Testing out the iPhone Hipstamatic app at speed for this merry-go-round shot. Have you ever noticed that you just don’t find merry-go-rounds anymore? Has someone declared them too risky for the latest generation of kids being that we seem to be raising with our ever increasingly risk-removed world?

We recently visited a park that we haven’t been to in nearly 8 years. Last time there was a merry-go-round and a couple of those spinning swing setups with four swings on chains that spin around a centre hub. They’ve been removed a replaced with more modern and, I’m guessing, safer equipment – much to the kids’ disappointment. Those old things were a tonne of fun.

Based on my extensive one-week survey of some remote rural areas of British Columbia, I’ve learned that if you like the old playground equipment, you need to find some nice rural playgrounds that haven’t been discovered by the big city safety regulators. Based on my kids reaction, they’d still prefer to have a merry-go-round any day of the week!

This parent, on the other hand, can only handle so much time on the merry-go-round before he starts feeling decidedly green.

For Hipstamatic fans, this was shot with the Watts lens and Big Up film.

From a triptic yesterday to a diptic today and I’m back to Silver Elvis. Both photos are untouched other than a square crop. Elvis has done all the work for me!

A little triptic today featuring a young couple who were paying way more attention to each other than they were to the performers at the International Street Performers Festival in Edmonton.

Chairman Jim hamming it up for my camera at the International Street Performers Festival in Edmonton.

I hope someone out there is still enjoying my portrait series from the International Street Performers Festival. I know I’m enjoying going through the photos. Today’s portrait features the other half of the Kamikaze Fireflies, Casey Martin. In this photo, Casey is looking down on the crowd from atop a jaunty pair of bright yellow stilts.

 

My portrait series continues from the International Street Performers Festival. Today features the Rob Williams half of the duo called the Kamikaze Fireflies. They entertained the crowd with stilt walking, flaming hoola hoops, fire-breathing, cube spinning, acrobatics, and whipping. Yes, whipping. That’s tricks with a whip as opposed to tricks with cream.

Peter Jarvis is Silver Elvis, at least, this time he was. It seems like Pete Jarvis has a very broad repertoire of characters and performances that he includes in his shows. In his Silver Elvis persona at the International Street Performers Festival in Edmonton, he’s not so much an Elvis impersonator as he is an Elvis simulator!

James O’Shea is Chairman Jim. He is another of the street performers at the International Street Performers Festival in Edmonton.

He juggles. He jokes. He fires stale bread roles from a giant sling shot at unsuspecting pedestrians. He builds chair sculptures from white, plastic lawn chairs.

Magical Mystical Michael entertained the crowds with some classics including the rings, card tricks and some good old science tricks with surface tension. My ten-year old wasn’t too impressed. After each trick, she’d lean over and whisper to me how she thought it was done. So sad to be so jaded so young…

Continuing my portrait series from the International Street Performers Festival in Edmonton. I know what you’re thinking, right? What was this woman’s talent? Juggling? Singing? Acrobatics?

No, apparently none of those. I think her talent was simply casting questioning looks at the lunatics playing the ukeleles.