This afternoon we met up in Collingwood for our exploration of the famous The Tote hotel. We only had a small window of opportunity in conducting our explorations (between 2pm and 4pm), and so it was really important that we would all waste no time in capturing our surroundings. Our gameplan was that we would all document as much as we could find that was interesting before coming together this upcoming Thursday and starting to piece our favourite bits together. I personally hadn’t been to the Tote before as far as I can remember, so I was definitely interested to see what it was all about and whether it compared to our research.

I was pleasantly surprised with how serene the place was. Visiting the site in the afternoon gave a very warm and organic feel – the main bar room had a distinct smell of dried up beer, and physical remnants of the night before were left on the bar tables themselves. Having the windows let in sunlight on a lot of the rooms provided a really heavenly sort of feeling, akin to being in a religious institution. It was interesting to note that all of us in the group felt this warmth of the rays of sunlight and the chirping of birds, and definitely was a source of inspiration to create as much as we could.

Looking back on some of what was created today as I write this, I am very fond of quite a few of these photos – I actually think this one photo below is one of my favourite I have taken in a long time. I didn’t even edit it.

I don’t think we’re going to have a problem stitching this assignment together. If the others felt as positive about their work today as I did, our project is going to being of a really strong quality.