My backyard

My backyard has changed from the lush greens in the summer and couple of feet of snow in the winter to steel, glass, and concrete year round.

I did not think much about this when I was looking for a place in Toronto, but since I was a kid, I always thought it would be cool to live in a high-rise in a downtown area with the glitters of city lights poking through the glass windows.

My backyard.

Well, I am now fifteen floors up and the view is not too bad.  Facing south, I can see some parts of the Toronto Islands and parts of Lake Ontario.  On a normal day, there is enough light out there I could walk around my place without turning on my lights.  On a foggy night, the view could be quite interesting.  I will see how winter will shape the scene--we just had the first snow fall this year in this area and temperature has fallen down to -1 degree this morning.

The street reporter

I have not posted anything for a while but I have been out there shooting.  Sometimes, it's lugging my two DSLRs around, and sometimes, it's just--wait a second, something just dawned on me ... did I miss the Henry's Exposure photo show this fall or maybe they cut the show down to only one per year--about running into something interesting while biking around.  And for that, I need something light, like my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30 that I purchased a while ago for $70.  The built-in telephoto lens on this camera is perfect for the ride-about that I do from time to time or the ride to work that I do everyday.

Just yesterday, I ran across an area cordoned off by police.  It was on my usual, daily bike route.  Some car was pulled over earlier in the day (apparently not by random chance) and some small explosive was found in a gym bag in the trunk.  The event had already unfolded by the time I got there but I got a glimpse of the scene.  It would have been more interesting had I witnessed the detonation of the explosive that the police had set off--well, maybe they would have cordoned off a bigger area so I might not have been able to capture anything then.  Anyways, I feel like an amateur street reporter with a cheap camera on hand.

It's almost 8am.  I gotta start preparing to go to work.