Photography

I was playing around today with a website called "Tiltshift Maker." Tilt shifting is a photography method which plays with the tilt of the camera and focus. It can be used to create selective focus pictures, which appear to be photos of miniatures, even though they are real.

The website allows you to use software to get this same effect. I tried a number of photos from my various trips over the years, but I think these are the best three of them. Enjoy.

Click on the photos for a larger view

Monaco Grand Prix, May 2009

Nice, France beach, May 2009

Arsenal's Emirates Field, November 2009

In honour of the ghosties and goblins, some creepy shots I have taken...

Egham, Surrey:

Bunhill Fields, London:

BOO!

More Olympic Fever. Looks like the temperature is really rising!

Seems I can't escape the Olympics, especially when you are living with 3 very patriotic Brits. This past weekend and the last few days have been very good to Britain in Beijing. They won a mass of Gold medals, and now sit at 3rd in the overall standings, behind only China and the USA. Many of those medals came in Sailing and Cycling, where Team GB's strategy of co-locating all their cycling athletes in Manchester at a state of the art, well-funded facility has paid off handsomely. Of the 10 events at the velodrome this Olympics, GB has won 12 medals, including 7 golds, putting them well ahead of the next closest team, Spain, with 3 medals.

I wandered down to Trafalgar Square today to catch two of those Olympic golds in the Men and Women's Sprints. A massive video screen has been set up in Trafalgar Square, and has become an impromptu living room / party room, with moments of tension as people watch events, and moments of levity as they celebrate the winners.

Victoria Pendleton won her gold medal match in the Women's Sprint, bringing cheers from the assembled crowd.

Next up, Chris Hoy of Great Britain beat Jason Kenny, also of Great Britain, to give a Gold and Silver finish to the Men's Sprint, and made Chris Hoy the first British person to win 3 gold medals in a games since 1908. More cheers from the crowds, the medal ceremony and then the song... God Save the Queen. I've been hearing it a lot lately.

Haven't heard too much of O Canada, unfortunately. It's only been played twice this Olympics. Sigh. I guess there is always 2012.

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Today, I found a barber not far from my place that I like. He's just across the river in Greenwich. £12 for a "Gents" cut. I guess I am a gent. Did a nice job with my hair, and despite the fact that he gave me a bit of a dressing down due to the fact that I sometimes shave my own neck between cuts (which causes ingrown hairs), I am for sure going back. Yay, yet another little bit of "settlement" news.

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While the 2012 Olympic site at Stratford is still mostly dirt, one site is up and running already, the ExCel Centre in the east end of the Docklands. I took a walk down that way the other day. It's a pretty impressive building, at least from the footbridge going across the Royal Victoria Docks. The roof is all spikey, white bars, almost like a giant constructor set.

Unfortunately, from the ground it's just a big box. To make a nice picture of it, you have to dress it up with something in the foreground blocking part of the view, like this handily placed crane.

ExCel will be hosting Boxing, Fencing, Judo, Table Tennis, Taekwondo, Weightlifting and Wrestling.

Walking out to the ExCel Centre I followed the North Bank of the Thames, and then cut up and walked along the north side of the Royal Victoria Dock. The area around Royal Victoria Dock is well developed, with a number of nice apartment buildings and a few bars and restaurants.

On my way back, I decided to see a different part of London, so I crossed over the DLR tracks to Victoria Dock Road. It is just north of the ExCel Centre and the condo apartments at Royal Victoria Docks, but is a very different place from it's neighbour on the south side of the DLR tracks.

On the north side of the DLR tracks is a lot of run down looking housing, and mostly scuzzy looking businesses, many of which seemed closed permanently.

Walking further along towards Canning Town, I came across a car on the side of the road that was completely destroyed by fire. 4 cars down from that, a car with it's passenger side window smashed, glove box open and papers strewn around the car. I thought about taking a photo, as it reminded me almost of the kind of shots you see from war zones, but then though better of hauling out my camera in an area where, apparently, people smash and grab and on occasion burn cars.

