A Sunny Evening in Calgary

After 3 days of photographing for Loblaws, I spent the early evening strolling around downtown Calgary. Pretty ugly actually. Hope there's less concrete and glass outside of the downtown core. This is my first trip to the city. I'm surprised. I thought it would be a little more sophisticated. Do I sound like a Torontonian? Having said all that, I spent a very enjoyable hour at the Art Gallery of Calgary, which I stumbled upon while I was wandering down a pedestrian street called Stephen Avenue Walk. Great exhibition by a Vancouver artist called Jeff Burgess and some fun sculptures made from cellophane wrapped around wire frames that looked like stationary elliptical curves (can't remember the artist's name). There was also an installation by Chris Lloyd of his printed out emails that he had written to Jean Chretian and Paul Martin everyday for the last 4 (maybe 5) years. I wish I could have photographed these because the installation was spectacular in the beautiful north light of the upstairs gallery. Back to Toronto tomorrow morning then onto Halifax next week and Montreal the week after. I'm really enjoying the creative challenge of churning out a semi-entertaining slideshow of photographs from the Loblaws executive training sessions. Not a technical challenge (although the lighting is crap) but definitely a creative challenge. Anyway, everyone seems to like the fact that I'm shooting in B&W. Even did a few with select colour ala the film "Sin City." That went over well and will try more of that next week.

Advertising by Leprosy Mission Canada

I caught the final frames of an ad/infommercial on TV by Leprosy Mission Canada, the Canadian arm of Leprosy Mission International, an NGO specializing in caring for leprosy patients worldwide. I was a little surprised because the ad overtly stated that the drugs to treat leprosy cost $295. This is clearly not the case. The Multi-drug Treatment is provided free worldwide by Novartis and the World Health Organization. The ad also left the viewer with the impression that deformities can be cured once the drug treatment has been completed. This is wrong also. Deformities have to be surgically corrected and will not be healed through drug treatment alone. I know this is not ethical, but is this kind of advertising even legal?