Overloaded

Vehicles overloaded, going way beyond design specs.

National Geographic Camels

Take a look at this National Geographic photograph of camels. (Click the thumbnail to enlarge.) Now look at it again. Do you see? It's an aerial photograph. You're looking down on the camels. If you look closely, you can see their tan bodies. The black camel shapes aren't the camels -- it's their shadows.

How cool is that?

[By the way of Ajay D'Souza.]

Ice Storm in Versoix, Switzerland

This was taken on Jan. 26, 2005 -- the aftermath of a winter storm in Switzerland. For more incredible pictures and the story, follow the links.

Museum of Sex

Here's a sign that can be found at the Museum of Sex, in New York.

When the Laughter Died

Photographs from an abandoned Japanese amusement park.

Overkill in the Park

Accuse me of overkill, I deserve it. I just finished whittling down a whole lot of photos I took in the beginning of September last year, and am starting to upload them online. I got the count down to 123. Yes, 123 photos from one outing -- one walk in the park. Some are great, some won't be to your liking. Check out the thumbnails above and click to be taken to the gallery that's playing home to the larger images.

Yearning for Summer

Last year summer, we had some tremendous rainfall in Toronto. It was so bad at one point, that waterways in the city breached their banks, and one six lane road was torn apart for a block. After one of those rainfalls, my wife and I went for a walk by a park that runs along the Don River. The river had flooded over into the park, but the water had long receded when we went on our walk. The usual suspects were up for grabs by my camera lenses, but I also got a surprise. I had never seen that many snails -- really tiny ones -- clinging to leaves and branches before. There were so many, that I couldn't stop clicking away at them.

Click the thumbnails above to be taken to the larger pictures.

Daughter

A sketch I did back in 2000.

Ghost Dancing

This is in my 2005 sketchbook, but I can't actually remember when I did it. It's a rough sketch, that was going to become something -- then it didn't. The idea, as I recall -- or am now making up -- is that he's a ghost, and she's in love. Freaky stuff! Or not ...

Sketch

Sketch from my 2005 sketchbook.

Frozen North

Click the photos for larger versions:

Lake Scugog, frozen over in winter. This panorama is composed of several photographs I took on January 15th whilst up in Port Perry for "afternoon tea" with my wife.

On the way back home, we took the circuitous route, and happened by the Mosport Pit. It's a scar on the landscape, a hideous man-made beauty.

Wife Tutoring

Sketch of my wife tutoring a student at a local Second Cup.

Infinity: The Most Fascinating of All Ideas

I attended the first of the Royal Canadian Institute's Science on Sundays series at the University of Toronto today. Check out my post for more on the topic. Click the photo above to see other choice slides from the lecture.

After the lecture, my wife and I enjoyed a cup of coffee at one of the Second Cups up on Yonge Street.

Girl Drawing Sword

I did this drawing back in latter half of 2005. There were a series of sketches that I did with girls and swords. Perhaps it was testosterone fueled teenager in me that used to find great insight into the human condition from stories of Conan, Tarzan and watching He-Man cartoons on TV. I dunno. Take it for what it is.

2003 Sketchbook

2003 Sketchbook

I didn't produce a lot of art in 2003. Or, I didn't find many in the sketchbooks I had handy. There may be others. I do have a habit of sketching wherever, whenever, on whatever. So, there might be other stuff out there. For now, all I found was 12 sketches. Some more detailed than others. Click the image or link above to see the rest.

Portrait

Not really sure of who she is, as she came out of my head. She's my attempt at putting some Indian flavour in my art. It started out as a rough pencil sketch in my sketchbook, then got some detail, then I decided to use pencil crayons. Took me hours. I'm fairly happy with the final product, although there's something about the nose that's driving me nuts.

Embryo

Here's a fractal piece I completed this morning. The rendering took quite a bit of time -- over 12 hours for sure. It was done using Apophysis.

Winter Wonderland

My wife and I went for a Winter Wonderland walk on New Year's Day. Not far from our home, there's a park of sorts that is wooded, with the Don River running through it. We had snowfall on New Year's Eve, and the snow remained for New Year's Day -- today, it's mostly melted again -- so I figured, while the snow is staying, I might as well go out to get some photography done. I haven't taken too many photos this winter -- so far.

What I've taken has been uploaded to my Webshots gallery. I've included four panoramas that were stitched together from the photos I took. The inspiration came from my daughter, who took her pictures of subway stops and were turning them into panoramas. All photographs on the gallery are high resolution images -- some would probably make great wallpapers.

