bw1972-12 Winter, Vancouver, BC - a photo on Flickriver

bw1972-12 Winter, Vancouver, BC

            Today marks the 60th anniversary of buying my first 35mm camera. On July 11, 1964, when I was 15, my father drove me into Montreal where I purchased a Kowa H - an odd SLR with a fixed 50mm lens. I went home with a 20-exposure roll of Panatomic-X (ISO 32, called ASA in those days). That seemed like a lot of photos to me; I had been running 12-exposure rolls through my little box camera until then. My family had been shooting 1 or 2 rolls of film a year, and now they found their daily lives being recorded at every random moment. On the whole, they handled it well.

Most of the acceptable frames I shot with the Kowa are already up on Flickr, and I'm saving the final few for a specific series. So now we fast forward to winter 1972, by which time I was using a Pentax Spotmatic and four lenses. I had relocated across the continent, to Canada's west coast, where I'd been told it never snows. And that year we had some light snow in December. It was gone in a week or two, and spring came early.

This is a found negative. It sat in its clear plastic file page for decades, never printed, unnoticed on the contact sheet. Last winter I finally noticed it, scanned it, and - presto! A time capsule! Look at the white go-go boots on the young woman at the left. Men wearing fedoras. The young guy at the right in his Cossack hat. And those umbrellas! I had never seen people carrying umbrellas in a snowfall. I guess because of all the west coast rain, the umbrella is like an appendage for these folks. 

Just around the corner - Seymour and Cordova, for those who know Vancouver - past the British Boot Shop, is Totem News with its "Indian Curios"... long gone along with its implied racism. The actual racism, however, still exists. I didn't have to buy any British boots because I arrived wearing a pair of nice handmade boots from Montreal, which looked great with my bell bottoms. I spent the winter broke but happy, wandering the city with my camera, wondering how I was going to survive. When spring arrived I did a northern working trip with my friend David Graber, planting trees and then working in a grain elevator. That was my first extended look at British Columbia, and I liked what I saw. I was still two years away from my first solo backpacking trip into the mountains, which marked a major shift from urban to wilderness photography.

(Again the Flickr map is hilarious: "Chinatown de Vancouver"? Vancouver is not French in any way, shape, or form. And this isn't Chinatown.)

This photo was scanned from the original Ilford FP4 black and white negative. Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission ©1972 James R. Page - all rights reserved.

Taken in: Canada / British Columbia / Vancouver / Chinatown de Vancouver (show map)

Taken on: December 1, 1972

Tags:

street photography

urban

winter

snow

snowfall

people

strangers

pedestrians

buildings

sidewalk

corner

downtown

umbrellas

Vancouver

British Columbia

Canada

film

scan

black and white

B & W

Ilford FP4

ASA 125

copyrighted

James R. Page

1972 « less

Sets appears in: • Best 1970-1979 • All of Us more » • Scans from b&w negatives « less

Groups appears in: • Monochromatic world • A Better B&W Group more » • Joy of Black & White • Metro Vancouver History • Living Life Through A Lens • People in Canada • Scanned slides, negatives or prints world wide • ***Are You Experienced°°°Film Only*** « less

Camera: Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 5000 ED (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 5000 ED
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop 22.5 (Macintosh)
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