Past Canning Town Station, though, suddenly everything changes again, with more pricey looking condos and shiny office blocks. A lot of the businesses along the Victoria Dock road close to Canning Town were shut down, not for lack of business, but because the land was reclaimed for a massive redevelopment project. When walking along, I couldn't help but feel that it would only be a matter of time until the gentrification oozed its way north and east and all those burnt out cars and run down flats would be replaced by condo high-rises and California-Thai-Mexican fusion restaurants.

Closer to the Thames River in Silvertown, development hasn't quite taken hold. It's still an industrial area with few opportunities for a pedestrian to get close to the water. About the only reclaimed part there is the area called Trinity Buoy Wharf, which has been remade from a Buoy manufacturing and maintenance facility into a centre for arts and artists.

(I didn't get to try Fatboy's Dinner. They were closed for August vacation).

Ironically, as part of the scheme, they have converted a lot of large shipping containers into art studios and small craft shops. This is ironic as it was ultimately the shipping container and the Port of London's inability to deal with the massive cranes and ships required to move shipping containers that lead the docklands to close and be redeveloped.

Then again, given they are artists, perhaps that is a statement in of itself?

Further east, south of Royal Victoria Dock and heading towards London City Airport is a large section of land that is unused. The area used to be manufacturing and shipping, but with the closure of the docks, it has mostly gone to fallow.

Walking along North Woolwich Road, I found another casualty of the docks closing.

With no thirsty dockhands looking for a pint, there is no reason to keep the pub open. Boarded up, abandoned and surrounding by two metal fences, the Graving Dock Tavern closed up in the 2002. Graving Docks, by the way, where used to clean the hulls of the ships.

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Continuing to geographically hop around without any sort of rhyme or reason, here's some photos from an underpass near Waterloo Station. Graffiti is allowed and encouraged in this area, and there are some interesting pieces of art.

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I know I've shown this picture before, but I really like it.

There is something very cool about the juxtaposition of the farm animals and the skyscrapers. I think every city should have a farm pasture right in the middle of downtown. It would be a great way for stressed-out office workers to relax during their lunch breaks.

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Hmm, an entry without any sort of point or purpose. If this were actual literature, people would probably complain, but as this is a free blog on the internet, I know that...

London was at the fore-front of the industrial revolution. By the late 19th century, the city had grown tremendously as people moved from the country-side and agriculture to the city and the factories. The city was bursting at the seams, and thus a lot of money and energy was poured into building the infrastructure of London, much of it still in use today.

Of course, 100 year old and older infrastructure does mean that there is a lot of maintenance that needs to occur. I wander around the city, I often see streets closed to traffic, with signs indicating work with the quaint name of “Replacing London’s Victorian Water Mains.” Despite the rather prosaic sounding name, it is a multi-million pound undertaking to update the infrastructure of London’s water system into this century.

I am reminded of this infrastructure work further today as I try and reach my destination. For anyone who rides the London train and underground system, weekend closures is probably something of a swear word, an indication that travel will be a pain. Much of the underground and rail network dates back a to late 1800s and early 1900s, including this platform at Baker Street, part of the world’s first underground train line dating back to 1863.

Of course, not all the work is due to being really old, as this weekend includes closures on the Jubilee line from Green Park to Stratford (opened in 1999) and the Docklands Light Rail (opened in 1987).

Also closed this weekend, though, was the Victoria line, dating back to 1968. Unfortunately, it was to a station on the Victoria line that I wanted to go. Instead, I needed to transfer at Baker Street to the circle line, riding it around to Victoria station, where I transferred to a Southern Line train service to Battersea Park Station. If there is one thing you learn quickly here in London, it’s to use all forms of transport available - Underground, Overground, Buses, Riverboat, and National Rail - anything that’ll take your Oyster Card.

