Photo Detail — A sum­mer storm builds over Nanny Goat Hill

I’ve been work­ing on a big pan­or­amic photo (the final print will be about 2 feet by 4 feet) that I star­ted this summer.

It was July, and we’d just moved into the new apart­ment in Chin­atown. The liv­ing room was pretty sparsely dec­or­ated at that point, non­ethe­less my room­mate and I were sit­ting around enjoy­ing the cool sum­mer after­noon.  “Look at that!” he said, and we rushed out onto the bal­cony just in time to see the giant black storm clouds passing over­head. It was a wacky sum­mer, and had rained almost every day. I had been teas­ing my room­mate that he had brought the wet weather with him from Van­couver. This cloud was dif­fer­ent, it was mov­ing fast and very dark. You could feel the elec­tric ten­sion in the air. It was going to rain any moment. I rushed back in, grabbed my cam­era, and fired off a sequence of pho­tos. A few sad little drops star­ted to fall. Then a few more, and all of a sud­den it was rain­ing big wet droplets in a rapid down­pour. And then, just as quickly as it had come, the storm was over.

Which bal­cony will colapse first?

My friends Greg and Matt lived in the white house across the street. It was a com­mon, if not daily, occur­rence for four or five people to be packed onto their little bal­cony in the even­ing, smoking and talk­ing.  From my bal­cony, you could see the old wood sag under their weight. They’d call over “come have a beer,” and I would, mak­ing sure to sit near the door, just in case.  Nobody who lived there seemed too nervous about the dis­tinct slant to the floor or the miss­ing rungs on the rail­ing. About a month before, a bal­cony had col­lapsed in Ott­awa, injur­ing two young women. My room­mate said I was crazy for going over there. So far, everything is still stand­ing. We’ll see what hap­pens in the spring.

Matt and Greg moved to Montreal at the end of the sum­mer. I was sad to see them go. I miss those guys and their crazy ways. There’s nobody else who’ll play fris­bee in the dark at next to mid­night. I hope they’re doing well in their new home town.