Tag: People

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Street Portrait

Street Portrait – Graffiti Alley

Graffiti Alley, Toronto

I was wandering through Graffiti Alley when a woman stepped outside for a cigarette break. For reasons unknown to me, I happened to be shooting with a proper portrait lens, my Canon 85mm f/1.2 so how could I not ask if she’d pose for a shot or two? And, of course, the graffiti makes a great backdrop.

In a way, it’s harder to do street portraits of women. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first relates to the power dynamics between a photographer and the subject. If I approach a man like Scott and he doesn’t want to pose, he won’t hesitate to tell me where to shove my camera. But it isn’t necessarily the same when approaching a woman. I have to be sensitive about how I present myself. Do I come across as intimidating? Does she feel free enough to tell me to take a hike? The exchange should feel natural, comfortable. Otherwise it shouldn’t happen at all.

The other reason is more practical. There are far fewer women out and about. The people with the most time to spare for a street portrait are the homeless. But almost always they are men. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it has something to do with the way social supports are administered, offering more protection to women and keeping them off the streets. Whatever the reason, my portraits of the homeless are almost invariably portraits of men.

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Street Portrait

Street Portrait – Sonny

I was framing a shot on Cumberland Avenue when Sonny popped in front of the lens. “Take my picture! Take my picture!” So I did. Simple as that.

I’m amazed at how varied the range of attitudes towards street photography. At one end of the spectrum sit the paranoids who think you’re spying on them or plan to do nefarious things with their image. At the other end of the spectrum sit the extroverts who are happy to pose for you and then give you their email address and IG handle so you can send them links.

I wonder if the range of attitudes is symptomatic of the paradoxical state of contemporary photographic practice. Now, almost everybody has a high-quality camera in their pocket and, collectively, we shoot more than a trillion photos each year. Yet this burgeoning freedom to shoot makes it easier than ever to watch us.

The strange things is: the spying doesn’t happen from above. There is no Orwellian Big Brother looking down on us. Instead, we are all complicit in our own surveillance, as I learned the hard way when I discovered that I had unwittingly allowed some of my photographs to “train” new facial recognition software in development by IBM.

Interestingly, the people most complicit in the rise of surveillance are the ones running around taking selfie’s all the time. I foresee a day when some poor schmuck is going to sue themselves for failing to obtain consent when they took a selfie.

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Street Portrait

Street Portrait – Scott at Tim Hortons

Victoria Street north of Dundas

I made this portrait of Scott on November 29th, 2015 outside the Tim Hortons on Victoria Street just north of Dundas. Scott’s job was holding open the door as people went in and out from the Tim Hortons. He shared a shift with some of his friends, and they took the work seriously. He wasn’t about to give his shift to somebody who didn’t bother to show up. They made their wages from the change patrons handed them as they left with their coffees.

Scott liked the photo and asked if I would print a copy for him. I did, but it took a while for me to track him down because he and his friends liked to change things up, moving from one coffee shop to the next. I caught up with him at the same franchise on April 4th, 2016. He looked different and I asked if he’d lost weight.

Yeah, he said, seventy pounds.

That’s good, isn’t it?

Not really. It’s happened so fast and it’s not like I went on a special diet or anything. I think maybe something’s wrong.

I’d been carrying the print in my camera bag ever since I’d seen him in November. I pulled it out and gave it to him.

That was five and a half years ago and I haven’t seen him since.

Scott holds open the door at the Tim Horton's on Victoria Street, Toronto
Scott holds open the door at the Tim Horton’s on Victoria Street, Toronto
Categories
Street Photography

How will we look back on the 20’s?

Two masked women pass windows on Bloor Street, Toronto

I imagine a time a few decades from now, say the 2060’s, when in all likelihood I’m dead and buried or planted or repurposed or whatever they do to corpses in the future. Someone, maybe an archivist or social historian, stumbles on one of my old photos and immediately recognizes it as a photo from the early 20’s. Maybe it’s the masks or the look of anxiety in the eyes, or the uneasy way the subjects carry themselves. There’s just something about it that screams pandemic.

