The Beach Boys: June 19, 2012 Toronto

I haven’t posted a blog entry for a long time…so…

Here are some pictures I took at the fantastic Beach Boys 50th Anniversary Tour show. One of the best concerts I have seen in a long time…Enjoy.

Roger Waters: The Wall Live

I was very excited to see this concert so my hopes were very high. Unlike 3 years ago when I bought a single ticket for Roger Waters Dark Side of the Moon Tour (DSOTM) I was simply curious as to how one original member of Pink Floyd could pull it off.

Pink Floyd’s “The Wall Tour” was a very limited concert tour in 1980-1981. They only played select shows in Los Angeles, New York, London and Germany. So this was a must see show for myself.

Waters and company played the entire Wall album without any encores. Encores would have been dificult since the stage was a mess with bricks strewn all over. The playing was note perfect except for some rough sound mixing in few places which was expected being the first show of the tour. Overall it was a Pink Floyd’s fan dream come true to see the wall presented by its principle authour before he becomes too old to perform anymore. Waters seems in good form for a man of 67.

Here are some pictures and video I took at the Roger Waters production of “The Wall” (opening night) on Sept 15, 2010 at the Air Canada Centre.

Banda Church Yard (Along Airport Road – July 2009)

I was driving back to Toronto from Collingwood last July and since I was on my own, I was free to stop and take pictures anytime I felt the urge to do so. So I decided to drive down Airport Rd instead of continuing along HWY 26 (which leads to Barrie and the 400 etc.). The Airport Rd route is a straight south line to basically Pearson Airport and its a very enjoyable drive on a nice afternoon.

Not far along my journey, I spotted a quaint little church along the road and stopped for a few pictures. The church is Anglican and a cemetery is also part of the yard. It is surrounded by farmland and I took some pictures of the rolled hay stacks which reminded me of some of Monet’s paintings. The sky was bright but was starting to become half filled with dark clouds and the sun was starting to set in the west. The interior shots were taken against the windows since the church was locked.

Split Personality

A friend of mine was sitting down during his work break when I took a few informal photos of him. This is my preferred way to take portraits. When I got to printing the negatives in the darkroom (and to make the image  more interesting) I took two halfs of two different shots and printed them separately, but on the same sheet of photo print paper. It gave it a split effect, thus I call this one “Split Personality”.

@ the Farm

Yesterday I visited a farm owned by a good friend. He runs a dairy farm in Southwest Ontario not far from Woodstock. I have only visited his farm about three times but everytime I go there I really enjoy the “getting away from the big city” kind of rush the countryside gives me. It was also a great time for the kids to enjoy some fresh air and not so fresh cowpie perfume…but such is life. It must be experienced in its various forms namely, urban and rural…

My farmer friend was working hard milking the cows early in the morning and later on mixing the feed. I was amazed that all the corn is used to feed the cows. Crushed into a mass pulp the entire corn plant, cob, stalk and leaves are mashed into a dark yellow mash and stored in an aboveground bunker. The bunker he explained was more cost effective than repairing one of his two grain silo’s. So in fact his massive corn field was for the cattle feed rather than human consumption.

In the barn I discovered the favourite hang out of the dozen cats that live on the farm. I was amazed how slippery the straw is when you try to climb it. Unfortunately I was not able to get on top of the stack…I also had a bit of vertigo when I tried to climb up the grain silo (at least I climbed it the first time I visited so I did not feel so defeated).

We enjoyed some wonderful beef steak which practically melted in your mouth (it was so tender) and earlier we had some Maple syrup they bought form the local markets. The milk we put in our coffee was of course fresh from the cow. The milk collector also showed up with his tanker truck and sucked all the milk from the storage tank in the milking barn. He comes several times a week to collect the milk for the local market.

Since the corn wasn’t ripe we drove into town to buy some from a local stand. Needless to say it was delicious along with the apple pie and ice-cream back at the farm.

It was a glorious day with fresh country air, fresh food and even a rainbow to guide us home.

Beggar

This is a photo I call “Beggar”. It was taken in the Philippines in January 2006, on our way south to Manila. We were eating lunch at the local Jollybee (kind of like McDonalds) in Solano City and I saw this sad looking fellow begging for coins at the rear entrance of the restaurant. I gave him some money as I felt I couldn’t take a  picture of him without giving him something for his troubles. He looks like he’s crippled as well. I entered this into a local photo contest and I converted it to black and white from he original colour file as I felt it had more power if I eliminated the distracting colours. It didn’t win the contest but I think it has a powerful social commentary. The desparate man is reaching for survival as the other people casually ignore him.

My Neighbourhood Cat

I call him/her “Caty”. I dont even know if she’s a girl or he’s a boy. She/he has hung around our neighbourhood ever since we moved here. He/she seems the typical cat. She/he likes to laze around between two houses at certain times. He/she seems nice but wont ever let me pat her/him. Anyway, everyone needs a neighbourhood cat.

 

Caty

My Photo Journey Thus Far

I have been an avid amateur photographer since the 1980’s. I first picked up an old 110 camera that my mother had and started my visual journey. Not long after in 1986, I picked up a used Yashica FX-2 for around $100 bucks. I was excited about the 35mm format and it’s superior quality over the 110! Soon I was taking my camera everywhere shooting anything I viewed as photogenic. I enjoyed capturing friends, family and still scenes (preferable because they didn’t move).

I remember someone commenting on one of the first photo’s I took with my Yashica of a glass window cracked and shattered and they said it looked very “artistic”. Comments from friends that my pictures were “really good” always kept me going even though the personal pleasure of “capturing time” has always been the main drive.

In 1987, I studied black and white printing at George Brown College and really loved the prints we made even though the chemicals smelled and we wasted a lot of materials in the process but we had a lot of fun. In fact, I still have most of my prints from those days.

In 1994 I picked up a Minolta X370 because of its light weight body. (I have a similar problem with guitars, many of them [mainly electric] are very heavy and can make your shoulder sore after a good while). That camera had been my main body until I got my first digital camera.

About the mid 1990’s I was asked by several people to be the Official Photographer at ther wedding. This was when I was showing off my black and white prints and impressed so many people that they wanted the same treatment for their wedding. I took a basic rate of pay since I did not want to mis-represent myself as a pro-wedding photoman (and in case I screwed up the whole thing). I ended up getting another camera body Yashica FX-3 so one was loaded with colour and the other with B&W film. After several weddings over the span of five years, I found the work repetitive and exhausting being a lone shooter and my equipment was substandard. Even though everyone seemed to like my work, I was not satisfied with the results and decided unless it was a special favour, that I would not do another wedding until I had proper equipment and a dedicated assistant.

As a music lover, I often found myself shooting concerts and it was great to get a souvenir of some memorable shows. One show I regret not getting my camera in was for the Staple Singers in 1995. We got so close to Pops Staples rocking on his Telecaster that they would have been exellent closeup shots…and only a few years later he passed away.

I still havent purchased a really good digital camera yet. My sister in-law gave me her Sony 3.2 MP camera in 2004 but it doesn’t have a decent zoom feature. In 2007 I picked up a little Pentax Optio E10 with 6MP quality. I have been having fun with my little Optio but it lacks a fast shutter so you have to hold it so still in low light and the flash, well it’s pretty weak. Despite all these weaknesses, I have been taking a lot more pictures since one doesn’t have to worry about cost of film anymore…I also like the colour resolution in digital pictures and the ease of editing on the computer.

So the journey continues…

P.S. I will be featuring some of my pictures and stories about them in future blog entries.