It was in Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto City Hall. A guy in a suit with an open collar had stepped outside for a break and sat at a picnic table. On the picnic table, there was a green plastic dinosaur, a friar tuck, as the hunter in Jurassic Park II calls it or, as his more knowledgeable companion corrects, a pachycephalosaurus which literally means “thick-headed lizard.”
There are many mornings, before I’ve had my first cup of coffee, when I feel like a thick-headed lizard. Maybe that explains why I was drawn to this scene. The man was texting on his cell phone, apparently oblivious to the dinosaur lurking nearby. I thought to myself: this is a photograph! I knelt on one knee and set up the shot, focusing on the dinosaur in the foreground, blurring the man behind. Then, when I was ready to release the shutter, I called out: “You realize there’s a dinosaur on your table, don’t you?” He looked up from his cell phone: “Huh?” Click.
What you can’t see from this image is the grin that followed. He immediately saw the humour of the situation and was fine with me taking the shot. I showed him the result in my viewfinder just to certify that I hadn’t caught him looking foolish. No tongue stuck out, eyes closed, boogers, zits, that sort of thing. Only the plastic pachycephalosaurus.
