When lockdowns left a Toronto flight attendant with little to do, he taught himself images with wonderful outcomes.
Carlier Morejon, 33, got here to Toronto from Cuba when he was 20 years previous. Life within the metropolis was fast-paced however, when lockdowns hit, Morejon was laid off.
“I really feel just like the pandemic actually allowed me to step again and reconnect with myself and reconnect with my roots and what I actually needed to do as a younger as a younger child,” he tells blogTO.
Pictures was one thing he all the time needed to discover extra.
“So I self-taught myself some images over the pandemic,” he says.
He visited Toronto parks and pure areas together with the Humber Bay shores, Excessive Park, Tommy Thompson Park and Centre Island. All of the animals in his pictures are present in Toronto.
His give attention to nature is linked to his childhood rising up in Cuba the place he helped farm greens, sugar cane and coconuts.
“I grew up in a really small village and in the midst of Cuba, and I spent numerous time working the land with my grandfather,” he says. “I developed a very robust reference to the pure world.”
A few yr in the past, Morejon had the thought to mix animals and concrete landscapes and he began experimenting.
“My objective is to reconnect the folks of Toronto with their pure habitat. I wish to deliver extra consciousness and a spotlight to the pure world that surrounds us right here in Toronto,” he says.
Animals akin to raccoons and coyotes are typically seen as nuisances within the metropolis, however Morejon hopes folks will take a more in-depth look and see how stunning they are surely.
“By figuring out and understanding what’s alive round us, we develop stronger connections and we develop new emotions of affection, appreciation and duty,” says the artist.
His hottest shot up to now is a raccoon that peeking out from the Gooderham Constructing in Toronto. He noticed the racoon within the Humber Bay space and spent a morning watching and photographing the lovable animal.
“I stored seeing folks strolling by and actually utterly lacking it,” he says. “So I needed to make it extra of the centerpiece.”
The ensuing mashup {photograph} known as Metropolis Icons and it’s on the market on his web site.
One other photograph, known as Hawks of Bay Avenue, options crimson tail hawks perched on Toronto skyscrapers, and a swan waits to cross the road in Bay Commuters.
Morejon makes use of a Sony A7R3 with an extended lens for animal pictures and a wider one for city landscapes. And as soon as he has each pictures, it could possibly take hours to mix them, making positive the positioning, lighting, highlights and shadows are proper.
As city areas encroach an increasing number of on wildlife habitats, Morejon hopes folks will take discover.
“I wish to create a way of belonging, and connectedness amongst ourselves and the pure world round us,” he says.
