Randy vs The Building: Round 1

Today my day started very differently then most others. Let me explain. As we all know in the past few weeks I’ve decided to take up some amateur photography. Nothing fancy, just me and my 2 mega pixel easy share camera. I’ve taken pictures of flowers, signs, bikes and other such subjects. Well today, I on my way to work, I decide to get off at Lucien-L'Allier and take pictures of buildings in the area before continuing to work. I don’t get to wander around downtown so I though that this would be fun for me and I’ll get to see some great Montreal architecture.

I started right out side the Bell Center, walked a little bit and took a picture of 1250 Boulevard Rene-Levesque as it pointed up to the morning sky. It was then that I was approached by a security guard. He then asks me if I had just taken a picture of the building. I said that I did. He told me that I wasn’t allowed to do that because there are a lot of movies are shot in front of this building and that the building was copyrighted. He then tells me that if I want to take pictures of the building I have to get permission and to delete my pictures. He was very nice about it and I did what I was asked as I didn’t want any trouble before work. I didn't want to end up in building jail and have to call my wife to bail me out. I’ve never heard such a thing. I wasn’t allowed to take the picture because the building was copyrighted and I had to get permission. I can only imagine the hassle that I would get if I was to try and contact the proper people about taking a personal picture of the building. Do they stop the tourists from taking pictures of this building as I’m told that it’s a nice attraction being one of the tallest buildings in Montreal? How would they possible police something like this in the city as I’m sure that building has it’s good side snapped buy lot’s of people everyday. How can they stop people from doing this? Is it even legal?

Now, I'm new to the city by most standards. I moved here from a small town in Ontario for a job 2.5 years ago and since then I’ve had to learn the do’s and don’t of this new city/province, usually the hard way. But this tops my list of hard times the city has given me. It’s unfortunate too because I’m going to tell my friends and family from Ontario about the building you can’t photograph and they’ll all agree with me (my co-workers already do) that it’s quite possibly the stupidest thing they’ve heard and as a result it will make Montreal look poorly in thier eyes. All because a security officer stopped me from taking pictures of, what I though, was a very nice piece of down town Montreal that I would have liked to share with my family. It’s a shame that this happened as it just makes me more frustrated with the city when it’s not really the city’s fault.

This could have happened anywhere and I would still be equaly as angry. So angry in fact that I've already written a "Letter to the Editor" of The Gazette. I hope it get printed. I know that I'm going to call the building owners/marketing people or who ever I have to to get an answer as to why tourists can't take pictures of this building. Depending on how retarded this get's I might even go to different media sources. Weather or not people will isten to me I don't know. I just know I want to make myself heard on this incident.

Experiment

So the other day I took our camera to work and took pictures on my trip in, around the building where I work and the trip home again. The moment I started taking pictures I instantly found that I was wishing for a better camera. Ours has no zoom, no close up feature… actually it’s completely void of features at all. I can ether take a picture or shoot 30 sec of video. That’s it. My camera pulls no punches, it’s just a straight up camera. Actually, I can take pictures with or with out the flash… so I guess that’s a feature. Only my camera gets lazy and keeps the shutter open way too long when the flash is off and the result is blurry pictures every time. The only work around I could find is to put my finger over the flash so I would only be using the natural light (it was a bit over cast yesterday). Here’s a quick bit of info for people. Even though the flash on your camera goes off for a mico second it’s extremely hot and I would have to wait to avoid scorching my finger.

All in all it went pretty well. I had an idea of on my lunch hour hopping the Metro (that’s what they call the subway here in Montreal which can be confusing because they also have a grocery store called Metro “I’m going to Metro on the Metro”) and traveling to some other stop and taking pictures there for an hour. But my back wasn’t in the best of shape for some reason so I called it off. I’ll try again next week.

Yeah, so this is turning out to be a fun little project. Snapping pictures on my lunch and drawing people on the train (I have more of those to post soon too) will keep me busy for a while me thinks. Now I just have to get a better camera.

Click!

Along with deciding to draw more I’ve started to lean towards taking photos. Mostly because I read SushiCam and the fellow there takes fabulous pictures of Japan. Now, I before this weekend I was in the mind set of “Why should I start to take pictures, Montreal isn’t nearly as exotic as Japan and so my photo’s won’t be as good”. But if that where true then photography wouldn’t really exist unless in Japan. So I decided to take our little 2 mega pixel Kodak Easy Share at snap a few images while we where down home in Belleville Ontario this weekend. I’ve posted the best of the ones I took to share with the three or so people the read this.

So it would seem that I’m filling my world with more art related projects. I actually find that I’m wishing I had the camera with me all the time so I snap pictures on my way to work. Maybe this week I’ll see if my wife needs the camera and if not scam it for the day. I’m already finding though that I wish I had a better camera. The one we have, which works just fine and takes great pictures as it’s the framing you use when taking a picture, not the camera it self, is a pretty bare bones camera. I find that I want to zoom in on subjects which is some thing our current camera doesn’t do. You have to walk up and practically stand on the object you wish to snap and then you’ll probably be too close and the photo will be kinda fuzzy. I should get use to taking photos and practice my framing before move’n up to a fancier camera though. Oh well, all in due time I guess.

Would it kill ya to smile?

Okay, I have some more train peeps for who ever wants to see them. I'm guessing that most people don't realize just how grumpy they look on the train. Now, I don't expect them to sit there with Joker type smiles... that would just be creepy, but man, the vast majority have the most sour pusses on, you'd think they where expecting to have a bad day. Yet another reason I hope people don't ask to see my drawings. I doubt most would be flattered to see them selves looking so unhappy. Or maybe it's just a big commentary as to how we live our lives. Maybe I'm drawing people how they truly feel when no one is looking. No front, no mask, just the real deal.

I wonder how I look when no one is looking...