Posts in Category: Photography

Natural Spotlighting

On July 18, 2026 0 Comments - Photography

***These photos will look much better on a bigger screen. Your phone will crush all the details***

Facing East

Every morning I make coffee and then sit at an old desk to study or write. My cat usually hops up, curls into a ball and sleeps beside me while I work and we listen to chill ambient music together…often Masakatsu Takagi’s Marginalia recordings. This is my favourite time of day. At the opposite end of the room, there are a few tall and narrow windows that let in the morning sun. The light filters through the trees and, over the next few hours, circles the room and then gradually disappears. There is not a day that goes by when I don’t stop to watch the shadows of leaves dancing on the floor. The light changes a little bit every day and every season brings a new variation. I never get tired of looking at it. In the picture below, you can see what I see on a summer morning…

morning light coming through east facing windows

Natural Spotlighting

While watching the light travel over the room, I began to notice moments when a ray of sun would pass through gaps between leaves and illuminate some small part the room as if to say: “look at this!”. Whatever it touched would glow in the intense focused light. It reminded me of a spotlight on a dark stage, but made of sunlight. “Natural spotlighting” is how I think of it. I wondered if there was some way to capture this phenomenon in a photograph. I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be easy.

Technical Difficulties

When I set out to make these photos I decided that I wouldn’t stage anything. I wouldn’t move things into a spot of light. The scenes would just have to happen on their own and it was my job to notice them and try to capture them with my camera. There were a few difficulties.

One problem was that the weather itself has to provide hard contrast between areas of light and shade. All of the photos below had to be taken from a shady area pierced by a strong beam of bright sunlight. Less than a big-blue-sky sunny day wouldn’t work for any of these pictures.

But, the bigger problem was manipulating my camera into seeing what I was seeing in my mind. It took hundreds of photos and the better part of 2 months to figure it out. The main subject is intensely lit, but because these photos are made on very bright days even the shade itself was full of light. So, if I exposed the spotlit subject accurately, the background would still creep into the photo.

Without going into all the details, most of the problem was solved when I experimented with severely underexposing all the shots (like 2 to 3 stops of underexposure!). This caused the shadows to fade to black and, as a bonus, added an extra layer of rich colour saturation to the main subject. This, along with manipulating a few other settings on my old Fujifilm X100, worked to produce the photos that I imagined.

The Photographs

a guitar head stock lit by sunbeam
One of the first things I noticed lighting up in the morning sun was this classical guitar head stock.
a moon jar lit from one side by sun
This piece of Korean Baekja pottery earns it’s popular name “moon jar” in this photo.
a lapel pin lit by sun
Zizkov is the neighbourhood in Praha where my family is originally from. This is an old cap or lapel pin probably worn by a streetcar operator.
a moon jar from above lit by sun
Another angle on the moon jar. As simple as the form is, it changes so much in different light. I have taken so many pictures of this piece.
a table corner with pinholes made by cat claws
This is the corner of a massive solid red pine table (you can see it in the first photo). The little pin holes are from cat claws. This wood is incredibly heavy and dense so those marks are mostly through the surface layer of tung oil. It would take 100 cats 100 years to do any permanent damage to this wood. The intense sunlight brings out great texture here.
a book on a table spotlit by a sunbeam
Book on table with eye glasses. A dark and sinister looking photo of a dark and sinister subject.
This is taken in another room that has a single north facing window. In the summer, a tiny sliver of sunlight creeps in for a short time early in the morning. This is a black and white press photo from the film Fallen Angels. The eye belongs to Michelle Reis.
a houseplant and pot lit by a sunbeam
Chinese Money Plant in clay pot. The bright sun brings out the texture of the pot.
backlit plant leaves
Money Plant taken from the underside of the leaves.
a feathery plant lit by sun
Unknown plant at the edge of a forest. A single sunbeam caught the top of it.
a spray of white flowers in the sun
From a garden at the University of Toronto. I am not sure what this plant is called.
ginko tree leaves back lit
Ginko Tree at U of T
orange lily in a sunbeam
Lily on a front lawn in Rosedale. This garden was in heavy shade with only this flower reaching the sun.
panacle of buds on a forest plant
In the forest understory. I am not sure of the plant name.
red currants in the sun
Red berries at the forest edge. Maybe currants?
green berries in the sun
Green seed heads. These were very small.
a hand holding tiny violet flowers
These tiny flowers were on long wiry stems. Because it was so windy, I had to hold the stem to keep the flowers from swaying in and out of the picture. I didn’t really want my hand in the picture but after seeing it, I really like the little shadow on my finger.
a grape vine tip in the sunlight
Grape vine reaching for the sun.

