Well, it’s happened. I’m getting antsy.

I was watching Breakfast Television this morning to see if Dina Pugliese would entice me into a passionate new day (and for the weather report). She didn’t; she’s just so dry (and it’s supposed to start raining tomorrow).  The over-boiled supposed-to-be-soft-boiled egg was digesting in my stomach, as was the thick, crunchy, crusty hunk of Vienna Rye (I buy it for a reason!) I was up early again and was feeling the need to get inspired. Portfolio’s a waitin’

Dina obviously wouldn’t do it for me so I decided to kill a few birds with one stone: head outside for a walk, get some inspiration, and take a few photos of it. I firmly believe that to solve a problem it’s best to walk away from it; just the excuse I needed.

My first thought when I hit Yonge-Dundas Square was to make the portfolio like a building. Each floor would house a project I’d worked on that you could fly into via the magic of Adobe Flash. The Woo building (I’m sure it has another name — but is it as catchy?), seemed like a suitable candidate. Lots of windows and spinny, twirly, moving things. Plus, I remember the Woo website being somewhat slick – the location must’ve worked for them.

Except that it’s been done, like, a million and one times already.  Every agency and creative somethingorother showcase their loft, or their building, or some nearby space on their web pages.

Okay, how about something like a construction site then?

I could have the shovels, umm, shoveling content. And the dump trucks … dumping … stuff. Hmmm.

That idea had two unfortunate connotations. First, the connection between trucks, dumping, and the intertubes. Not sure if that’s the image I want to give off. Second, this thing:

Ultra-cheese since it first appeared in a Netscape window. I haven’t used Netscape since I don’t even know when.

So that pretty much put an end to the construction idea.

For some reason, fire trucks were racing along Yonge Street the whole morning. I didn’t see a single emergency (no smoke or stretchers), but they did spark off an idea.

Maybe I’d been over thinking it. Maybe I could just use one complex, rotating, 3D object in the middle of a pristine white web page. The object could be something like a fire truck, the Swiss Army knife of vehicles. Or a Swiss Army knife. I imagined it would be kind fun to poke and prod this thing on screen, having each prodable doohickey act as an activator to some portfolio piece that would pop up beside it.

KEEP GOING …

To be perfectly honest, there’s nothing I enjoy more than having someone tell me how to operate my own equipment. I mean, a suggestion is one thing. That I don’t mind at all. It doesn’t make any presumptions. But when that short, older man (wearing a Yankees cap!) told me, “you can’t shoot directly into the sun, son”, I could scarcely contain my rage.

I took him to the nearby corner of Yonge-Dundas Square and I showed him a few things.

“You see, sucker”, I thought to myself. “There’s enough ambient light on the sidewalk”, now out-loud, “to illuminate subjects from the front. They’re kind of shadowy, but I think that’s kinda cool. All thanks to this iContrast thingie.”

“Ah!”, he marvelled. “What camera is this? I have an EOS Rebel XSi at home. Is that a Rebel too?”

“No”, I replied, “it’s a … umm …”. I’d forgotten the name. Flipped it over. “Oh, yeah, a Powershot … SX 10 … IS. Fixed lens (can’t stick another lens on there) … but what a lens!”

I went on to extole the virtues of the camera and its lens while flipping through the other photos.

“So, it has all the same software?”

What an odd question.

KEEP GOING …