Late Winter / Early Spring in Toronto

On May 3, 2026 0 Comments - Photography, Toronto

***your phone will crush these photos-this will look much better on a laptop***

It’s been a long time….

…since I have put up any pictures. I have been taking pictures but very few seem worth sharing.

Day to day, I walk the same familiar paths and see the same things over and over. I pass by the same trees, the same houses and the same streets with the same stores. Walks through nature become routine as well, especially during winter when almost nothing changes. When you experience the same things over and over, they lose their impact and you kind of stop seeing them altogether.

This makes me think of my last trip to Tokyo where everything was new and everything that I saw was interesting and beautiful in some way. It was so easy to take pictures and the pictures themselves were so absorbing. When it came time to post up the days’ travel diary, I had a hard time choosing between the photos.

The Tokyo natives must have thought i was insane, photographing every vending machine and bicycle and sewer cover! But, I think the same thing when I see tourists in Toronto taking pictures of black squirrels and pigeons and geese. Why are they taking pictures of such ordinary things?

The normal Tokyo things were interesting to me because they were unexpected. And so, they sparked that wonder and excitement that only new things can. Like hearing a new song or meeting a new love.

I haven’t travelled in well over a year and I think that partially explains my lack of inspiration. I have been too lazy to put in the effort to look at my own environment from a new perspective. Just like relationships with people, your relationship to your home environment takes effort and imagination to keep it fresh and engaging. Comfort and familiarity are important but almost never inspire creativity and passion. You need to find a balance by looking at your familiar home with fresh eyes and an open mind, experience it in some new way. This article is an exploration of that idea.

Photographer as witness…

Sometimes things just happen in the environment and they are so unusual and striking that no effort is needed to get a good image. This winter, some weird weather made for good pictures. I was happy that, for a change, we had a little more snow than usual and a couple of really powerful snowstorms. The first one was such a white-out that I didn’t even take my camera with me when I went out in it.

This was the big one…it was even hard to walk. iPhone video… University of Toronto campus.

Sometime towards the end of winter, there was one unusually hot day. Suddenly, the temperature was close to 20c while there was still deep snow everywhere. This hot, wet air crept over the cold snow and set a thick layer of fog low to the ground. In the cemetery, where the snow never gets cleared, the fog was especially thick and eerie.

This pathway down a hill disappears into cloud

Simultaneously very pretty and a little creepy

The last big snow…

This shot, taken during the last snowfall of winter makes me a little sad. Recently, Canada Post announced that home delivery will be cancelled and replaced with mega-mailboxes in parking lots and on street corners. No more mailman.

Spring arrives in full colour….

This spring has been mostly cool and wet with a few big blue sky sunny days. Toronto is a city that can go from winter to summer in a very short time: one week you are shovelling snow and the next week you are sweating buckets while stuffing the air conditioner back into the window. So it has been nice to see a cold and snowy winter followed by the slow and steady warm-up of spring.

Brand new Mourning Cloak butterfly drying it’s fresh wings on a sunny post.

Tamarack (or Larch) tree budding out. This is a deciduous tree with needles instead of leaves. Spring brings little pineapple shaped pink flowers that turn into pinecones later on.

Spring blue sky and red brick at Brickworks park.

This is an owl climbing structure at the new Biidaasige Park in the port-lands just south of the Distillery District. It is huge…you can go inside and sit in its head and look out the eyeballs at the city skyline. The colours and the shape of the panels make me think that it would not look out of place in a Star Wars movie. It has a kind of Deathstar vibe.

Blue blue sky of of the spring evening. These are the buildings that are eating St James Town. None of them were here when I moved to this neighbourhood less than 10 years ago. Many more are on the way.

Corner store owner arranging spring bouquets.

Cherry blossoms at University of Toronto.

Forsythia: first colours of spring start with these yellow branches. I have tried to take pictures of these many times but this is the first one I have liked. The red of the stop sign and the people underneath give it some contrast and anchor it in it’s urban environment. Better than just a picture of some pretty yellow flowers.

Spring trip to Leslie Spit

Tommy Thompson Park on the Leslie Spit is a natural wonder of Toronto and an urban wildlife sanctuary. It is made entirely of rubble, cement, brick, tile, metal rebar and other construction/destruction detritus from Toronto’s development. Nature has gradually taken over and thrived along this area of the lakeshore. I won’t go into it too deeply here but, if you are interested in reading more about this area, I wrote about it in this article last year.

The southern tip of the spit under the lighthouse. This shoreline is a good place to find bits of antique coloured tile from kitchen and bathrooms of Toronto’s past. Some very cool stuff.

This is a crushed and bent piece of rusty steel. I thought it looked a lot like a pencil skirt with a row of buttons up the side.

This is Lake Ontario from the lighthouse point. You get a sense of the vastness of the lake in this picture. There is only sky and water as far as you can see. I think it looks better on its side.

A distant Toronto from the lighthouse point.

Swans: there is not much to give them scale in this photo but they are huge birds.

About looking at familiar things from a different perspective…

Yesterday was a grey, cloudy and cool day. I set my mind to going out and making some spring photos around Evergreen Brickworks park, a place that I have walked around and photographed hundreds of times. Everyone thinks of spring as a time of renewed colour with trees and bushes flowering out and halo of bright green in the forest canopy. After seeing the above pictures, I thought it would be an interesting challenge to try to capture spring in black and white.

I love going to Brickworks often but I really felt like I had photographed everything I wanted to. So…I knew that this would be difficult and I would have to try hard to look at things with a fresh perspective. Here is what I got…

White tree blossoms. I also did a colour photo of this exact scene but the black and white was so much more striking. The absence of colour draws your eye to shape and texture in the image.

Trees die too…from drought, disease, parasites. This one folded from the unusual weight of the snow this winter. Older bones are stripped of bark and exposed underneath. Spring reveals the aftermath of winters destructive force.

New growth against the central trunk. All parts of the same living giant.

There is some threat of violence in this photo. New buds are protected by razor sharp spikes. F@#$ with nature and find out!

A towering giant pushing out a few new leaves under the grey sky. Black and white silhouette and the blurred top make it feel massive. It is dark and ominous but it still shows signs of spring. This would be a throw-away picture in colour.

Brickworks boardwalk in high-contrast black and white.

The idea for the next photos came to me in the moment and they are a perfect example of trying to see ordinary and familiar things from a new perspective:

I am not going to say anything about them other than they are some of the best photos I have taken recently.

There are people under the trees in this one…

When I got home to look at these, I wasn’t sure what I would find. So often, I go out and capture what I think will be good images only to be disappointed in the result. Not this time. This last handful of pictures make me really happy. I thought really hard about how to take a dreary day by the water and turn it into some compelling shots.

I came to the realization that while sometimes the world just hands over great images to capture, other times, you have to turn the world on it’s head to find them. In these photos, I consciously tried to see things in a different way, photograph things that I would normally pass by and photograph them in a way that I have never done before.

If you think you know how the last group of photos were made, please leave a comment below. There are definitely hints in the photos (and text). If you guess right, I will buy you a Pocari Sweat next time I see you.

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photography, toronto

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