Kate and I took a trip to Toronto, Ontario over the weekend. She ran the Toronto Marathon (and beat her previous time by almost three minutes!) while I acted as her support crew. This mostly meant bugging her about drinking more water, making sure she barely walked or moved the day before the marathon, and then being at a couple key points during the race to hand her fluids. In other words, I had an easy weekend.
We had our “victory dinner” on Sunday night at Yours Truly. As luck would have it, we had an hour free before dinner and were able to meet up with the super cool Lisa, who we had only previously known online. While Kate and Lisa caught up, I shot a few rolls of film in the surrounding neighborhood of Little Portugal. I know next to nothing about Toronto, but I loved this area. There were plenty of interesting storefronts, signs, bicycles, etc for me to take pictures of and after 45 minutes I had burned through two rolls of medium format (I only took the Hasselblad for the trip) Fuji Provia 100 slide film and two rolls of Kodak Portra 400.
Here’s about a roll worth of the slide film pictures. I’ll post the Portra pics tomorrow.
These first six pictures were all taken on Dundas Street West in Little Portugal.
Auto Repair, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100
Soo Ling Beads, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100
Super Variety Grocery, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100
Discount Mart, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100
Laundromat Sign, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100
Easy Driving School, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100
I first met Kate at Mile 14 to hand her Gatorade, water, and a bag of ice. It was a gorgeous day, but hot when you are running 26.2 miles. After Mile 14, I hopped on the trolley that crawled down King Street to the waterfront. It must have taken me an hour to get down to Lake Shore Boulevard. I had hoped to see Kate at Mile 19 and Mile 25. She beat me to mile 19 by a long shot. Yes, she was winding through the streets on foot and STILL beat the trolley that slowly traversed King Street towards Lake Ontario. So, I gave up on Mile 19 and stopped at Mile 25. Here I was about 15 minutes early. Kate was still remarkably on schedule – much better than Toronto’s public transportation system. I took a few minutes to snap pictures before she arrived.
Lake Ontario Waterfront, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100
A Hasselblad medium format camera loaded with 100 ISO slide film is not the best tool to capture the action of a marathon. But you work with what you have. I took turns cheering and snapping a few pictures while I waited for Kate. The race shots look pretty good. I prefocused on a line in the street and shot at f11.
Toronto Marathon Runners at Mile 25, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100
Gentleman Entertaining the Runners, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100
4 Comments
I enjoy these photos very much Shawn.
Great to see your photographic style emulating a different city scape (Toronto).
and the photograph of the entertainer reminds me why I got into 6×6 in the first place again.
Thanks, Dave! I’m pretty sure you could dump me in any city and I would take the same types of pictures.
That musician was a character. He was working as hard as the runners.
Little Portugal never looked so good. The last photo, of the gentleman entertaining the runners, is out of this world!
Thank you, Lisa! He was really into pumping up the runners. And I can’t wait to go back to Toronto and have a leisurely weekend exploring.
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