When I first arrived in Toronto, I took a few photos with a twin lens reflex camera, a Yashica Mat-124G. Looking back at these photos, I wish I had used this camera more often. The twin lens reflex is an ideal camera for street photography, as the camera is held at waist level and you look down into the viewfinder to frame the photo. The negatives are large and crisp, but there are only 12 exposures on a roll. Perhaps this is the reason it was abandoned in favour of the 35mm SLR.
It was my friend Bill Knetsch who introduced me to the wonders of coffee in the fall of 1980. Before that I had been a tea drinker, but there was something about relaxing with a coffee and doughnut, that couldn’t be beat. After a marathon printing session in the Ryerson darkrooms, Bill and I would hit up a local coffee shop such as the Donut Castle on Church Street. At 1:00 am the place would be crawling with all manner of characters–cab drivers, cops, prostitutes, night owls, students, partiers, etc. But is was the lure of coffee that brought us together!
It’s Throwback Thursday (#TBT), and today I’m going back 40 years to a time when many business names had not yet become acronyms. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was not yet CIBC, and Kentucky Fried Chicken was not yet KFC. I spent a lot of time on Carlton street in those days. I lived a little further east near Sherbourne Street, and would see concerts and hockey games at Maple Leaf Gardens, and movies at the Carlton Cinema.
This photo appeals to me in several ways, but most of all because of what the mixed lighting sources do to the colour. The mixture of neon, fluorescent, and daylight really bring the scene alive. Also, I love Laura Secord chocolate!
This photo was taken on the Montreal metro in 1983. The colour red really comes alive with Kodachrome film.
In 1967 I visited Montreal with my family to attend Expo ’67. It gave me a love for Montreal that has remained for all these years. What an amazing city! And it looks so good on Kodachrome.