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UrbanToronto is happy to announce long-time Forum contributor, Albert C, as the winner of the second annual Jasonzed Photography Award!
Last year, in partnership with Karen Zytynsky, UrbanToronto created the Jasonzed Photography Award, to honour her brother and one of UrbanToronto's most prolific and enthusiastic contributors. Jasonzed — or Jason Zytynsky as he was know in the real world — for many years captured the evolving development scene in the Greater Toronto Area, especially in his home base of Mississauga, using both his drones to get great aerial shots, and his various cameras for ground level views. UrbanToronto and the world lost Jason to mental illness 2021. Karen shared Jason's experience with us, which we detailed extensively in this tribute article. Please read it if you haven't yet.
Together with Karen Zytynsky, UrbanToronto created the Jasonzed Photography Award, in the hopes of…
- annually bringing Jason's story to light to help people who suffer from this stigmatized disease
- to honour Jason's contributions to UrbanToronto
- to honour other members who bring so much to UrbanToronto, especially though photography
Our first Jasonzed Award winner, last year, was UrbanToronto Forum contributor Tim Macdonald, another Mississauga resident and also a drone enthusiast, who has kept UrbanToronto readers up to date on projects across the western GTA for several years now.
For this year's award, we wanted to expand our scope beyond members with drones and embrace photographic contributions to the Forum more generally. UrbanToronto staff considered several Forum contributors — some of whom may be future winners — but could find no one more fitting to formally say thank you to this year than our longstanding member AlbertC, who goes by the name of Albert Chen in real life.
Albert has been a member of UrbanToronto since April, 2007, and in the years since has posted 21,318 times to our site, with most of those messages including photography. Albert posts extensively on projects in Toronto's West End where he lives, but beyond as well, and has kept us abreast of everything from single-family home conversions to multiplexes to the larger, splashier skyscraping developments in Toronto that gather more attention.
Albert is a details guy when it come to the city, and that speaks to us. Without being particularly splashy, Albert's photography typically solidly captures buildings in good light, carefully framed, keeping our members updated on the latest progress. A selection of his photos mostly from 2023 follows…
like this shot of Oscar Residences,
this one of XO Condos,
this one of 57 Brock,
this one of cranes at the site of Galleria on the Park Tower III,
this one of the future swimming pool in the new Wallace Emerson Community Centre,
this one of a metal escape stair being attache to the heritage 30 Powerhouse building,
…and this one of a church to condo conversion project at 260 High Park Avenue.
I do want to finish with a 'splashy' image. This shot by AlbertC during a Jays game this past summer, dramatically captures the construction of Concord Adex's Canada House condos, popping up through the partially open roof of the Rogers Centre, all the while the late-day sun uplights the archipelago-like clouds above. It's a great only-in-Toronto shot.
Along with Albert's own photography, he also connects many photographs from developers' own online sources to the Forum, making sure that we don't miss updates even if other members are not seeing them directly; it's a measure of sharing with community that reflects what UrbanToronto is all about in the first place…
…and it's for all these reasons that Albert Chen is this year's recipient of the Jasonzed Photography Award. We thank him for the thousands of posts with thousands of photos and renderings and project updates from over the years that have kept us informed. Our thanks to Albert comes with a $500 cash prize, while another $500 goes to CAMH in memory of Jason Zytynsky, the funds provided jointly by UrbanToronto and Karen Zytynksky.
We have many more contributors to thank over the years, you could be next! If you're on the UrbanToronto Forum and see one of AlbertC's many posts, please give him a thumbs up!
