Toronto Shooters Club

Toronto Shooters Club Photo Walk – Yorkville

Apr 272010

Well, our luck is really holding; we had another gorgeous spring afternoon on Monday, April 26. And this time, the Toronto Shooters Club gang took advantage of the excellent weather to explore Yorkville. This famous Toronto neighbourhood was full of inspiration, featuring subjects including urban landscape scenes, architecture, sculpture, people and even pets.

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!

Necropolis Photo Walk – Peaceful and Pleasant

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Apr 212010

The third spring photo walk of the Toronto Shooters Club was an extremely pleasant outing. Unseasonably warm weather continues to make our photo walks comfortable adventures in Toronto. This time out, Roman, Neil, Patricia and I enjoyed exploring Riverdale Farm from the outside (sad that it closes at 5pm every day) and the Toronto Necropolis from the inside. Stone monuments, spring blossoms and the slanting afternoon sun dominated our photography subjects.

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.

First Photo Walk was Fun!

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Mar 312010

The club enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather on March 30th and ventured out into the urban wilds of Chinatown and Kensington Market.

Five of us, Patricia, Kristen, Ivan, Roman and I, gathered and set out from Dundas and University. Upon arriving just beyond the AGO, across from the Hong Kong bank, we started shooting at a grocery stand after conferring a bit on the high contrast lighting conditions and appropriate camera settings.

Slowly, we made our way along Dundas, observing vehicles, wares, characters, buildings and street scenes. Sadly, Patricia had to head off to an evening course before we made it to Kensington. Heading north up Spadina, we took in a few more sights of Chinatown but in somewhat more subdued lighting since the sun was shadowed by the buildings on the west side of the street. Still, there were a few places where strong directional light shone through some alleys for some more dramatic views.

The next hitch was Ivan’s loss of battery power just before we transitioned into Kensington Market. Still, he decided to hang in there with us. As we ambled along St. Andrews, we had the first of several encounters with the denizens of Kensington. I met Morris, a fellow photographer who has been exploring Kensington for 10-12 years. He was on his way to the synagogue for a Passover related get together and agreed to have a portrait taken. Very nice man. Much nicer than the young thug who appeared from behind a heavily graffiti’d van I was framing up to inform me that “if I take too many photos, I might get shot at.” Sure, whatever.

Next we turned north on Kensington. Again, more subdued light, but some of us enjoyed capturing a graffiti on the brick side of a building that recommended “Fuck the fake” – interesting point of view. I encountered an unfortunate woman here who was mentally ill and muttered that “they’re going to have to be shot. The police said so.” I tried to soothe her, saying no one would be getting shot, and moved on.

As we came to the top of Kensington at Baldwin, the setting sun was lighting up the grocery displays on the southwest corner. This offered up some interesting shots. As we moved along, I tried a couple of a young guy playing guitar but only managed two blurry shots with Roman’s borrowed camera. I’m still not sure if the body is functioning well or not.

By this point, poor Ivan without a camera was getting bored and I was getting hungry. So, we considered a few more opportunities on Augusta as the light was fading and eventually made our way up to the Big Fat Burrito. Ivan and Kristen headed off and Roman and I chatted about our photo adventures over some great burritos.

Not bad for the first time out. I’ve posted 19 of my photos on Flickr. I hope everyone gets their Flickr accounts together and uploads their picks. Make sure to tag them with torontoshootersclub so they show up in the slideshows on our club site at torontoshootersclub.ca.

I think we’ve settled on Mondays. The poll suggests that the next location should be the Brickworks. That is further from our home base at Dundas and University, but let’s try to get over there by 5:45pm, Monday, April 5. I’ll add that to our calendar…

See you then!!