A hundred years ago, the 20’s were the Roaring Twenties, or the Jazz Age, the age of F. Scott Fitzgerald and flappers, libertine excesses and bottomless champagne glasses. Those were the 1920’s. How will we remember the 2020’s? What will we call them? And what feelings will those epithets evoke?

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Street Photography

When narrative leaks from an image

Streetcar on King Street, Toronto

Photography and writing go together like hand and glove. Some people decry the use of text in or around images; the image should speak for itself, they say. I’m not such a purist. That should be obvious from the fact that I offer text alongside every image I share on this web site.

I look at this tableau, three people riding a streetcar in downtown Toronto as darkness falls across the city, and I can’t help but see narratives leaking from the image. The image sets my imagination adrift. It’s no coincidence that the word “imagination” has “image” as its root. The same process can happen in reverse, too. Sometimes I read a story or a novel and it stimulates my visual imagination. I can’t help but turn the words into a tableau.

Here, all three riders wear masks and all three have their heads bowed into their cell phones as if engaged in a liturgical rite, a confession, say, or the reading of a holy text. The two men wear toques while the woman is bare-headed. Maybe, in the enclosed fish-bowl world of the streetcar, head-coverings have some significance.

Are they going home after a long day at work? What sort of lives wait for them when they get off the streetcar at their respective stops? A dinner alone, poured from a tin can into a pot and heated on the stove? A night streaming shows on Netflix while thumbing through social media feeds? A spouse? A partner? Someone to save them from the pandemic’s forced isolation?

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Uncategorized

Family Portraits

Family portrait on the E & N Railway Trail, West Victoria, B.C.

While we were out in Victoria B.C. visiting my wife’s brother and his family, my sister-in-law wondered if maybe I could shoot some family photos. I had minimal kit with me, so I had to think for a bit about what I could do to compensate for technical limitations (like no flash). I suggested we go casual. The big graffiti murals on the E & N Rail Trail would offer a huge selection of possible backdrops. Let’s grab a couple lawn chairs and go for a hike.

The walls on the Rail Trail face north, so they throw everything in shade, perfect for eliminating shadows on a sunny day. Yes, despite flooding in B.C., it was a sunny day. We found a mural with colours that worked, crawled through a hole in the fence, and set up the chairs.

It used to be that family portraits were a formal affair. Years ago, when it could take minutes to expose a glass plate (or whatever the photographer was using to capture the image), the subjects had to stand stock still. And because it’s difficult to hold a smile for minutes, most subjects resorted to an impassive expression. Sometimes, they looked ill-tempered or even evil. What started as a technical necessity morphed into a social convention. Even as film speeds improved and subjects no longer had to keep still for minutes, the process was cast in the pall of formality. People felt obliged to be stiff and humourless for family portraits. I remember as a child being scolded for ruining a shot because I laughed. Now, I look back on those photos—the outtakes—and they’re the only ones worth keeping, the only ones that really capture a sense of personality and family dynamics.

In this case, the portrait looks more natural. But don’t be deceived. There’s still plenty of artifice at play here. For example, when my sister-in-law folded her legs and leaned in, I moved my nephew from the centre to the side to create a long diagonal line from the top of his head to the tip of his mother’s toes.

After we finished there, we moved to a playground at the local elementary school where I could position everyone on upright logs. Here, I didn’t have the benefit of shade, but the results were better than I expected. This time, the diagonal line moved in the opposite direction.

Family photo
Categories
City Life

Photographing Singers

Baritone Danlie Rae Acebuque sings at the Orpheus Choir of Toronto's Sidgwick Salon

I sing with the Orpheus Choir of Toronto (tenor) and we support a scholarship program for students in programs like the Glenn Gould School and the U. of T. Opera School who are on the cusp of careers as professional performers. To raise funds for the program, we host an annual salon where, in effect, our scholarship students sing for their money. They get a few things out of the program, including a regular stipend (students can always use money), an opportunity to work closely with our artistic director, Robert Cooper, and experience singing in an ensemble (where they have to rein in their big solo voices).

