Bill Smith's Photography

 It was a stinky hot Canada Day, Jo-Anne was up in North Bay visiting family so I did a solo day trip up to Beaverton and Cannington, Saner heads would have just hung out at home and blast the air condidtioning. I wnet up first thing and I'm glad I did, the smart thing, changed lenses sparingly so rear lens elements didn't fog.  The heat as bad as in on my way home I wanted to stop by Second Wedge Breweing to grab some beer and some Foundry Pi Pizza, only the brewery was open and doing great business, No pizza, the cooks were sent home because it was too hot in their container with the pizza oven.  I chose the Minolta XE-7 and Ilford FP4 125 as the camera and film, I still stand by my position both this and the XD series of cameras were Minolta's high point for manual focus cameras. I'm happy to be shooting my Minoltas again.  Camera: Minolta XE-7, MC Rokkor 50 F1.4 Lens. Minolta MD 75-150 F4 Zoom Lens.  Film: Ilford FP4 125, Ilfotec HC 1+31.  ...

 Less than wonderful weather makes for better photography.  I drove up to Cannington Thanksgiving weekend to meet up with my cousins Leslie and Wendy for coffee as well as clean up the family cemetary plot on Consesssion 11 just south of town.  Cannington is a small farming town in the northern end of Durham Region and my family has roots in this part of the world, The Smith family owned a feed store on Cameron Street which while my great grandfather William George Smith sold the business before World War 1 and settled in Toronto. The building that housed the business burned down in the early 1990s and is still a vacant lot. Sadly in some ways the town is now a bedroom suburb for Newmarket and Aurora or Oshawa and there's little activity.  Camera: Nikon FM2n, Nikkor AIS 28 f2.8 lens.  Film: Eastman Kodak Vision 3 250D, ECN2 processed by Graination Lab. 

 Yes Virgina, Beaverton exists and it lies on the eastern shores of Lake Simcoe, in a transition zone between farming counry in Brock Township and cottage country of the Kawarthas to the east. My personal  connection to Beaverton is two fold, two cousins are the custodians of the Smith-Stewart-Grant Cottage in Cedarhurst just south of town and two, my great uncle Masson up until the late 1940s was the town doctor.  Jo-Anne was up in North Bay for a family visit and I had the weekend to myself. Would have gone Saturday but the weather wasn't condusive for day trips. Even on Sunday when I went up the light, was, well, weird. Smoke from the wild fires in Northern Ontario and Quebec was lingering in the atmosphere and it felt humid as in thunderstorms could pop up in the afternoon humid.  That didn't stop me from shooting two rolls of Kodak Ektar 100 through my Nikon F100 on this day trip. Roll one you see here, it was a fun day and I got a chance to try out a new lens, ...