Waterfalls on the Bruce Trail

There are music festivals, then there are Folk Festivals. The first sell out in about 1.25 minutes - the latter, well, you can get tickets at the gate on the day of.

I went to Summerfolk in Owen Sound this past weekend - yes, we got soaked on the Saturday afternoon. But really, that was beside the point of the great music in a low-key setting. Great music, good people - barely any public drunkeness and headache music. You listening to me, Hillside?

I've been going to this festival, on and off, for about 10 years and always staying at a friend's mom's house. I always take the turn-off to "Inglis Falls" to get to the house. In ten years I'd never actually seen Inglis Falls. This year, I finally did.

Who knew Owen Sound was this beautiful? Sure, the waterfalls aren't Iceland spectacular - but I didn't have to fly 5 hours to get here.

Yes, that gate goes to an abandoned water treatment plant. You can't put 3 civil engineers on the Bruce Trail and expect us to NOT stop for that. Come on.









Kids - Life Lesson #254 of being a kid. It sure is fun to stick your head through a fence like that - but it's only fun on the way in. The way out is hell. This is the life lesson where you learn about your ears.

If you like music and stuff - a few good acts from the festival who you may not have heard of:
Poor Angus
Baskery
Delhi2Dublin

Castles and Iron Chefs

I spent Saturday doing some photos at Casa Loma for LEAF, then made my way down to Harbourfront for the Hot and Spicy Food Festival's Iron Chef competition.

My cousin, local star chef Joshna Maharaj was competing in the first semi finals - Canada vs New Mexico. Secret ingredient = mushrooms. I was doing photos until I was apprehended by the barely 20 year old dude in charge who told me I needed a media pass. So I whipped out my 7 year old Snap Toronto media pass (I have no idea why I had it with me - it means nothing). That was good enough for him to let me keep shooting until the end of the first competition - but dude told me he would escort me to the security desk to get a Harbourfront pass right after the competition. Fine. I didn't ask why he didn't bother anyone else with a camera - none of whom had media passes.

As I was being escorted out - I heard someone call "Kanch!". There are very few people who call me that name - either people I am related to or people from childhood - neither of whom I expected to run into at Harbourfront that day. It took me a while to register that it was one of my brother's childhood friends - he was the sous chef in the second semi final - Antigua vs Mexico.

What are the odds of that?

So I got my media pass, wandered around and shot festival photos (one of which made it to BlogTo- then came back to shoot his competition.

I won't tell you who won - you'll have to watch TV for that.

Weeds

I completed my second afternoon of Riding Buses and once again, spent a lot of time waiting around. These were at the same corner as the chopper bike photos from the last time.

Point and shoot camera on macro mode - weeds, mostly. I wasn't looking through the viewfinder or at the LCD for most of these. Point and shoot, literally.

Bicycle Marathon

This weekend I participated in the Toronto Photography Marathon (TPM).

12 exposures, 12 themes, 24 hours. It's harder than it sounds.

I also decided to make use of the time and do some OT for work. So I was travelling all over the west side of the city looking for my TPM subjects (in order) as well as riding buses for work.

I took a point and shoot camera with me along with my 35mm SLR - and I spent a lot of time waiting for buses. Especially the 32 Eglinton Bus (I don't want to talk about it). I did a lot of this.

You notice a lot of interesting things when you're waiting on the side of the road, by yourself. All day. Things like elephants on walls, light streaming through things.. after looking through the images, I realized that I seemed to have a thing for bicycles and the sky this weekend. Specifically red bicycles.

The sky thing I always knew about - the bicycle thing, notso much.

Perhaps it's the engineer in me.

Engineer, meet photographer.

/<.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.