Light painting, 50mm's and loneliness

I was torn between two posts, one about my light painting/50mm escapades and a second about my experiences with public transit, when I came to the stunning realization that this is my blog and I'm the boss. What have I decided? I'm posting both topics in one entry and there's nothing you can do about it. Gold star if you are able to draw a connection between the two as I'm unable. I'm almost certain this will be an unorganized rambling. (Reader beware!)

I discovered light painting at 8:00pm last saturday evening, and by 9:00pm I was 30 minutes into a light painting extravaganza. My sister-in-law was a very patient model and my beagle Charlie was a terrible assistant as usual. I can never count on him to do anything (least of all photo retouching-- terrible eye for it.) Here is what we came up with no thanks to Charlie. These images have not been manipulated with photoshop-- this is how they appeared when they came off of the camera.

Now onto some 50mm fun. I had an unfortunate accident with my camera earlier saturday morning last weekend. A large gust of wind lept over our fence, sprinted across the backyard and tackled my camera to the ground-- tripod and all. My 18-105mm lens has plastic threads holding it to the camera body, and even though it face-planted into our lawn, the impact was enough to break off one of the threads rendering the lens useless. I was less than thrilled but it was just what I needed as an excuse to buy the 50mm lens I'd been eyeing while I wait for the other to be fixed. It was easier to reason it out to Joe this way. It's super fast, super slick and takes lovely portraits. Charlie was kind enough to flash his better side my way so I could click out a few pet pics. Here's what I've got: (he's actually kind of cute when he's not licking himself)

FINALLY: On an entirely different note I had a sad and empty experience as I got off the shuttle bus from York to the GO train station. Everyone filed out-- nearly 50 people-- and no one spoke as we made the slow saunter along the walkway to the train platform. I felt extremely uncomfortable with how silent it was. It felt like a death march and everybody was so careful to keep their distance. Why is there such a strong social pressure to keep silent? I wished I could have jumped right into it and learned everything about the people around me today. I wanted to know so badly what makes them excited about life, what are their worries? What do they wish they could let go of? What are they hopeful for?

How is it possible for so many people to seem so lonely in each others company?