Street Projects
Street Projects
The Best Camera Is the One You Have: A Phone Around Toronto
None of these came off the Leica. They came off my phone, the same thing everybody else in these rooms had in their hand, and for these six frames around Toronto and the GTA it was enough. There is an old line that the best camera is the one you have with you. People...
Sunday at Tims: Half an Hour in a GTA Tim Hortons
A Sunday at Tim Hortons is not the same room as a weekday. Three days earlier this same Tim Hortons out in the GTA was full of people working, laptops open along the window tables and men doing paperwork under the old price list. On Sunday every one of them was gone....
1961 Thunderbird Convertible: The Bullet Bird Comes Back in Daylight
The same car came back. Thirteen months after I photographed this 1961 Thunderbird convertible with the sun going down behind it, there it was again, same Monday night, same Canadian Tire lot in Richmond Hill north of Toronto, only this time it was twenty past six on...
I Am My Phone: People on Their Phones Across Toronto
People on their phones are the easiest thing there is to photograph and the hardest thing to say anything new about, everybody has that picture, I have hundreds of them. What I noticed putting these six together is that I am not photographing a phone at all. The phone...
1948 Mercury Restomod: Inside the Coupe and Where It Has Been
A 1948 Mercury restomod is two cars wearing one body, and the first time I photographed this one I only did the outside of it. That set is the chrome grille and the last of the sun down a white fender, and it is here. This is the same car on the same Monday night in...
Everyday Street Photography: Just Another Day in Toronto
Nothing happens on most days. You go out with the camera, you walk for two hours, people go to work and come home and buy something and wait for a bus, and none of it is an event. That is the whole subject. Everyday street photography is not about waiting for...
1956 Bel Air Gas Cap: The Trick Behind the Taillight
I photographed this car four times last summer without ever deciding to. Same turquoise Chevrolet, same 56 DREAM plate, same parking lot, four different Monday nights between the middle of May and the first of September. Somewhere in the middle of all that I went...
GTA Suburban Street Photography: Ten Years at the Edge
The GTA does not end where most people think it ends. It runs about seventy five kilometres east of downtown before it finally runs out, and the towns sitting out at that edge were real towns with real main streets long before Toronto got anywhere near them. GTA...
1966 GTO 389: Under the Hood at a Toronto Cruise Night
A car with the hood up is a different photograph from a car with the hood down, and at a Monday-night meet it is also a much rarer one. Most people close everything, wipe the paint, and stand back where you can watch them being casual about it. This 1966 GTO 389 sat...
Up in the Six: A Winter Walk Through Downtown Toronto
Toronto picked up the nickname somewhere along the way and it stuck, mostly because it is short and it sounds like the place. Nobody says it about Richmond Hill. It means downtown, the core, the part with the streetcars and the cranes and the man in gold paint...
1965 Ford Mustang: The Plate Reads OUR 1965
The plate reads OUR 1965. Not MY, not a joke about horsepower, just OUR, which tells you two people share this car and have been sharing it for a while. It is deep burgundy, the top is down, there are two small Canadian flags clipped to the windscreen and a pair of...
Toronto Restaurant Windows: The Winter the Rooms Emptied
A pizza place on a cold night, both cooks in white behind the counter, stacks of red boxes going up the wall behind them, and taped to the glass in front a printed sheet saying the dining room is temporarily closed. They were working flat out and there was nobody in...
1950 Dodge Coronet: A Mopar V8 Under a Jade Green Hood
The hood was up all evening, and I understood why about two seconds after I looked under it. The car is jade green, wide whitewalls, a chrome grille with enough bars to trap a small animal, and a ram standing on the nose. Then you get to the engine bay and the century...
Toronto Windows at Night: The Warm Side of the Glass
Winter comes early here and the light goes at half past four, and that is when this work gets good. A room with the lamps on is a stage with the fourth wall made of glass, and you are standing out on the cold sidewalk looking straight into it. Toronto windows at night...
1957 GMC 9300 Stepside: Canada’s Blue Chip Pickup
I did not find this one on a show field. It was sitting in a Canadian Tire parking lot on a Monday night in Richmond Hill, north of Toronto, a Tesla on one side and an orange Mopar on the other. That is my favourite kind of car show, the kind that is really just a...
Inside Tim Hortons: The Office Nobody Rents
The second time out with this project I noticed something I had walked past for years. Half the people in the room were working. Not staff, customers. A woman in a blazer running what was clearly an interview from a window booth, two people hunched over a laptop,...
1961 Thunderbird: The Bullet Bird
The light goes orange around eight o'clock at these Monday meets, and that is when the red cars start to earn their keep. This one did not need the help. Top down, wire wheels, a moulded cover laid over the back seats with two headrest bumps rising out of it, parked...
Toronto Winter Street Photography: Grey Skies and Slush
Winter is the season most people put the camera away. I do the opposite. Grey light, wet sidewalks, snowbanks going black at the curb, everyone bundled and moving fast with their heads down, that is the Toronto winter street photography I keep coming back for. The...
1968 Oldsmobile 442: The Thinking Man’s Muscle Car
There were a couple of hundred cars in that plaza lot on the Monday night, and most of them were red, or black, or some shade of candy that took a man three weekends to spray. This one was white. Plain white, a blue stripe down the flank, chrome Rally wheels and a...
Colourful City Street Photography in Downtown Toronto
Toronto does not whisper. Walk into Yonge-Dundas Square on a grey afternoon and the sky can be the colour of wet concrete while the buildings scream orange and red and electric blue. That contrast is the whole reason I keep coming back for colourful city street...