What John Irving Said…

I once read an interview with the novelist John Irving where he said that his approach to writing is to start with the ending and then figure out how to get there. That’s where the hard work is. My approach to photography projects is similar. I often start with a specific mental image of a finished photograph and then figure out how to work with natural light and the camera to tell the story to the end. This is never easy but I usually end up with something unique, something I haven’t seen before. If you are interested in seeing a couple of older photo projects that came about in the same spirit as this one, have a look here and here.

The images above may look simple but, getting them to where they are was not easy and I am proud of they way they turned out. I don’t do any photo editing other than some slight cropping sometimes. All the hard work, all the thinking and planning, happens before I push the shutter button. It’s not that I think there is anything wrong with post-processing. It is just a different kind of photography and I don’t enjoy doing it. I grew up shooting on film where 99% of the creative process had to come before you release the shutter and I still like to do it that way.

I hope you enjoyed these photos. If you have any questions or comments or if you know the names of any of the plants in the photos, please feel free to leave a message in the space below. I always look forward to hearing from you.

If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. Thank you for reading TigerSalad.

Late Winter / Early Spring in Toronto

On May 3, 2026 3 Comments - Photography, Toronto

***your phone will crush these photos-this will look much better on a laptop***

It’s been a long time….

…since I have put up any pictures. I have been taking pictures but very few seem worth sharing.

Day to day, I walk the same familiar paths and see the same things over and over. I pass by the same trees, the same houses and the same streets with the same stores. Walks through nature become routine as well, especially during winter when almost nothing changes. When you experience the same things over and over, they lose their impact and you kind of stop seeing them altogether.

This makes me think of my last trip to Tokyo where everything was new and everything that I saw was interesting and beautiful in some way. It was so easy to take pictures and the pictures themselves were so absorbing. When it came time to post up the days’ travel diary, I had a hard time choosing between the photos.

The Tokyo natives must have thought i was insane, photographing every vending machine and bicycle and sewer cover! But, I think the same thing when I see tourists in Toronto taking pictures of black squirrels and pigeons and geese. Why are they taking pictures of such ordinary things?

The normal Tokyo things were interesting to me because they were unexpected. And so, they sparked that wonder and excitement that only new things can. Like hearing a new song or meeting a new love.

I haven’t travelled in well over a year and I think that partially explains my lack of inspiration. I have been too lazy to put in the effort to look at my own environment from a new perspective. Just like relationships with people, your relationship to your home environment takes effort and imagination to keep it fresh and engaging. Comfort and familiarity are important but almost never inspire creativity and passion. You need to find a balance by looking at your familiar home with fresh eyes and an open mind, experience it in some new way. This article is an exploration of that idea.

Photographer as witness…

Sometimes things just happen in the environment and they are so unusual and striking that no effort is needed to get a good image. This winter, some weird weather made for good pictures. I was happy that, for a change, we had a little more snow than usual and a couple of really powerful snowstorms. The first one was such a white-out that I didn’t even take my camera with me when I went out in it.

This was the big one…it was even hard to walk. iPhone video… University of Toronto campus.

Sometime towards the end of winter, there was one unusually hot day. Suddenly, the temperature was close to 20c while there was still deep snow everywhere. This hot, wet air crept over the cold snow and set a thick layer of fog low to the ground. In the cemetery, where the snow never gets cleared, the fog was especially thick and eerie.

St James Cemetery in the winter fog.
This pathway down a hill disappears into cloud
Simultaneously very pretty and a little creepy

The last big snow…

This shot, taken during the last snowfall of winter makes me a little sad. Recently, Canada Post announced that home delivery will be cancelled and replaced with mega-mailboxes in parking lots and on street corners. No more mailman.

Spring arrives in full colour….

This spring has been mostly cool and wet with a few big blue sky sunny days. Toronto is a city that can go from winter to summer in a very short time: one week you are shovelling snow and the next week you are sweating buckets while stuffing the air conditioner back into the window. So it has been nice to see a cold and snowy winter followed by the slow and steady warm-up of spring.

