Bill Smith's Photography

  The April photo walk was on a day calling for rain, yet at the same time, temperatures were quite mild, we wound up having lunch on the patio of The Rebel House, and the skies only started to open up when we settled our bills. The route had not been done before I wanted to traverse Casa Loma neighbourhood and work our way down to the end point on Yonge Street near the Rosedale Subway Station.  I wound up choosing one of my Nikon F's, a black Photomic FTN, kinda like taking out a Porsche 356 C Carrera for a spin. Usually if I want grab and old Nikon body for a spin, I usually grab one of my F2's  I'm happy with the results and I should shoot with my eye level prism F's more often, I am trusting the meter less on my Photomic variants.  Filmwise, I went with a classic, Kodak Tri-X, however, I rolled with 510 Pyro, hind sight I should have rolled with Ilfotec HC for snappier negatives. So it goes. I plan to re-do the walk on a later date with another group. We'll see....

 I was doing some photo walk research, I wanted to piece something together around The Well and the King and Bathurst/Portland area, it's still a work in progress. It was a solo walk because Jo-Anne was up north visiting family as her brother was visiting from Scotland. I also wanted to stop by Soma Chocolate's King St. West outpost for some chocolate bars to spoil her. I also wanted to shoot around King St. West which like my neighbourhood in Midtown Toronto is morphing at breakneck speed. I remember going to the Rotterdam Brew Pub (which became the Amsterdam Brewery) at King and Portland and the neighbourhood, had, character. More accurately in the mid 1990s it was rough around the edges but starting to evolve from the garment district to a marketing/tech hub, and much later club district.  I rolled with a black Nikon F2 Photomic, it is one of two in my collection, it was traded to me for an early Canon F-1. Shot with it a little last fall and was then loaned out to Alex Luy...