May 15, 2006

It all started as a relaxing fieldtrip — fifteen people in my photography class brought their cameras to Waterloo Park and promptly fell on their knees to better photograph flowers at different shutter speeds.

I got bored with the flowers pretty quickly and said, “Fuck this shit, I’m jumping in the lake.” That’s when the fieldtrip became an extreme sport. I swung my camera around my shoulder, jumped down some boulders, and grappled with a sewage grate to pass over the rushing water to the other side of the lake. The water seemed frothier on the other side, especially at those points where it ran into my shoes.

For some reason, nobody followed me across to the other side of the lake. But that was no reason to slow down the extreme photographing adventure. There was more boulder-jumping with my camera dangling dangerously above the water, some trespassing, and some crawling beneath railway cars to explore new layers of rust.

That’s when complete strangers started to recognize me for the monster I am.

“So you’re Tudor?” Fran asked. “I heard about you running around naked with your camera.”

“Umm … must’ve been somebody else,” I said, quickly running away to find something else to scale.