Brand new Mourning Cloak butterfly drying it’s fresh wings on a sunny post.
Taking in the first warm days.
Tamarack (or Larch) tree budding out. This is a deciduous tree with needles instead of leaves. Spring brings little pineapple shaped pink flowers that turn into pinecones later on.
Spring blue sky and red brick at Brickworks park.
This is an owl climbing structure at the new Biidaasige Park in the port-lands just south of the Distillery District. It is huge…you can go inside and sit in its head and look out the eyeballs at the city skyline. The colours and the shape of the panels make me think that it would not look out of place in a Star Wars movie. It has a kind of Deathstar vibe.
Death Star death stare.
Blue blue sky of of the spring evening. These are the buildings that are eating St James Town. None of them were here when I moved to this neighbourhood less than 10 years ago. Many more are on the way.
Corner store owner arranging spring bouquets.
Tulips…
Cherry blossoms at University of Toronto.
Forsythia: first colours of spring start with these yellow branches. I have tried to take pictures of these many times but this is the first one I have liked. The red of the stop sign and the people underneath give it some contrast and anchor it in it’s urban environment. Better than just a picture of some pretty yellow flowers.

Spring trip to Leslie Spit

Tommy Thompson Park on the Leslie Spit is a natural wonder of Toronto and an urban wildlife sanctuary. It is made entirely of rubble, cement, brick, tile, metal rebar and other construction/destruction detritus from Toronto’s development. Nature has gradually taken over and thrived along this area of the lakeshore. I won’t go into it too deeply here but, if you are interested in reading more about this area, I wrote about it in this article last year.

Red Osier Dogwood line the lonely road.
The southern tip of the spit under the lighthouse. This shoreline is a good place to find bits of antique coloured tile from kitchen and bathrooms of Toronto’s past. Some very cool stuff.
This is a crushed and bent piece of rusty steel. I thought it looked a lot like a pencil skirt with a row of buttons up the side.
This is Lake Ontario from the lighthouse point. You get a sense of the vastness of the lake in this picture. There is only sky and water as far as you can see. I think it looks better on its side.
Cyclist at the end of the world.
A distant Toronto from the lighthouse point.
Swans: there is not much to give them scale in this photo but they are huge birds.
Complexity of branches.

About looking at familiar things from a different perspective…

Yesterday was a grey, cloudy and cool day. I set my mind to going out and making some spring photos around Evergreen Brickworks park, a place that I have walked around and photographed hundreds of times. Everyone thinks of spring as a time of renewed colour with trees and bushes flowering out and halo of bright green in the forest canopy. After seeing the above pictures, I thought it would be an interesting challenge to try to capture spring in black and white.

I love going to Brickworks often but I really felt like I had photographed everything I wanted to. So…I knew that this would be difficult and I would have to try hard to look at things with a fresh perspective. Here is what I got…

White tree blossoms. I also did a colour photo of this exact scene but the black and white was so much more striking. The absence of colour draws your eye to shape and texture in the image.
Trees die too…from drought, disease, parasites. This one folded from the unusual weight of the snow this winter. Older bones are stripped of bark and exposed underneath. Spring reveals the aftermath of winters destructive force.
New growth against the central trunk. All parts of the same living giant.
There is some threat of violence in this photo. New buds are protected by razor sharp spikes. F@#$ with nature and find out!
A towering giant pushing out a few new leaves under the grey sky. Black and white silhouette and the blurred top make it feel massive. It is dark and ominous but it still shows signs of spring. This would be a throw-away picture in colour.
Brickworks boardwalk in high-contrast black and white.

The idea for the next photos came to me in the moment and they are a perfect example of trying to see ordinary and familiar things from a new perspective:

I am not going to say anything about them other than they are some of the best photos I have taken recently.

There are people under the trees in this one…
Here too…people under the trees.

When I got home to look at these, I wasn’t sure what I would find. So often, I go out and capture what I think will be good images only to be disappointed in the result. Not this time. This last handful of pictures make me really happy. I thought really hard about how to take a dreary day by the water and turn it into some compelling shots.

I came to the realization that while sometimes the world just hands over great images to capture, other times, you have to turn the world on it’s head to find them. In these photos, I consciously tried to see things in a different way, photograph things that I would normally pass by and photograph them in a way that I have never done before.

If you think you know how the last group of photos were made, please leave a comment below. There are definitely hints in the photos (and text). If you guess right, I will buy you a Pocari Sweat next time I see you.

If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here. As always, thank you for reading TigerSalad.

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Winter Solstice

On December 21, 2025 2 Comments - Photography, Toronto

The shortest day

December 21st is the shortest day of the year. Daylight shrinks to barely 9 hours with sunrise just before 8 am and sunset just before 5 pm. I know I am not the only one who feels the weight of this time of year. Many people I know seem to enter some kind of seasonal depression, sometimes (but not always) tempered by Christmas festivities.

