A beautiful Friday afternoon on the ice in High Park. So far this season I’ve gone skating four times. Which are your favourite ice rinks in the city?

Last week I was visiting The Blog Studio, where I bumped into Jason Howlett post yoga.

Found off Dundas Street W, just east of Beverly, this city of Toronto sponsored, Chinatown Mural is tucked away in an ally off the Dundas strip. Definitely worth seeing in person, it captures the spirit of the Chinese community here in Toronto. And stretches down the ally beyond what I’ve captured here.

So last week I finally picked up a Canon 5D mrkII. After a bit of a mishaps with my older 5D while I was in Vancouver, I needed to make the leap to a newer body. I must say that I love it. It’s a dream to shoot with and I wonder why I didn’t do this sooner. This is the first shot I took with the camera over the weekend.

Toronto is in full swing with TIFF happening in the city, and it seems that TIFF means different things to different people. For many it’s about seeing as many films as humanly possible in a week, for others it’s stargazing as many celebrities flock to Toronto for the festival and for some it’s about getting into as many parties happening in the city in conjunction with a bunch of the films.

Last Friday I worked a party for Haagen Dazs at the Princess of Wales Theatre, where lucky facebook page winners had a taste of being a TIFF VIP. Click here to view some of the pictures from the party.

What parties have you been to? Which celebrities have you seen? What films have you loved and hated?

A couple of weeks ago I made a brief trip to Ottawa on my way to Montreal. I was there for a photo shoot which I completed earlier in the afternoon, but before deciding to leave our capital city, I decided to swing by Parliament Hill to check out the scene. It was a grey day and there was definitely a sombre feel in the air, as thousands line up to pay the respects to the late Jack Layton. Although I didn’t wait in line, I took a moment in silence and shot this photo of the Hill to pay my tribute.

Not really being home much over the last week and a half, I never got a chance to post this photo of Jack Layton from Pride 2006.

Jack, you were an amazing leader, you were such a giving person and overall, Jack was likely one of the nicest and most accessible politicians I’ve seen. You sir will be missed.

It’s all about the Hustle.

Captured this shot in the same alley as yesterday’s shot. The colours look fantastic.

Found in an alley behind Queen Street West. Quite impressed with how the Nokia X7 captured the colours in this piece.

Two bikes just off Ossington, on Argyle St. I’m always drawn to shooting pictures of bikes in the wild.

Shot with the Nokia X7, Brown Wall at Gladstone and Queen. Love how they left the graffiti door intact.

Wandering about downtown Calgary is a task that you can pretty much do in a day, so while I was in Calgary, I hopped on Calgary Transit and made the trip out to Chinook Centre. It was a fairly decent sized mall, but it sure had a lot of higher end stores. In this shot, I captured the ceiling in the newer end of the mall.

I must admit I was quite impressed with the public transportation in Calgary. It might not be as extensive as Toronto, but it definitely did the job with flying colours.

Calgary isn’t just about cowboys. They even got a tiny little Chinatown. The city was actually, surprisingly more diverse than I imagined.

Toronto is a city of summer street festivals. I think pretty much every week, there is a strip in the city that closes it’s streets for a bit of a community party. Big on Bloor is the local one for me and is probably the underdog of all of these festivals. This weekend they celebrated their fourth year, and for the third year in a row, they experienced rain. Perhaps we should start calling this the rain festival. Joking aside, the strip of Bloor between Dufferin and Lansdowne was closed off to traffic, and lotf of businesses, artists, musicians and food vendors were out to share their talents.

Had first row seats at a Toronto Jays game this week. We were sitting just past first base. That’s where I caught this shot of Ace, the Jay’s mascot.

Walking around Calgary, I found myself in front of the Calgary Board of Education where I found these statues, Family of Man, by Mario Armengol. The statue was originally made for the British Pavilion for Expo 67 in Montreal. The statues were then purchased by Maxwell Cummings and Sons, who then donated them to the CBE.

Check out this cute little house in Calgary, inspired by The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai. I’d totally live in this house. Can we build one here in Toronto?

A herd of Buffalo found on 6th Ave SW and 5th St in Calgary. There was so much public art in Calgary and I did a horrible job and tracking and noting what each piece was.