Street Photography at Kensington Market , Toronto

I decided to head into Toronto for a day of street photography, with my little Leica Q2 Monochrom and a red filter. Typically I would use a red filter for landscapes when there are big blue skies that can be darkened for dramatic effect. But I had this idea to try that in a street setting, as it was a sunny day. My thinking was to create very dark dramatic images – dark skies, dark buildings, contrasted with areas of sunlight hitting the edges of buildings, cars, people, and the street.

After half an hour of looking for wide street scenes, I was distracted by the wonderful characters that can be found at Kensington Market. It really is the best place in Toronto to go for street photography opportunities, and you come away with more photos from the streets around Kensington Market than anywhere else in the city.

Leica Q2 Monochrom

The Q2 Monochrom has become my favourite street, travel and documentary camera. It’s small, discreet, fun to use, and the 28mm fixed lens is proving to be the perfect all-round focal length. The sensor in the Q2 is sublime. It’s more like a medium format sensor, with a wonderful rich tonal range. And the noise, when the ISO is cranked up, is more akin to film grain. So my thinking was keep the red filter on the camera for shooting people and street scenes, which loses me three stops of light. This allows me to crank the ISO up to around 1,600 or 3,200 ISO or higher, and bring out some of that film grain look into the photos. This, combined with my editing style, allows me to create images that have a film photography look, similar to when I sued to shoot on Ilford HP5 film stock years ago.