CP Train Station - 7 August 2026

 

Because I am a product of the last century and a photographer from it I have always considered that the Holy Grail of photography is a personal style that can be identified. That last century was of the Irving Penns, Richard Avedons, Philippe Halsmans and only Annie Leibovitz is a survivor.

7 August 2026

The flavour of the month and of many years leading up to this one has been street photography. Because Henri Cartier-Bresson was a pioneer who lived many years in Paris and went to cafés his b+w photographs are instantly recognizable. Of late Vivien Meirs is in ascendance. For people under 30 Dorothea Lange may be an unknown.

7 August 2026

Street photography is the norm because most people now carry that ubiquitous camera that is the cellular phone. I think there is another reason. Post covid pandemic has made people less willing to talk face to face or answer the phone. It is far safer to press the button on you cell phone camera from across the street or to make believe you are looking at it when you press take.

I have always been a portrait photographer and part of the pleasure in being one is to address the person you are going to photograph. But you cannot be a “one trick pony” so I shoot street photographs in Mexico and Argentina (landscapes there, too) but try not to shoot sunsets. I scan my plants, which while it is not photography is it a form of making images.

Because I print lots I had to go to Opus downtown to buy 81/2 by 11 inch plastic sleeves for my prints. Opus on Granville Island had run out.

I decided to take my Fuji X-E3 camera. I took 3 photographs. One of them was for a purpose.

It was when I was a little boy that my grandmother told me that at around 1918 she and her two daughters and son travelled to the Bronx from Manila. I remember how she told me (in Spanish), “We disembarked from our Japanese boat in a place that had mountains and forests. It was called Vancooover.” We went to a large train station and from there we took a train to Montreal and from there to NY City.

In my recent past when I happened to be downtown (I avoid it now) I liked to to the CP Train Station and sit on a bench (most gone now) and imagine my family walking across it.

The panoramic was a shock for me as that cruise liner is huge. It is almost like a floating first class hotel.

The third shot when I saw it I had to go around the block. Am I a street photographer?

No.