Buskers In The Act

Today I am starting off my series from the buskers festival, held on Sparks Street at the beginning of August. I photographed several of the buskers, though not all of them, over the course of the weekend. Where possible, I'll provide links for a performer's site or Facebook page.

This annual festival brings in many buskers and draws a crowd. This first busker goes by the name Jaardu. A magician with a good slight of hand, he was in the midst of a trick when I took this shot. It involved several empty paper bags on the table, while one extra bag hides a spike mounted on a wooden base. The woman he drew out of the audience had moved the bags around while he was blindfolded, and he was busy at this point slapping each bag in turn- ending up not having a hand impaled. His website is here.

Two stilt walkers were making their way down the street at one point. I took several shots of them, but it's the expressions of the kids they're approaching that made this shot work for me.

Paz is this busker's professional name, and his act revolves around the game of hockey. He juggles and does a good number of other tricks through his act, all while bantering with the audience. I photographed him during a couple of occasions over the weekend, and he got a great laugh from the audience by remarking on how the Maple Leafs juggle hockey pucks- and then placing each puck on the ground and picking them up very slowly. He can be found on Facebook.

This colourful pair of performers are billed as the Flying Dutchmen; one is Dutch and the other Canadian. Busking requires a good deal of audience participation, and these two certainly had that in hand. They asked a young boy and a man to join them, and did a trick involving a spinning ball on a finger. The ball kept spinning on the boy's finger for twenty seconds. On the other hand, the man's finger just couldn't keep it spinning that long. Here's a link to their Facebook page.