15-4-28

15-4-27

15-4-26

Every store. Everywhere.

15-4-25

(almost) waiting patiently for pancakes.

15-4-24

15-4-23

Two days of rain and cold and the skies relented.

15-4-22

The day after. New Town is a landmark of Chinatown. It sells amazing food for really cheap. Steamed buns filled with BBQ pork or curried chicken, and the famous salty donut. 

And then I found these billboards. There was a fire at Main and Broadway some years ago. It destroyed artists' studios, and a couple of good, cheap places to eat. The image of the burnt out facades with the blue construction fences, that's about to be the home to this. There's no lack of irony in the propaganda that has photos of old, heritage storefronts and touts the amenities and the character of the neighborhood that it's playing no small part in changing. I'd bet $50 there won't be a pizza place on the ground floor that sells $1.50 slices of pizza and a cheap glass of beer like Pizza Express did. 

New Town Bakery survived and promises to be open in "a few days." That makes me happy.  

15-4-21

I took this photo with my cell phone. I uploaded it at a higher resolution than usual, because it's surprisingly good for a stupid little lens and sensor that, combined, would fit on the end of my finger.

And that's that.

15-4-20

15-4-19

15-4-18

1965-ish Buick Riviera. 4000lbs of car, with a 401 V8. It could get up to 60mph in a little over 8 seconds which is actually pretty impressive for the mass of the car and an output of 314hp. But there's the 9 miles per (US) gallon rating which means if you were to drive from Vancouver to Hope for a slice of pie, you'd need about $100 for gas. (190 miles round trip, 21gallons of gas, converted to liters is almost 80 liters of gas at $1.25/liter is $100) It makes the $45 in gas it would cost to drive my Mustang there seem cheap, and it uses premium gas. But those headlights. And that grill. There's no good reason to own this car. Oh, it's not for sale, I didn't buy it, it was just there and I took a picture of it. And it gets you thinking about cars and stuff. So you do the math. There is no good math with this car. And yet you still want something like it.

Maybe I'll spend $45 on a slice of pie tomorrow. I mean, $50, the pie itself is $5.

15-4-17

New BBQ. First burgers of the season. And eating outside. Despite there being another month of hockey, it would seem spring is turning to summer.

15-4-16, bonus edition....

 On any given day I might take a few pictures. On any (most) given day(s) that picture ends up here.

 But there's always more than one taken. Well, not true, sometimes there is exactly one taken. Some days there are none taken. But most days there are a few taken.

 I've been finding it harder to find the energy to take photos every single day. To take the same photos every single day.

 Sam did it for years and years. Ten years, I think, and his approach was marginally easier in that he just posted a photo every day whereas I take a photo every day and post it. Sam might take 50 photos on a weekend and he'd be good for nearly 2 months of posts.

 But even Sam got sick of it after 10 years. He's a better photographer than me too. Or maybe I'm just homesick for Toronto. Still. Even the cabs are just the right colour there.

Funnily, I find it nearly impossible to take photos in Toronto. Everything there seems normal, or "right" to me. And one only wants to take photos of things that are unique, noticeable, different. I like all of today's photos on some level. The isolation of the red chair chained to a fence, protecting a moment that seems so disorienting, trees with flowers, trees on buildings, that damn cat... and so on.

When you're from a place you don't notice it. Like old shoes, they are just there, you don't give them a second thought as you walk in them.

I've lived in Vancouver for longer than I lived in Toronto but it still feels like I'm visiting here and when I go back to Toronto, over 10 years later, it still feels like home. It's hard to describe why or how, but that's how it is.

15-4-15

1/2" square tube, 0.065; 9@6". 9@5". 9@4". 1 1/2" angle, 9 @ 4" shy. Still need to buy 1/2" square tube section, almost 3 sections. And some spray paint.

15-4-14

15-4-13

15-4-12

15-4-11

15-4-10

15-4-9

15-4-8

A cm in two months.

15-4-7

15-4-6

15-4-5

15-4-4

15-4-3

Another 8 hours in the wood shop. So many cuts. So, so many cuts.

15-4-2

The sun is putting up a good fight these days but the clouds are being persistent.

15-4-1

15-3-31

*There are no purples in the sky in my original file. Blogger seems to be changing the colour space of my photos. I've noticed this a few times, it's really obvious in this one. Today I begin in earnest looking at alternatives. Perhaps WordPress. Not sure yet.

15-3-30

There are 5kms between where I live and where I work. It's the same 5kms. A hill, a bike route, a bridge, some other stuff. I walked today. This is the same photograph I've taken a dozen times before, but today it was off the other side of the bridge because I was walking.

I was challenged with taking 500 photos in my back yard once. I feel like I've taken 5000 photos in this 5km stretch of Vancouver. After the first year of taking a photo a day I took about 8 months off. I think I've taken a week or two off since then, but I don't remember. I've certainly missed days, some by accident, some on purpose. You try to mix it up with a road trip or some other distraction like film coming out of a 40 year old medium format camera.

You look for things to be different but they more often than not end up being the same.

Little metal ribbons connecting one coast to the other, just like Buster Keaton taught us in that grade school film we'd get to watch when it was too rainy to play outside or if we had a substitute teacher. When I see these tracks it's as close as I get to connecting to the horizon some days. Maybe that's why I take pictures of them over and over again.

But where are the trains?

15-3-29

Frederick Law Olmsted cries.

15-3-28

Two takes on the same picture. I didn't take it first, but I saw it before it was taken first. Or something like that.

15-3-27

Finally getting around to finishing this one.

15-3-26

15-3-25

15-3-24

There is a magic to busy streets when they are deserted. The meaning of a traffic light changes when there are no cars.

15-3-23

.......

15-3-22

Sophie and I do Ai WeiWei.

15-3-21

20mm is a pretty wide lens. I had a 14-24mm Nikkor lens for a while, and I still have a 24mm lens that's fantastic but I don't use it very often. The 20mm is a pretty wide lens. Pretty wide.

I had forgotten that with the 14-24 you had to be careful about collapsing perspective, buildings looking like they are falling in on themselves, or rooms looking, well, just odd. But it lets you stand across the street from monumental buildings of magnificent scale, or, about a block long-ish, and swallow the whole thing in with that big, wide, 20mm lens.

It gives you lots of room to fix the photos on the computer. Some of the magnificence is lost, and the slightly unnatural perspective sneaks in when you stare, the verticals are parallel, but unnaturally so, the buildings can start to look like they get wider at the top. It's not too bad when the buildings are only 4 stories tall but if you look at it too long it comes across as slightly off. Both are slightly off, I guess. I don't know which I like more. Or less.

15-3-20

Thom Yorke. Limited white vinyl pressing.

15-3-19