Painting on the Mackenzie-King Bridge

You might have heard earlier this month about Patrick Mills painting every day in March on the Mackenzie-King Bridge. I made a point of going to visit him shortly after that story broke, chatted with him a bit, and of course took a photo:

He has a blog where he keeps track of his regular progress.

A couple days after reading about his work, I recognized one of them staring me in the face as I walked out of the office on the second floor of City Hall (between the elevator bank near the Laurier entrance and the rotunda):

This had just recently been installed, as part of the recent trend to spill out the City's art collection on the otherwise unused wall space.

Patrick is painting every day in March, of which there aren't too many left. So if you want to check him out in person, don't wait too long!

Crescent Moonset

As I was heading to meet friends for dinner in Somerset Village, a giant red crescent moon made itself apparent right in my path. I diligently got my tripod out and took photos from the middle of the street.

As I was fiddling with the camera settings, a party of twelve came out of Mama Theresa's and watched me while they tried to figure out what I was doing. When I returned to the sidewalk and saw they were still watching me as I put away my tripod, I pointed to the end of the street and said "look, the moon!"

One ventured hesitantly into the street, saw it, and was soon followed by the rest of the group to admire the spectacle. After a minute or two, they figured it was time they got out of the road. There's a certain bemusing thrill to stand in the middle of the street to admire a sight, especially when traffic is so sparse.

Generally the moon illusion is associated with a full moon, but clarly it works just as well with a crescent moon.

Back in May, I tweeted a similar photo of the moon over the Plaza Bridge by the NAC, Parliament Hill, Rideau Canal, and former Union Station. That was a cropped version of this one, which is a stunning and classic Ottawa nighttime shot even without the moon:

3D Thursday: end of the Rideau Canal season

The end of boating season is rapidly approaching on the Rideau Canal, but back in August when we were having that beautiful summer weather, I took a few days off here and there, managing to take many photos around town, including many in 3D. I'm still working on the technique of taking photos with two cameras simultaneously, but the timing on this one was close enough to catch this yacht heading towards the Plaza Bridge at a pretty decent clip: (If you don't have standard red-cyan 3D glasses, I usually carry spares to give away if you see me, otherwise you can get them for $2.99 at the Comic Book Shoppe at Bank and Lisgar)

Source photos for the 3D image: Left, Right

For many years the sculpture Balancing was on the last just to the right of the photo, between the National Arts Centre and Confederation Square. After four years away, John Hooper's 1981 artwork has been fully restored and was reinstalled ten days ago on the opposite side of the canal, just to the left of where the trees are on the left side of the photo. (Photos of the restoration are on the NCC's Flickr gallery on the linked page).

I took another couple of great 3D shots around the Plaza Bridge and elsewhere the same day I took this one, but I won't post them just yet. I'll save those for weeks like this one, where time pushes me to post a one-photo entry. I missed the last couple of 3D Thursday posts, but I'm working on a two-part blog post each with a number of 3D photos of a part of downtown you may not even know existed!

[Tune in on Thursdays at noon for a new 3D image. View the 3D label for other posts with 3D images]

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]

Cozy Oscar

It's cold outside, but the statue of Oscar Peterson, unveiled by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on June 30, 2010, has a warm knit cozy around the prop.

Jazz music plays from speakers above the statue at the corner of Elgin and Albert, and it's popular for people to have pictures taken of themselves sitting next to Oscar on the bench. A great piece of interactive public art, right outside the National Arts Centre!

[Look for more one-photo posts under the label Singles]