Streetcar, Queen St. W. and Palmerston, Toronto, 1988

Boy about town

As a small town boy from Vancouver, one of the first things about Toronto to impress and initially intimidate was the Toronto Transit Commission network of subway, streetcars, busses and trains that connects the sprawling Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

I’d arrived in the Big City by Greyhound bus, having liquidated my Chevy van in Van to pay off debts. So, aside from occasionally driving the work’s van for studio deliveries, I used the TTC for transportation, never regretting carlessness during my 2-year stay.

It was, and is, an impressive public transportation system that puts to shame anything the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island — especially Vancouver Island, bereft of anything other than busses — have to offer. It’s one of the few things (including the entertainment and arts scene) that I miss about Hogtown.

Alchemist

<rant>It’s unfathomable, really, how a city as big as Vancouver has failed to build anything more than a couple of “Skytrain” lines over the last 30-years.</rant>

In the photo above, an early-morning Queen Street tram (a newer model than the “red rocket” featured in an earlier post)  passes the foot of Palmerston Street, where I lived for a year. I caught the first of a series of TTC connections — streetcar to subway, to bus — every weekday at this spot. 

Looking through my tripod-mounted Nikon FM, I previsualized the stark, graphic elements of the scene, offset by the motion of the streetcar.

Latent image

I wouldn’t realize the image until more than a year later, back in Vancouver. It took me that long to settle back in and, more importantly, set up a darkroom. There, I finally developed the roll of 35mm film that includes this frame.

Initial printing experiments didn’t return the kind of atmosphere I’d originally “seen” or that I had “developed” outside the darkroom. It took another year and another move before I returned to the negative in a new and improved darkroom.

Selenium to the rescue

Selenium toning is usually reserved for traditional photographic prints — e.g. silver gelatin. Transforming silver halides to silver selenide — a more inert metal — improves archival stability. But it can also be used to enhance permanence and intensity in films. The latter process is especially helpful in roll films where individual exposure is harder to control than sheet film.

Eureka! As I’d learned from Ansel Adams’ The Negative, I might expect the process would “open up” shadows, at the same time as expanding highlight values. In the case of this photograph, it meant achieving the luminance seen in the graphic crosswalk lights and revealing the subtle brilliance in darker areas.

Of course, these details can only be truly appreciated viewing a fine print (made these days via digital scanning and pigment printing).

Just as forgetting sweaty 7am subway rides leaves me nostalgic for the TTC, I sometimes miss the mystery and magic of film photography, though not the smell of stop bath in the morning.