I was shooting in Callaghan Lane, near Dundas & Parliament, when a guy spotted me and came over to chat. Before he went on his way, I asked if he would pose for me. He stood in the shade against a mural on the south side of the alley. Even though it was bright & mid-day, the lighting turned out to be perfect. The wall on the north side of the alley is white & acted as a reflector, bouncing fill light into the shadows.
By coincidence, when I got home that evening, I read a piece in I-D about The Straight Up (which you can read here if you’re interested). The idea is that you shoot street (documentary) like a fashion photographer. While I wasn’t deliberately trying to shoot like a fashion photographer, given the lighting conditions, and given the fact that I included his torso, I can see how this almost makes it into The Straight Up aesthetic, or whatever.
By the way, this is James. He came over to chat with me about photography. He has a Samsung (Galaxy?) with a cracked screen and it’s full of photos he’s taken. He assures me he has a Dropbox account where he backs them up. He wanted to show me the shots he’d taken of the new Ryerson Building at Gould & Yonge St. He likes to experiment with interesting angles and unique perspectives. He likes to experiment with editing apps, too. The building has blue cubes, but he’s processed it with green and purple just to see what the building would look like in an alternate universe.
I need for encounters like this to happen to me again and again. Everyone we meet carries hidden lives, and it takes so little to draw these lives out. Just to pass him on the street, I would never have figured James for man who cares about buildings, and street art, and visual details. But there he is, clicking away.