Jef Kearns plays the flute while dancers from the Toronto Aerial Dance Project warm up.

The crowd trying to watch Circus Orange, something almost impossible considering the rain and the sea of umbrellas. Unless you were about seven feet tall, you weren’t going to see much except soggy bottoms.

Jesse Dell choreographed a performance at Nuit Blanche. Here two of her dancers try not to disturb the policeman sitting in his car on Church St.

Seen while walking along the walking trail along the north side of the St John River, in Fredericton.

A scene from Circus Orange’s performance at Dundas Square on November 15th.

Warming up for a Toronto Aerial Dance performance at Nuit Blanche.

Jesse Dell choreographed a Nuit Blanche performance. Jesse and her crew danced the first shift, from 1900 to about 0030. The second shift danced from 0100 to about 0530. Church Street was dead after 0400, so no one wanted to continue until 0700 without an audience.

The parade started off with grey skies and chilled bones. By the time Santa himself got moving, it was snowing, and bones had progressed from chilled to frozen. In previous years I’ve always gone down to Front Street, for the end of the parade. Today I went to the staging area.

I’m surprised by how many school bands there are from the US and small Ontario towns. Toronto itself doesn’t seem to have much of a marching band culture. But it looks like every marching band, American or Canadian, within a five to eight hour bus ride shows up in Toronto. And there are a lot of them.

Usually he plays with another fellow or two, and usually with a full drum kit, but last night he was on his own, trying to hang onto his drum sticks – they were slippery in the rain.

Mucking about, waiting for the performance, and too anxious to join everyone else under some shelter. Well, the illusion of shelter, as everyone is exposed to the element there.

Circus Orange performed at the Festival of Lights opening this evening. Dundas Square was a cold and miserable place, with rather a lot of wet fish armed with umbrellas getting in the way of the photographics.

I slid around trying to get my soggy shutter finger to jab away at appropriate moments. Didn’t manage to capture the whole performance, or even a third of it.

Alec Soth put up a fresh post this evening. Advice from some 35 Magnum photographers on what got them started and their advice to photographers.

Alex Majoli says “Work everyday even without assignments or money, work, work, work with discipline for yourself and not for editors or awards.” I took that advice when I first got started about five years ago. Did a photo a day for some 15 months. At the end of it, I was a much stronger photographer. Today, I’m much better than I was back then, but still not good enough.

It’s never too late to learn. One thing I’ve not done, and it has hurt, I think, is to study painting. For the last few years, I’ve had my head stuck in photo books, not books about painters.

Thomas Hoepker says “Visit as many museums as you possibly can. The images you see (painted, drawn, etched or photographed) will stay with you for the rest of your life. They will help you to discover good pictures in real life.”

Joey took notes at Hugh MacLeod’s Startup Empire talk. Slide three suggests you’re going to have to put a lot of hours in before you get somewhere.

The Independent profiles Malcolm Gladwell, who has a book coming out the 17th or 18th of November (UK on Monday, Amerika Tuesday). Malcolm’s book is all about the 10,000 hours it takes to become an expert (working seven days a week, that’s roughly three and a half years).

Madisyn Whajne and the New State played Lee’s Palace a week ago.

Related: The New State

Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs performed last night to a packed house at the Horseshoe Tavern last night. Holly is English, Lawyer Dave, who makes up the Brokeoffs, is American. They’ve been playing together for about ten years, apparently, and it showed. Very tight, confident, performance.

Allie Hughes opened for Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs at the Horseshoe. I hadn’t heard of her before, but she has made a name for herself.