Brilliant Lights from Toronto's Dizzying Heights

We decided to take advantage of Toronto's unseasonably warm weather over the past few nights by visiting some of our favorite rooftops. Transformed by the night, the darkened city shone with a seemingly endless blanket of light.

My rooftopping adventures are usually saved for brighter hours, but with winter's shortened days, some late evening elevation seemed my sole option. What I discovered dazzled me; although rooftopping usually refreshes my (sometimes slightly jaded) view of the built environment, getting a unique take on the city was itself elevated by the darkness.

One of the natural intrigues of photography is its inherent mystery: darkness is required to produce light, and vice versa. The apparent contradictions have been with photography since its inception -- the discovery of the camera obscura, daguerreotypes, etc. -- and are still with it today.

I chose a black-and-and white format for this series to emphasize the contrast of light and dark, day and night, seen and unseen.

Nothing gives me a greater sense of calm than looking out over our beautiful cityscape in crisp weather. The darkness of the night adds to this beauty in an abstract and subtle manner: seeing the city from a height, the veil of night seems pierced with thousands of tiny pinpricks. The quiet of the gentle horizontal flow of city traffic is met by sparkling towers, each unique, yet somehow the same. I am struck, suddenly, as I realize that the background -- all that wallpaper -- has suddenly taken the foreground.

(To see the rest of the snaps, as well as high-res. versions of those pictured above, you can check out my flickr slide-show below.)