Toronto is a lovely city for the three warmer seasons but not so much in winter. From now until spring the sun rarely shines and the occasional bright morning inevitably turns to gloom by the afternoon. Most years, there is not much snow in the city and winter temperatures tend to fluctuate above and below the freezing point. Snow quickly melts into salty, grimy pools that later freeze into sheer ice. Sometime in the new year, Toronto enters a deep freeze that lasts anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months. These cold days can bring sunlight but it doesn’t last for long and the city soon sinks back into murky grey.

When traveling, sometimes people ask me what Toronto winter is like. I am sure they are imagining crisp cold air and bright blue skies meeting a sparkling white horizon. I am always a little sad to tell them that, at least where I live, it is mostly salt crusted dirty streets, grey days and long dark nights.

orchid blooming during winter solstice
Blooming White Orchid on winter solstice
Toronto bank towers in black and white
King Street Bank Towers

Winter Blues (except when it snows)

Even though I live in this colourless city, I can still enjoy winter. The cold doesn’t bother me, and of all the natural phenomenon in the world, I am always deeply moved by the magic of a big snowfall. Every time. I love the way it mutes the city noise and how it transforms the urban landscape into something soft and beautiful. I can’t think of too many things that make me happier. Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually last very long before the next melt cycle.

Deep in the typical gloom of Toronto winter, I have a hard time seeing anything that I want to photograph and writing becomes a lot more difficult. Creativity shrinks back. I tend to retreat into reading books, watching films, listening to and learning music and language studies. A lot of input, not much output.

From spring to fall I was writing on here at least once every two weeks and I had so many pictures that I sometimes had trouble organizing them. Lately I have been doing less creative writing. And I have not wanted to pick up my camera as much but, I have taken a few pictures that I like. I will post them up here with no other purpose than sharing a few good, mostly unrelated, shots.

Rosedale station at night with strong diffusion filter
Rosedale Station from a failed photo project involving strong diffusion filters. I especially like the green lights on the turnstiles inside.
concrete subway station at Downsview Park
Downsview Park Station: All concrete grey on grey. On my way to get yeast to ferment pear alcohol. I shot this in black and white but a colour photo would look about the same here.

2025 in review

For a long time, I had planned to take a year off from work and 2025 was it. Originally I thought I would get right into planning my next career move but, instead, I was flooded by the desire to create and to learn. Not in any organized way…just to follow threads as they appeared and to accept and act on ideas and inspiration without any resistance and with the least amount of judgement possible. The result was a ton of writing.

This website started as a travel diary for an early spring trip to Japan and Korea that I took with my daughter. Sick of all the trash and advertising on social media, I thought this would be a fun alternative. In the end, it became something I loved doing and something I am quite proud of. I still revisit the trip quite often. The photos are good and the articles are fun and pretty well written.

When I got back, I wanted to keep writing and TigerSalad became a place for me to document photo projects, recipes, articles, ideas and sounds…all things I used to dump (in some compromised way) onto social media. On here, I rarely involve my phone and I can write as much or as little as I like. To date, I have written over 70 articles.

Surprisingly, TigerSalad has done ok. I get a decent amount of traffic and I know that the people who are visiting are interested in what I am doing rather than getting directed here by some stupid algorithm . I don’t link ads or pop-ups and so, I make zero income from it. Fine with me! Instead, I have a discreet donation link where people can send me some dollars which I put into website maintenance if they enjoy the articles. Even though I had zero expectations, a few generous amounts came through in the first few days. Thank you!!

On top of those 70 or so website entries, I have been doing other writing on the side. I have started some long form fiction (in other words, a book). Whether or not it ever gets finished or sees the light of day is not so important to me. I just enjoy writing it and learning about the inner lives of my characters as they unfold. I like the people in the story. They make me laugh and I care about them and I want to know what happens next. That is enough for now.

In the last few months, I have also picked up a few paid jobs doing copy writing: captions for social media projects and website copy. I really enjoy this work. I will labour for hours choosing the sharpest word, the most effective sentence, the most concise and economical phrase where necessary. To me it is like solving a puzzle. I love it. And, I do it all facing my big windows with a hot coffee and a sleeping cat on my desk. It is like a dream and I wish I could keep doing it. Let’s see what happens…

Varsity stadium sign toronto
From a series I planned around black and white photos with strong backlight and hard contrast. This is the sign outside Varsity Stadium on Bloor Street
Danforth and Braodview Streets at sundown
Danforth and Broadview shooting into the sun.
ROM at sundown
ROM with strong shadows and contrast. The little people give scale to the huge crystal building. The sunbeams bouncing and reflecting off the buildings is beautiful.
Bloor Street with harsh backlight
The old Hudson’s Bay Company on Bloor. Hard light and contrast. I like the flag shadows.
Backlit highrises and concrete elevated subway tunnel. That tunnel looks so Eastern Europe to me.

