that the group broke up as we each pursued our individual inspirations. Having each explored a number of the many photographic possibilities for the better part of a half hour, Roman was inspired to climb a steep hill just as we had gradually drifted closer together, and we all flocked along behind.

Great thing we did too; we were all presently treated to the awesome views provided from the Governor’s Bridge Lookout. To the northwest, the namesake of the Lookout, the Governor’s Bridge which carries Governor’s Road as it traverses the Moore Park Ravine ravine between Rosedale and the neighbourhood of Governor’s Bridge was visible through the trees. To the west, the ponds were laid out before us with the setting sun and dramatic clouds beyond the tree lined edge of the valley. To the south, in the foreground lay the buildings of the Brick Works, currently under construction towards eventual restoration. Further beyond to the south lay the somewhat distant skyline, featuring the CN Tower and tall buildings of the downtown core. To the south east, the Prince Edward Viaduct was fully visible along with sections of the Don Valley Parkway system.

Here we remained, shooting contentedly and occasionally discussing various technical and artistic points until the sun began to set. After a brief discussion which concluded with the sad realization that heavy clouds at the horizon would prevent any decent golden hour shots from developing, we decided to head off. Another great photo walk! Wish you could have been there with us!

According to the Wikipedia; “The Don Valley Brick Works is a former quarry and industrial site located in the Don River valley in Toronto, Ontario. Currently the buildings sit mostly unused while the quarry has been converted into a city park which includes a series of naturalized ponds. The Don Valley Brick Works operated for nearly 100 years and provided bricks used to construct many well-known Toronto landmarks, such as Casa Loma, Osgoode Hall, Massey Hall, and the Ontario Legislature. The buildings are currently undergoing restoration, courtesy of Evergreen, a national charity dedicated to restoring nature in urban environments.”

Let’s plan to gather at Castle Frank station at 5:45 pm. The Weather Network is calling for a high of 19C – should be nice!

To get into the Brick Works area via Milkman’s Run on foot:

From the Bloor–Danforth Subway and South Rosedale
25 to 30 minutes, with a relatively gradual descent into the valley.

Directions

• From Castle Frank Subway Station, follow Castle Frank Road north, past Hawthorne Gardens.
• Head west on Elm Avenue to South Drive. Head north, past the entrance to Cragleigh gardens. The entrance to the Milkman’s Run trail is on the right.
• Follow the trail downhill to the Beltline Trail. Continue east, following the signs for Moore Park Ravine, all the way to Evergreen Brick Works.

Note: Ignore all the little paths down the slope. Be patient! Watch for a maintained trail with a sign at the top of it.