Toronto Windows

This Toronto window street photography project came together over several seasons of walking downtown with a camera, a Leica Q2 for some of it, a Fuji X100V for others while paying attention to what was happening on the other side of the glass. What I found was that the window does something wonderful for me as a street photographer. It removes the subject from the noise of the sidewalk, places them in their own contained world, and gives them the sense of privacy to just be themselves.

 

 

That is the central idea behind this project. The woman waiting in the nail salon, phone in hand, absorbed in whatever is on the screen. The cook in a restaurant kitchen pressing dumpling dough at the counter, focused entirely on the task with limited awareness of me on street outside. The man at a diner counter at the end of the day, with the city’s sunset reflected in the glass behind him. None of them are performing as if noticed so I am not getting posses, I’m getting honest street images. The glass between me and the subject makes it easier to find the right shot.

 

This unguarded moment is often what I look for in street photography,  that real moment to capture. No reaction to the camera. Sometimes I’ll wait till the subject does notice me and capture an honest reaction; will it be a smile or a frown?  This is one way to achieve reality in street photography. A window makes that kind of access easier than almost any other situation you will find on the street, because the glass itself creates the distance that takes you out of the equation.

 

There are a few things worth knowing before you start a Toronto window street photography project of your own. First, if you want to only capture the subject on the other side of the glass then you must get as close to the glass as possible. The closer your lens is to the surface, the cleaner the image of what’s inside.

 

However, for street photography I usually prefer distance because I want to capture the subject in their world yet place it in the context of the busy world they are surrounded by. Many of the images in this series were shot with the Leica Q2 or the Fuji X100V at distance from the glass to show the reflection of the overall environment and its contrasts with their chosen setting. Both the Q3 and the X100Vare compact, quiet cameras, no mirror slap, no large barrel drawing attention, and that matters when you are only a few feet from the subject due to their 28mm and 35mm respective lenses.

 

It is intentional that window reflections themselves are part of the image. While sometimes, the outside world is visible as a ghost layer over the interior, often the reflection itself may be the reason for the capture. It could be the street signs, parked cars, buildings and street buzz is the true subject and what’s on the other side of the window is just supporting the image. Sometimes the beautiful sunset reflecting on the window drives home the point that humans are too busy to notice the beauty around them while staring at their phones to look up. That is not a mistake to correct in post-processing. It is the point. A window doesn’t just reveal; it also reflects. One frame can hold two worlds at once, and when that layered composition comes together it asks questions that a street photograph should ask. Who is inside, who is outside, and which world are we looking at?

 

Third, shoot in available light and trust your camera. Neither the Q2 nor the X100V needs a flash for this kind of work, and a flash through glass is useless in most cases. Expose for the interior and let the exterior take care of itself. Both cameras handle the mixed light of a warm restaurant interior against a cool city street and have the exposure range to deal with it.

 

Once you start looking for this kind of project, you can’t stop seeing it. A restaurant at lunch, a café in winter, a windowed food stall at any hour, a service business at night. A city like Toronto has thousands of them, and the city keeps building more. This first set of Toronto window street photography images draws on multiple seasons of shooting across downtown, different venues, different light, different people, all of them living their lives a few centimeters behind glass.

 

There are more Toronto Windows posts coming, and more street photography projects to browse if you want to see what else the city has offered up to my camera — like the people I caught eating in a grocery-store window in People In The City. If you’re curious about the cameras behind the images, take a look at the gear page. As long as there are windows and people busy living their lives behind them, the series will keep going.