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Oh good, you're here!

 

Welcome to my place. I've got to tell you, I thought you'd never get here. Seriously! I mean, I was told you'd be comin' around eventually, but...

 

...I'm just so glad you finally made it!

 

Come, come. Sit. Is the fire warm enough? There you go. Well, if you're ready, just throw that blanket over your shoulders, pour it while it's hot, and I'll tell you all about your humble host.

 

I was born in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, back in the days when every girl had cooties. Street hockey & hide-and-go-seek was the answer to every kid's prayers, a decade before Nintendo kept us all indoors and Reality TV gave us something new and unusual to talk about. I still live in Toronto, about 50 feet from Lake Ontario.

 

Retired from being an Insurance Adjuster and a Nightclub Manager, I pursued my dreams back in the Spring of 2005. I quit my career and immediately began taking classes at The Second City Theatre. It is there that I learned the pioneering fundamentals of what I require every time I stand in front of a camera or on a stage.

 

Several weeks later, I was performing as a blind painter in my very first film. It was called “Do You Remember Me?”

 

As I write what you are now reading, it seems as if it were yesterday. Since then I have performed in over 60 films and television projects. I have produced incredible results for myself and I always anticipate my next role with rabid enthusiasm.

 

Up until just several years ago I was, for the most part, a "corporate junkie". I mean no affronted transgression against the suits of the world. But that was always my vocation by default, and back then the universe was always about 1's and zeros. Little numbers that are said to construct the things that matter. It was an uncomfortable environment for me, although I played the role very well. But money doesn't buy true happiness.

 

What now seems like moments before my grandmother's passing, she so casually said something to me that poked a very large hole in the blanket of my reality.

 

"There is nothing worse in life than woulda, shoulda, coulda. Never let a ' what if ' happen to you, my boy!"

 

Those words caused me to leap into the foray of the unknown and do what my heart was telling me to do. I had to ask my heart to repeat himself a few times in the beginning, because his voice was quiet and I had never heard it before.

 

Those closest to me see what I have done with my dreams. They see that I just might be a statistic among them, and that is thrilling. I see what could be in store for me in the future, because I want it badly enough. And perhaps others may see that too, from time to time.

 

I got to talking with my neighbor and good friend, Nadia, one day in the park out back when we were walking our dogs. My rapidly growing interests in flexing the creative muscle through photography was evident that day, as the vanilla clouds collided with the pinkest of skies, over our city.

 

This was in October of 2008. She offered to lend me her Nikon D40. I headed downtown and spent the day listening to Oscar Peterson and Didjeridoo Ensembles on my iPod, while staying completely miscellaneous among the many. I have never taken a class on how to take pictures, and I was all thumbs trying to figure out certain settings on her camera. But I quickly learned to simply feel my way through the entire experience.

 

MY CITY is the name of the album. Nadia further fueled the artist inside me that day with her selfless loan.

 

It was an incredibly ecclectic journey. And word has travelled to other good friends like Donn, who got me using his Nikon D300 on several occassions. If Life does not get in the way on too many occassions, I hope to have the resources to purchase my own camera as soon as I can.

 

What you are about to see, if you wish todig a little deeper, is a wide-eyed kid's further journey into the unknown. I photograph impulsively, and to the voice that is no longer quiet inside of me.

 

The best...it's always yet to come!

Welcome to my universe.

 

As ever;

 

Michael Giel,

Professional Starving Artist

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