Picture

From this angle... it's the same; but different.

I always like to study the world from unpopular angles. I love to take a fly-on-the-wall perspective where ever I can find it. This photo was taken at the base of Clifton Hill, Niagara Falls. The distressed mirror hangs perched on an old entrance gate to the old rail-car that lead to the maid of the mist. The mirror serves no purpose but to be ignored by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year.
The mirror allows us to see the familiar sights of the tourist district from a different angle. Within this broken piece of history, lays the present in a slightly different form. Discarded and waste, but still a piece in the puzzle that is the illusion that is Niagara Fall's tourist district. I like how this archaic piece of history is subtly and innocuously insignificant, and yet stands their reflecting ourselves back at us. 




 
Picture

Happy Sushi is Happy :)

The last few posts have had interesting and deep connotations and I want to remind everyone that art can be funny too. (Not that I would call this "art", but it's still one of my cherished photographic memories.) This photo just sort of reminds me that it's okay to be a kid now-and-again. It's alright to laugh at the insignificant or mediocre things in life that might bring you a smile. This sushi, for example, was some of the most bland and boring sushi we ever made...and yet, a couple of them came out smirking at us, almost as it to say "Hey man, you fail!"
It's these little moments, the memories and little laughs and joys, that we need to cherish. These are the elements that keep us sane. These are little little moments of insanity that keep us going. If it wasn't for this little piece of paradoliatic-humour, I would probably have been disappointed in this sushi. Eating it with a smile however, somehow made it all better.


Life is best when it's shared with good friends, good times, and when taken with good humour. If we can't laugh at the random, can we really laugh at anything at all. So this photo just reminds me that life's hilarious...go out and enjoy it!
 
Picture

How much is really real...?

You may recognize this image from the Niagara Blog page. It's an image of a leaf created by artist Pearl Paul. the reason I love this photo so much is that nothing in it is really as it appears. That's not the moon in the background, nor is this even outside. It's a hallway of a university and it's not even autumn. The leaf is tissue paper and dye, the tree is just a bunch of dead twigs... This image makes me think that art imitates life, but often the things we love more about life are taken for granted. The simple idea that we can recreate a seemingly mundane scene, in the visual poetry of the plastic arts, is proof that, as people, we yearn to imitate our surroundings. It's a rare occasion that we find ourselves staring at something this redundant in real life but, as art, I couldn't take my eyes off it. 
This photo takes me to places in my mind that, though not entirely fictional, do not exist; but are simply constructs of a different reality. So is this real? Is anything that we peer at through our monitors and lenses really real...how much of anything must be altered by the human spirit before what's authentic is no longer natural. Everything is real, it's the limits of reality that we must keep defining...altering...realizing.


Cheers,
-D- 
 
Picture

Mysery Maze, Beat it!

This image is a simple one. As we wonder through life, almost aimlessly at times, we don't always look around at the subtle ironies. This sign caught our attention and made a whole lot of us laugh. The coincidental irony that an advertisement meant to attract guests to this tourist trap spells out a negative value for its customers. The most ironic point is made by their attempts to be funny with the "Get lost" slogan which produces the rare, illustrious and unforgettable "double-irony".


Sure, it doesn't actually say Misery verbatim, but the "Mysery Maze" is quite funny still. 
 
Picture

Where your focus falls...



Might as well start with the banner image. 
This photo was taken on the brink of the Niagara Escarpment between the Niagara Falls and the Rainbow Bridge. It's significance is to reflect how, as a local, we often ignore the iconography that is associated with the Niagara Falls. We take for granted the falls and their beauty and often pass by them with little focus on their culture, economical, and emotional significance on our daily lives as a citizen of the Niagara Region. 


Only faintly can you distinguish the American Falls lit behind the main focus of the trees. I wanted to portray our lack of focus on the large things and our concentration on lesser and more mediocre aspects of the surrounding that we find ourselves in. 


-Dennis
    TwitterFacebookStumbleuponFavoritesMore
    Picture

    UniverseGuyD

    Niagara raised blogger, amateur photographer, vlogger and all-round insane person.

    Archives

    January 2011
    December 2010

    Categories

    All