Christmas is coming…

I have a few close friends who are sincere Christians with a strong connection to their church and community. Christmas has a deep spiritual meaning for them. It is a time for celebration. The effort and joy that they put into this season is awe inspiring. It is fun to witness and some of their energy definitely rubs off on me.

As for me, I was mostly raised without any religion. Czechs, along with Japanese and Chinese are among the worlds least religious people. My family never went to church and religion was never a topic of conversation. Christmas was important but it centered entirely around family.

When I was very young, my parents (barely 20 years old) were new immigrants to Canada with no family here at all. I don’t remember too much of those days. I think our Christmases were probably more like house parties with lots of music, drinking and smoking with me sleeping in a pile of fur coats on a bed somewhere. But, over the next few years, my family began to grow as my parents began sponsoring their brothers and sisters to move to Canada.

At some point in my early adolescence, our family was suddenly huge. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, everyone gathered at our house for the Christmas season. For around a week between Christmas and New Years Day, our house was packed with aunties cooking and baking and uncles smoking and drinking and talking non stop. Food was everywhere. People slept over and stayed for days. One meal would blend into the next. Endless packs of cigarettes would burn to ash over hours and hours of card playing and laughter. To me, it was heaven. I can’t remember a time when I felt more warmth and happiness.

Of course, as years pass, time takes its toll and my once huge family Christmas has all but disappeared. Death, disease, divorce and relocation for work have all played a part in chipping away at the giant celebration of the past. These days, Christmas is always coloured with a little sadness. I miss that huge family made up of the people I have loved the most. I especially miss my uncles who have died, the ones who worked awful jobs and had nothing, but would still manage to tuck a few hundred dollar bills into my pocket every Christmas. XOXOXOXO.

These days, my family is very small. Still… we have our Christmas rituals, we eat our turkey dinner, exchange a few gifts and enjoy the love and warmth of the season. We are lucky to be able to do so. Although Christmas arrives with a little sadness and a little loneliness, I still look forward to it and feel fortunate to spend the hours with people that I love. Merry Christmas!

Best Christmas Song: “The Christmas Song” Nat King Cole (chestnuts roasting on an open fire..)

Best Christmas Food: Turkey (brined)! Stuffing (must have bacon or sausage)! Cranberries!

Best Christmas Movie: “2046” Wong Kar Wai. Not exactly a Christmas movie but a lot of its key moments happen at Christmas. It is really my favourite movie. I watch it once a year at night on the 25th.

OCAD and AGO at dusk
AGO blue building and OCAD university at dusk with blue sky

Upcoming Projects

Although I haven’t posted up anything lately, I have been busy photographing and documenting a few fermentation projects. My apartment is cool in winter so it is a perfect time for long ferments. I have a batch of 2 stage makgeolli (Korean rice alcohol) that is almost done. A detailed recipe with tons of pictures and sounds will go up soon. I will also be fermenting pears, first into alcohol and then into vinegar. This will take well over a month but it is in the works.

TigerSalad has a fair amount of recipes and I use them all the time. Originally, I had recipes scribbled down all over the place on loose paper and the backs of receipts etc… I started putting the recipes on here because I wanted to make an online cookbook for myself so I can have everything in one place. I really dislike cooking from videos, and most online recipes have too much filler and way too many ads and pop ups. My recipes are designed to be clear and logical, with lots of photos to make even complicated things doable. Try them…they work.

University of Toronto at night
Foggy autumn night University of Toronto campus
Convocation Hall at night
Convocation Hall at night in B&W
Remembrance Day wreaths at U of T
Two old-timers looking at Remembrance Day wreaths U of T
Man walking dog on rainy night in Philosophers Walk toronto
Man walking his dog in the rain Philosophers Walk

Winter Photos

I hope it snows soon. Big snow. Lots of it. I am looking forward to getting out in the city with my camera and capturing Toronto in some of its handsome winter moments. Like this one in St James Town last year:

Big City Winter Survival Tips:

1-Go outside! It’s not as cold as you think and the more you go out the more you will get used to it. There is lots of oxygen and less pollution in heavy cold winter air. It is energizing.

2-Don’t try to look cool or fashionable in winter. Just dress up in warm layers of clothes. Unless you are very wealthy, it is hard to be warm and look cool at the same time. Just give up!

Happy holidays from TigerSalad! See you soon with a home made booze recipe just in time for New Years!

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions please leave them below. I look forward to hearing from you. It is the only way I know you have been here…other than vague stats from Google : )

If you enjoy the content and would like to contribute towards website maintenance and development, you can make a donation here.

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