From Battersea Park Station, it was just a quick walk to my final destination, Battersea Power Station.

Opened in 1939 by the London Power Company, the station was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, an industrial designer who was also responsible for the red telephone box so associated with London. The plant, a coal fired plant that provided electricity to London, was expanded in 1955 to it’s present form with four stacks in an imposing red brick building.

By 1983 both of the two generators were shut down, and the station fell into disrepair.

For those outside London, the station will probably best be known for appearing on the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals, with a large pink pig floating above it.

Though tethered to the station, the large floating pig broke loose and rose up into the sky. Unfortunately for travellers into London that day, Battersea is below the flight path into Heathrow Airport, and so a large number of flights were delayed and cancelled while the pig floated above London, finally landing somewhere in Kent.

The pig has become something of a symbol for the power plant itself, and had been used in the campaign to notify the public of the free tours and consultations for future development going on this month.

The power plant is quite imposing, a tall, thick red-brick structure with it’s massive stacks. It has, however, been unused for a quarter of a century, so it has fallen into disrepair, the site covered with fallen brick and rusting metal.

Currently, development plans have been drawn up to reclaim the site and turn it into a residential, shopping and business area. The plans are quite elaborate and grand, including a massive clear chimney that will vent hot air and bring in cool air into the “ecodome,” as a heating and cool measure. The glass chimney will tower above the four white stacks of the old Battersea Power Station.

The plans are not without their critics, though, and they aren’t the first plans to redevelop the site. The next two years will be taken up with approvals. Beyond that, plans to extend the Northern tube line to the site to be completed by 2015, and the rest of the buildings on the site completed in a phased development after that.

Still many years before the white stacks with be dwarfed by the glass eco-tower. Lots of time for them to tower over the south Thames.

A few weeks ago Toronto was getting another blanketing of snow. I was standing in the vestibule of my apartment building doing up my jacket’s zipper and securing my hat and gloves. A man walked into the vestibule also readying himself to head out into the falling snow.

“Bad winter, eh?” I said

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “it’s Canada.” Then he turned and walked outside, letting twister of blowing snow into the vestibule and causing a chill to creep up my spine.

“I don’t know, seems bad to me,” I said to no one, before hunkering down my shoulders and heading out into the snow.

That encounter got me thinking, though, whether or not I’d become some sort of softy when it comes to the snow. After all, my usually constant business travel usually keeps me on the road during winter in places that are warmer and less snowy than Canada. This winter, though, I’ve mostly been here in Canada. Perhaps all my travel has zapped me of the usual Canadian stiff upper lip when it comes to the winter weather.

Turns out, though, that isn’t the case. It is a bad winter here in Toronto. Last Saturday Toronto was in the middle of a blizzard delivering another 30 cm – 40 cm of snow, and we’d already had 20 cm earlier in the week. A front page story on the Toronto Star laid out the truth. We were very close to being the worst winter ever in Toronto.

After the 40 or so centimeters that fell on Friday and Saturday, so far this winter season Toronto has gotten 189.6 cm of snow (almost two metres!), and is only 17.8 cm away from the all time Toronto record of 207.4 cm set in 1938-1939. With still half of March and the very real possibility of some snow in early April, Toronto could break the record yet.

This is further contrasted by the fact that last year Toronto only got 60 cm of snow all winter, the second lowest total on record. So it’s not just my imagination, it is a bad winter!

Sunday was a beautiful sunny day, so I went out to capture some of the aftermath of Toronto’s latest snow storm.

Snow banks above car roofs. Cool!

The rest of Canada probably won’t think this all that impressive, of course. Ottawa, just a 5 hour drive away, has had 411 cm of snow so far this year, and Montreal has gotten 348 cm of the white stuff. In fact, Toronto is just 79th on the list of snowy cities, and our all time high of 207 cm is just above the AVERAGE snowfall across Canada of 200 cm a year.

Just another reason why the rest of Canada can continue to hate Toronto.