Each year, I photograph the event and each year it presents me with the paradox of capturing in one medium the artistry expressed in another. Singers sing. That’s what they do. There’s nothing I can capture in a photograph that conveys the auditory pleasure their skill produces. And yet …

These students are not just singers; they are performers. They project a presence. With bearing and gesture, facial expression, poise, a sidelong glance, they convey so much more than we find represented in the notes on a page. These are elements the camera can capture.

Featured here is baritone Danlie Rae Acebuque while looking on is Russell Braun. You can tell by the way Danlie holds himself that the music he makes is worth listening to.

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Street Photography

Entrance to the Argyll Arcade

Argyll Arcade, Buchanan Street, Glasgow, Scotland

I don’t know what you call this person in his morning coat and top hat. A valet? A beadle? Whatever you call him, the way he stands with his legs crossed, he looks like he has 15 minutes left before his washroom break and is doing his best to hold it in. He is facing south to Argyle Street. To his back is the Argyll Arcade. I’m not sure why the distinction between Argyle and Argyll. Apparently, in linguistic terms, there is no difference. Maybe the people responsible for the Arcade’s signage ran out of the letter E.

Laying out a jewelry display in the Argyll Arcade, Glasgow
Laying out a jewelry display in the Argyll Arcade, Glasgow
Categories
Street Photography

Street Scene in Glasgow

Pedestrians at the intersection of Mitchell and Gordon Streets in Glasgow

I’m standing at the intersection of Mitchell and Gordon Streets when a girl walks through the frame while a man smoking a cigarette approaches and gives me the evil eye. Or at least a vaguely suspicious glance.

One of the things I love about Glasgow is that, in the downtown area, there is a good selection of pedestrian-only streets. Sauchiehall, Buchanan, a portion of Argyle, the Royal Exchange Square. It makes these areas vibrant and safer. I wish my hometown would take a cue from this.

Another thing I love about Glasgow is that Glaswegians never leave you in doubt about what they think of you. They are honest. Some might say brutally honest. If Greta Thunberg decides to attend Cop26, she might find herself in a city full of kindred spirits. It’s a no-bullshit kind of town.

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Street Photography

A Stormtrooper Wears a Tartan

A stormtrooper wears a tartan.

The conventional story holds that the plaid twills (tartans) we see in Scottish kilts are a relatively recent development from the 17th century. However, archeological finds in China of all places suggest that Celts have been weaving tartans for at least 3,000 years. But the fashion may go back even further than that. George Lucas presents convincing evidence that tartans have been around since the early days of the Galactic Empire.

Have you ever noticed that there is no sex in Star Wars? It’s implied by family lineages and we get a whiff of it in Luke’s kiss with Leia. The only overt act in the whole series is more reminiscent of West Virginia sex between siblings. I suppose Leia as Jabba the Hutt’s sex slave implies a certain quality of sex at play in the background. We see a similar arrangement in Solo with Qi’ra, which suggests Han Solo has a “type”; he needs to rescue troubled women from enslavement by domineering men (though I’m not sure Jabba the Hutt qualifies as a man). Even so, we never have any good healthy romps in the bedroom. It all gets sublimated into shooting blasters and waving light sabres. I guess that explains why Disney was comfortable buying the franchise.

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Street Photography

Child Running in the Rain

Child runs in the rain at the Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow, Scotland

I’m standing in the Royal Exchange Square at the back end of GOMA, the Gallery of Modern Art, experimenting with the wet pavement and the broad curving line of the steps when a child runs up the steps and races towards me. Sometimes the photography gods are kind to me. What is particularly kind in this instance is that the girl’s parents look on, smiling, apparently unconcerned that a middle-aged man is standing there with a camera.

