The Brickworks -- Toronto -- February 18th, 2012

A few of us from the Oshawa Camera Club went to the Don Valley Brickworks (now Evergreen Brickworks) on Saturday. The weather wasn't the best but there were a couple 100 visitors there... lots of families with their kids. They have activities for the kids.

Last time I was there things were a lot different. There's a small market now (just on weekends  someone said),  a nice cafe, and a dozen or so vendors with food or crafts & gifts. Some of the old buildings are still standing. Entry is allowed in the old brick-manufacturing building.

32!

Sometimes it's the things "on the side" that grab your attention. That's the case here. This is the first electric car I've seen in the wild... plugged in and charging. It's a Mitsubishi. It's in keeping with Evergreen's green policy.

Turns out there was a second one on the other side of the lot. This is a Nissan. I wonder how long it'll be before they're common. And what about the chargers? How many and where will they be? I guess hybrids make more sense. Maybe these are both hybrids, I'm not sure.

The kilns used for making the bricks.

 I can't imagine it. Huge callouses I guess. How many bruised & broken fingers & thumbs?

 

There's lots of boring graffiti everywhere these days, but this one impressed me... haunting.

Another green vehicle... a mini-truck, about the size of a van.

It was a good shoot. Also picked up a couple toys for our grandson in the market building, and one for me too. :-)

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The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) & Street Photography

The Northumberland Photography Club had an outing to the ROM in Toronto on Sunday. It had been forever since I had been there so I jumped at the chance to join in.

I hadn't seen the radical update to the architecture of the building... and radical it is. It looks like a modern building fell into/onto the old one, but it does make for interesting reflections.

The old amongst the new... Church of the Redeemer... just across from the ROM.

I headed straight for the Dinosaurs. I always try to imagine these giants walking around the countryside of today's world.

The displays are set up for viewing, not for photography, so it's hard to get clear shots of many of them.

I Photoshopped out some of the lines. It's just too much bother for most shots though.

Quite the headplate.

Talk about ragged teeth.

Emotion in stone.

In the African display... coffins from Ghana. If you're a fisherman you can be buried in a fish.

Do you drive a Mercedes? Why not get buried in one then.

I love street photography. Ordinary people doing ordinary things. I shot more on the street than I did in the ROM... or in some cases, I shot street scenes from inside the ROM.

Depending on the image, I sometimes prefer color, sometimes B&W. Some I crop, some I don't. How much to include in the shot is always a decision you have to make.

It was a cold day and a McDonald's & a coffee shop were across the street from the ROM so many a passerby had coffee in their hands.

Color?  B&W? Include the bikes?

Crop even tighter? Clone out the lettering? Lots of choices.

Pick your own private window or join the bunch on the ledge.

The view from beside the ROM.

Mannequins without faces look strange.

The trip home on the 401. It wasn't as bad as the telephoto lens makes it look.

The ROM is like all large museums. You'd need days or weeks to check it all out.  As fascinating as museums are to me, I quickly become tired and bored. I do enjoy them but I can only take them in relatively small doses. That's probably why I ended up doing so much street photography.

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