Yesterday was Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas, if you celebrate.
I left home around 11:30, walking toward an appointment at 610 University Avenue, and didn’t arrive until close to 1:00. On paper, it was just another utilitarian walk across the city—Yonge to College, College to University—but something rare happened along the way. Everything aligned.
The sun was low. Not dramatic golden hour, not theatrical clouds—just clean, winter light scraping across the city at a sharp angle. The air was mild for late December, especially by Toronto standards, and more importantly, there was almost no wind. After days of flat, uninspiring light and weather that made photography feel like work, this felt like a gift. Long shadows stretched across sidewalks and facades. Contrast arrived uninvited.
I made a simple decision early on: long and harsh shadows would be the theme. No overthinking. No hedging. Just commit.
That choice mattered more than it seems.
Constraints That Don’t Feel Like Constraints
I was carrying the Fujifilm GFX100RF, fitted with the 35mm f/4—effectively a 28mm field of view in full-frame terms. That focal length is home base for me. I’ve written before about why the 28mm perspective feels honest, demanding, and present in Finding Style in the Street, and this walk reinforced that belief yet again.
I set the camera to black-and-white. I turned the aspect-ratio dial to 9×16 portrait orientation, something I rarely use. And then I stopped thinking about gear entirely.
This wasn’t a limitation as a deprivation. It was a limitation as permission.
By committing to black and white, a single field of view, and a vertical frame, I removed an entire layer of indecision. I wasn’t asking what this could be? I was asking does this fit the idea I already chose? That shift is subtle, but it changes everything.
It echoes something I explored in One Field of View, Three Sensors—the idea that the right tool isn’t about flexibility, it’s about clarity.
Walking, Seeing, Being There
I’ve said before that walking is not incidental to my photography; it’s foundational. In Why Walking the City Is Essential to My Urban Photography Practice, I described walking as the mechanism that slows my thinking down enough for seeing to catch up. Yesterday was proof of that again.
The rhythm of walking carried me into a state that felt very close to what people describe as flow. There was no pressure to produce, no sense of obligation to come back with “something.” I wasn’t chasing moments. I was letting the moment find me.
That mindset has more in common with mindfulness than with traditional ideas of productivity. Several writers have described street photography as a form of moving meditation—being fully engaged with your surroundings without trying to control them. That felt true yesterday. The city wasn’t performing for me; it was simply existing, and I was present enough to notice.
This is where the decisive moment stops being mystical and starts being practical. As I’ve written before in relation to Henri Cartier-Bresson, the decisive moment isn’t luck. It’s alignment—head, eye, and heart arriving at the same place at the same time. Yesterday, they did.
Output Without Pressure
By the time I reached University Avenue, I had made 91 exposures of roughly thirty subjects. That number alone doesn’t matter. What does matter is what came out the other end: ten keepers, one of which may very well become a portfolio image. Two more strong frames didn’t make this set simply because they were horizontal rather than vertical.
That’s an unusually high hit rate for me, especially considering that over the past week, I hadn’t made a single outdoor photograph I genuinely liked. Plenty of practice frames, sure—but nothing that stayed with me, all rubbish in the end.
Yesterday was different.
It wasn’t different because I tried harder. It was different because I was not trying at all.
This reminded me of something I touched on in When I Think About Having a Pint—how creativity often arrives sideways, sparked by enjoyment rather than effort. Fun is not the opposite of seriousness. Fun is often the condition that allows serious work.
Why This Is “How We Do It”
As I walked, one lyric looped in my head on repeat:
And that felt embarrassingly true.
That feeling—the quiet euphoria of seeing clearly, of responding instinctively, of knowing in the moment that something is working—can’t be forced. It can only be invited. And the invitation, at least for me, looks like this:
Walk.
Choose a simple idea.
Commit to it fully.
Let go of results.
Everything I’ve written about building a voice, committing to a niche, and working within self-imposed structure ultimately points back here. This hour wasn’t separate from the work—it was the proof that the work is working.
I didn’t just come home with photographs. I came home reminded.
And sometimes, that’s the best outcome of all.