Film isn’t dead

Some of you may be wondering about the post below. It all started a few weeks ago when Alan found some old medium format negatives sitting in a box and decided to scan them. We thought it would be nice to file the pictures in the computer. Our chins dropped to the floor as soon as we finished scanning the first negative – the amount of detail was simply unbelievable. As you can see from this photo, every line in the wood is clearly visible. It definitely took him back to the good old days. That’s when he started talking about getting another medium format film camera. After scouring ebay for days and reading many reviews, he settled on the Minolta Autocord, a twin lens reflex, considered one of the best among TLRs. He found such good deals on them that he bought two and gave me one. I have to say that I fell in love as soon as I looked through the ground glass viewfinder. Alan still has his old light meter so we can find out the right exposure and I can’t wait to try the camera out. But before we could take them out, he took one of the cameras to be cleaned and refurbished at this joy of a place that the folks at Downtown Camera recommended. The store was as far as one could possibly go through public transit but certainly worth the trip. While Alan got his camera, I snapped some pictures of some of the treasures in there:

Alan almost bought another camera while we were there. A Mamiya RB67:

And this is the one I want (here shown in just the body, minus the back and the lens). Alas, I’ll have to wait until I get a job since it goes for anywhere around 1,100-1,500$:

New toy

TED

 

Portrait

I love pictures of people.

Although I have no problem in chatting with strangers, I’m much more self-conscious about asking them if I can take their picture. Most people actually don’t mind and are flattered when you ask but for some reason I often feel shy about asking. This saturday we went to the Distillery District and while sitting outside having a coffee, I couldn’t help noticing this older Chinese lady sitting beside us. She was colourful but what attracted me was the peaceful vibe she emanated. I finally broke down and before we left, I asked her if I could take her picture. She smiled shyly and mumbled something while pointing to the entrance of the restaurant. I guessed she was saying she didn’t speak English and her companion was inside buying the coffee. So I remembered the advice of a photographer when prompted how to ask to take someone’s picture when there’s a language barrier: I raised the camera to eye level and made a questioning look while smiling. She blushed slightly but sat up, very proud. I took the above picture and showed it to her. Her reaction warmed my heart: she gave a little excited shrill and gave me a big hug. Made my day.

Late Fall

Job applications, thesis, teaching, disease in the family, it seems the whole world is conspiring to keep me from this blog. All is well, just super busy.

Fall

Fall is in the air and I’m in the midst of midterm marking, lecturing, and writing. But today is sunday and we’re off for a hike with TBN. Hopefully I’ll be able to take some nice pictures along the way.

Tour de Greenbelt

Ontario’s Greenbelt is an area of protected greenspace and farmland, where some of the best agricultural land in Canada is located.To promote the Greenbelt, volunteers and sponsors put together a bicycle ride each year called the Tour de Greenbelt. I saw an ad for it last year but we weren’t cycling as much then so postponed our participation till this year. There are four different rides to choose from and although I really wanted to do the one through the Niagara vineyards, we were busy that weekend. The second choice was the ride out of Newmarket, a small town north of Toronto. Why? Because it would start and end at a farmers’ market and I couldn’t pass that opportunity!

The weather forecast wasn’t good. After weeks of perfect weather, they were calling for rain on Saturday but we bought some rain gear and decided to go anyway. In the end, the weather held, the sun came out at certain points of the ride and the rain only came when we were back in Toronto. It was an amazing day! We’ll definitely do some of the other rides next year; maybe we’ll even volunteer! Click below for a slideshow:

International Car-free Day

Today is international car-free day, a day in which people are asked to leave their car at home and go about their business without it for a day. The idea is not only to illustrate how life is like in any given city without most of its cars on the road but also to reflect on the challenges and limitations of being without car, particularly in North America where cities are not pedestrian-friendly. Toronto failed miserably a couple years ago when celebrating car-free day. The city had done much to promote it and then when the day came, most city councilors arrived at city hall in their cars. When asked by reporters why they drove if the city was making such a big deal about car-free day, most simply stated that it wasn’t convenient to take public transit. And that was that.

Alan was furious and wrote some letters to the mayor and his ward representative, but the city councilors are partly right. We have a long way to go to catch up with most European countries when it comes to public transit infrastructure and sharing roads with bicycles.

A Canadian woman who lives in Copenhagen was interviewed on CBC Radio this morning about car-free day and she confessed that it doesn’t occur to people there to mark car-free day since two-thirds of the residents already commute by bicycle or public transit. She spoke about the infra-structure built in so that cars and bicycles can share the roads easily without confrontation and how traffic lights are synchronized to the speed of bicycles (20km/h) so that cyclists can get a green light all the way through when commuting.

And Vauban, a suburb of Freiburg, Germany, has banned cars altogether. The entire suburb was designed and built so that every resident is at walking distance from shops and schools. Public transit into the city is also easily available. Read more about it here.

As a historian, I understand why North America moved away from a focus on public transit and based its cities on private cars. How we got here is not the issue. The issue is that we now know that this car culture is not sustainable in the long run and our society needs to invest more heavily into making walking, cycling, and public transit the most convenient options for its citizens. Maybe that way, our councilors won’t have an excuse anymore. Better yet, maybe like the people of Copenhagen, it won’t even occur to us to celebrate car-free day.

PS: Montreal has closed part of its city core to cars today.

Yet another cycling picture

The good weather will soon end and the cycling will stop but for now, we try to make the most of the summer weather of the past week. While I love my Opus for commuting and getting around town, for longer rides with a group I needed something else. So we finally got something this weekend. Meet my new bike, a cyclocross:

Last night we went out in yet another ride with TBN. This one got us to the Leslie Spit, a park that extends far into the like and from which we got an amazing views of the city. It was an ideal ride to test my new bike since the ride was only about 25 km but it went through very varied terrain – from smooth roads to rocky and sandy gravel. Ideal to test the versatility of the cyclocross. The bike performed really well and I’m very happy with it.

But the best was the view of the city:

You can browse the flickr site for some other pictures, but you get the idea. The evening ended at a vegetarian restaurant near Gerrard & Broadview where I had the most amazing grilled eggplant dish, even if it left me really full…

Back from the market

Coming back from the farmers’ market with paniers full of fruits & veggies. Notice the beautiful basil plant hanging from the basket…