Bill Smith's Photography

It's my first anniversary buying my condo in Toronto and Mount Pleasant Road is my main street. For those outside of Toronto, it starts just south of Bloor St. as a branch off Jarvis St. and ends at Glen Echo Road before Hoggs Hollow.   I generally say I live in Midtown Toronto, depending who you talk to, I am in the north end of Mount Pleasant West and a few blocks south of Sherwood Park. I chose this neighbourhood because everything I need if the weather really turns to shit, is at most, a six block walk away. My local, the Granite Brewery is a couple blocks walk south of me, and I'm spoiled for choice in terms of coffee shops.  Many ways the opposite of Oakville where I had to get in car to do everything.  What about parks? I'm a short stroll from the Sherwood Park Ravine, which onee you are in the valley, go east, you wind up in the Sunnybrook Ravine and by extension the Don River watershed, walk northwest, you walk into the Blythwood Ravine which will take you e...

 To quote a long running local pizza chain radio ad, "It was a rainy day...." A group of friends met up at The Granite Brewery for lunch as my friend Andrew Reyonds was passing through on a family road trip on his way back to New Brunswick with his wife and daughter. In the end, it was just my other friend Art Leim, Jo-Anne and myself who went out to do some shooting after lunch.  Thankfully the rain weakened down to light showers, and while it was cold and damp, it was still a good day for photography. I pushed a roll of Ilford HP5 to 1600 which makes sense for a grey day like this one only this time used Ilfotec DDX 1+4 dillution which is pretty much British Tmax developer.  For some reason there was more dust on the negatives than with Ilfotec HC.  Camera wise I ran with a black Nikon F2 Photomic with the classic Nikkor SC 50 F1.4 lens and just ran with that. The F2 series is my current camera of choice out of my fleet.  Camera: Nikon F2 Photomic, Nikkor S.C ...