John FitzGerald's photos

Toronto Eaton Centre is a shopping mall in downtown Toronto that is a major tourist attraction. The geese are a sculpture by Michael Snow called "Flight Stop". It consists of photographs of a goose over fibreglass and styrofoam cores. This is a re-edit of an old post that I deleted when the site seemed to be about to close. More photos of the Eaton Centre will be coming; I have created an album for them. Since artistic copyright is a popular issue these days, I'll mention that in 1981 Snow sued the Eaton Centre when it put ribbons on the birds' necks for Christmas. He had to prove prejudice to his honour or reputation, and he won the suit. Since then the Canadian Copyright Act has been amended so that any modification to a painting, sculpture, or engraving is always considered prejudicial.

Toronto Eaton Centre is a shopping mall in downtown Toronto that is a major tourist attraction. I am reposting some photos of the Centre that I had removed, and have created an album for the Eaton Centre. The PiP at top left has a view of this tower from inside the building.

Yonge Street, Toronto, opposite the Eaton Centre. And a happy Fence Friday!

Happy new year! I took a lovely photo for New Year's Day but my computer has been refusing to recognize the SD card, so that went down the tubes/up the spout/out the window, so here once again is an old photo that I don't think I have posted before. I believe this was inspired by Diane Arbus -- not directly, of course, but through some abstraction that my unconscious drew from her photographs, or some of them, and then burst into my consciousness one day -- but I have no evidence to support this belief. Perhaps it was the Virgin Mary, or the muse of photography, or perhaps it was simply a random firing of neurons. Or perhaps you will conclude it is completely uninspired, which, to my mind, could well be true. La pensée a été donnée à l'homme pour lui raconter des histoires , or something like that. It's quite the snare, at least. Anyway, all the best for the new year, don't take any wooden nickels (although they're probably worth more than real nickels now), don't mind me. UPDATE (January 5): I tried fixing the ghost on the part of the cord/flex above the floor, and when that failed I tried re-editing, and when that failed I decided to throw myself on everyone's mercy. The merciful are blessed, you know.

It's almost winter so here's a winter photo, taken in 2015 and cropped since its first appearance here back then. When I lived in Toronto (which now seems like a century ago even though it's only been three years) the skating rink at Nathan Phillips Sqare was one of those places where everyone was happy -- the tourists trying skating for the first time, the families skating together, the speed demons whizzing around the outside, the young figure skaters practising their chops. And some going the wrong way, like buddy in the orange tuque; there's always someone, eh? But Jan Morris provided a much better description of activity at the rink in Among the Cities so you'd probably be better off reading that. [Sarah Paris has suggested that the backwards fellow may be taking a photo, which seems highly likely to me. Thanks, Sarah.]

Perhaps I oversharpened this. If, in fact, there is such a thing as oversharpening. I don't think there's an ISO standard for sharpness. So maybe I didn't oversharpen it. I need to get off my back.

Another find from the St. Lawrence Market weekly collectibles show in Toronto. I don't think I've posted it here before, although I posted on Flickr once. There are recipes on the other side, but I didn't like the scan of them, so didn't post them. I could try again if anyone would like to see them.

A cropped version of the photo is in the note at top left.

The large version annoys my eyes less. Type Z to find out if your eyes think the same way.

I still don't have anything new I want to post, so here's one I took in 2014.

My first post of a photo taken in 2022. As soon as I uploaded it I realized it looks like someone with their tongue hanging out of the left side of their mouth but I'm willing to overlook that. I'm feeling a bit peaked at the moment so will start commenting on other people's photos tomorrow,