I offer this photograph as a reminder of whose interests we serve at Cop26. Let us never forget: our children have no voice here. We will be long gone by the time the consequences of our decisions play themselves out in full. It will be our children who suffer or benefit from those consequences.

Categories
City Life

Piper in Nelson Mandela Square

Piper marches through Nelson Mandela Square in Glasgow during an All Under One Banner (AUOB) protest.

When we see the bagpipes, our minds immediately think of Scotland. When we hear the bagpipes, our minds immediately think of cats tied to the back of cars and dragged through city streets. No one would listen to the bagpipes for the mere pleasure of it. Would they? Then again, this is a people who thinks sheep’s offal stuffed with oatmeal into its stomach is a delicacy and washes it down with liquefied dirt (Laphraoig). Why then would it surprise us that they have such taste in music?

I caught this piper at a Scottish independence march: All Under One Banner (AUOB), passing through Nelson Mandela Square in the centre of Glasgow. It seems the vaguely racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric wafting up from the Tory government south of the border has galvanized many Scots. That and the economic fallout from Brexit. As a Canuck, I sympathize. We’ve had to put up with the stink of vaguely racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric wafting from south of our border too.

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Street Photography

Child on Buchanan Street

Child climbs a step on Buchanan Street, Glasgow, Scotland

I was standing beside the entrance to the Buchanan Street underground, shooting south down to the Clyde River, mesmerized by the reflective surface of the polished rock, when a young girl (and her reflection) stepped into my frame. How could I not make the shot? I’m not sure what she was thinking but I suspect it was simple curiosity: what is that man doing with that funny-looking box in his hands? There is something satisfying about this shot—the reflection, the way the perspective lines all lead us to the girl, the red bow in her hair, the simple expression of innocence—so that I’ve ended up including it in my portfolio.

A child on a Glasgow street, she reminds us why we’ve tasked our world leaders to gather nearby and hammer out an agreement to limit climate change. She is emblematic of our future. We do this for her.

Categories
Street Photography

Scary Hallowe’en Photo

Hauling a clothes rack up Augusta Avenue in Toronto's Kensington Market.

I shot this photo in beforetimes. You can tell. No one is wearing a mask.

It was just before Hallowe’en in 2019. Ah, we were so young, so naive. We didn’t have a care in the world. We had no idea what scary things lurked just beyond the horizon.

This year, I’m dressing up as an anti-vaxxer. I’m leaving the mask at home. That’s the scariest costume I can think of.

Categories
Street Photography

It’s Not Easy Being Green

Walking up Yonge Street towards College Street while dressed all in green

The title for today’s post comes, of course, from Kermit the Frog, who faced discrimination for the colour of his skin. Amphibians have faced such discrimination since the first tiny tadpole sprouted legs and crawled from the primordial slime onto dry land.

Martians face similar discrimination as, historically, they’ve been known as “little green men.” Oddly, feminists have tended to ignore the sexism embedded in the “little green men” stereotype. When you think about it, though, there’s no reason little green women couldn’t be the ones who invade planet Earth. Maybe they need space for themselves because they’re sick of living with all those little green sexist bastards.

Vulcans have green blood. Ask a phlebotomist. It’s one of the first things they learn in Phlebotomy 101.

Ever since Othello killed poor Desdemona, we’ve called jealousy the “green-eyed monster.”

And people can be “green with envy” as Anne Shirley discovers when she dyes her hair.

Green is the colour of money, at least in America.

The colour green falls in the range of wavelengths from 495 to 570 nm on the visible spectrum of light. There is some debate about where blue ends and green begins but given the passion some people feel for such distinctions, I prefer to avoid this controversy altogether.

Personally, I am partial to green. In fact, we named my daughter “Green” but in Japanese because it sounds much more delightful as a Japanese word–Midori.