Space Girl with BIG Gun

Here's a piece I had completed a while back. I modeled the gun after a toy gun from the 1950s. I'm not too pleased with the outcome. I used markers, then added the smoke with pencil crayons.

Larger images are hosted on my Webshots gallery.

Christmas

A few photographs I've taken during the Christmas holidays.

Click the image to see more.

Click the image to see more of our cat..

Lunch at Zyng!

My eldest and I were out late this morning, into the afternoon, doing some drive by shooting at a number of different subway stations in Toronto. She's working on a design project to provide the blind with geographic information when leaving Toronto's subway stations. It's for school, so whether it gets implemented in the real world is another story. I'm sure a lot of people were wondering why two people were running around taking so many pictures. We photographed Don Mills, Bayview, Lawrence, Eglinton and Bloor -- a total of 277 photos, and approaching 700MB. Whew!

For lunch, we stopped off at Zyng. Zyng is one of our favourite restaurants in Toronto. (We actually have many favourite restaurants.) I ordered Indian Spiced tea, and she had Jasmine Flower (or something like that). For lunch we had Pad Thai and she made her own noodle bowl. It was delicious. As usual. The conversation was also great, bouncing across many topics. Since I'm off for the holidays, I'm trying to put in a lot in the two weeks I have, with my family. When I'm at work, our time together seems hurried.

Here's what our view was for lunch. It makes for great people watching.

Bad Winter

It's been a bad winter so far here in Toronto. We've had some snowfall, but it has been followed almost immediately by the weather warming up a little. That means there has been little accumulation of snow. This afternoon, my wife and I took a walk a little ways through a nearby park, and we did find a good deal of snow, but there was none on the trees. All had pretty much been melted. Which didn't leave much photography to be done.

I took some pictures anyway. Click the image below to be taken to the gallery that has the rest of the pics from today.

Inspired by Ghost in the Shell

Here's a little something I did when the Ghost in the Shell inspiration hit me.

Night of Snow

Since the first light brush of snow, I've wanted to go out there with the camera. Yesterday we had a big snowfall. Predictions were that the snow would continue on and off throughout the weekend. Well, today, it all sort of got melted. It was a bright and sunny day, and it was a wee-bit warm. We still have some accumulation, but it's not the same. I figure that would happen, so last night, when everyone was in bed, I slipped out onto the balcony, and tried taking some photos of my backyard. Here are the results.

Driving in Winter

We've had a little snowfall here and there in recent weeks in Toronto, but winter didn't really arrived until last week. At least we had a taste last week. I took the following photos as my wife was driving me to the subway station.

The bus turning onto the road is the one I should have been on.

Traffic is always slow after the first snowfall that accumulates. Despite that, there are usually numerous accidents. After the first few snowfalls, people get back to driving like normal, and accidents are reduced. Go figure.

This is a small park by the road.

Another view of the park. Yes, we got real accumulation.

The snow never lasted of course. It was gone by the end of the day. Yesterday though, it started again, and is expected to continue over the next couple of days. We're expected to get up to 30-cm according to some forecasts.

Self Portrait

Here's a self-portrait I did sometime ago. I did it originally for a web comic, but I ran out of patience.

Egyptian Inspired

Here's a piece of art I did about a month -- maybe two -- ago. It's one of my favourite pieces in the new sketchbook I started. I was given the sketchbook for Christmas last year -- or my birthday -- can't remember which one. The sketchbook is only 7x5-inches, but the paper is 110lb. That made it easy for me to use inks and markers -- which resulted in this piece. I've since decided that the sketchbook will be devoted to just colour art -- which is quite the goal I've set myself, as they take hours to complete -- usually at a coffee shop somewhere.

From the Weekend

Yesterday, I also sketched my cat. She was doing her best to appear as lazy as possible. This was done again, with just markers.

My wife and I were also on this past Saturday, having brunch at Bloor West Village -- otherwise known as the Annex. It's an artsy-fartsy part of town. My wife was being sketched by some guy. I in turned took a couple of minutes to capture these two men having a coffee, yapping and looking out the window.

Sketch from this Morning

Here's a sketch I did this morning at our family meeting. My daughter was sitting opposite me, and I had the Faber-Castell brush pens out. I did this without the aid of pencils. Sometimes, it's best to just strike with the pen, and not worry about getting things perfect. I thought this sketch came out pretty good. The left and bottom right portraits bear the closest resemblance to my daughter.