03.16.25: Festival in a square

‍I’ve made numerous visits to Toronto through the years. It’s a beautiful city, one that is very walkable and, I suspect, very photogenic.

‍But I’m guessing about the photogenic part because I’ve only made one visit to Toronto when I packed my camera. I freed up about an hour split across three days that trip to look for photos.

‍It’s a sad but true photographic equation: Large city divided by little time equals few photos.

‍I did photograph a few scenes around CN Tower, a 1,815-foot-tall concrete communications and observation tower that is the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere. Everything else amounted to generic street scenes near the hotel.

‍But I did manage to find a festival shortly after checking into the hotel on a Sunday afternoon. I had walked to Nathan Phillips Square, a courtyard south of Toronto’s City Hall that features a large, rectangular fountain pool surrounded by acres of concrete. I grabbed a few rather boring photos at the festival, followed by a few equally boring photos of the fountain, before cutting across the square to return to the hotel to meet with business associates. 

‍As I walked out the southeast corner of Nathan Phillips Square I looked back toward the festival one last time. The curves of the arches crossing the fountain and the curves of the city hall complex caught my attention. I quickly climbed nearby stairs to an elevated walkway and checked the scene again from a higher perspective. The sky, the buildings, the arches over the fountain, the angle of the elevated walkway and the walkers in the square all worked to create an interesting composition.

‍I had an extreme wide-angle zoom on my camera, which allowed me to capture walkers in the foreground as well as the tall buildings in the background. I framed the scene and waited for walkers to fill the lower right area of the composition, breaking up the large expanse of bland concrete, then snapped off a few shots.

‍Then I hustled back to the hotel.

‍Eventually I’ll return to Toronto with my camera and sufficient time to explore the city. Until then, I’ll always have Nathan Phillips Square.