One thing that I feel that certainly helps any group is spending time together outside of the normal grind of the project you work together on. And for that, it’s the Classic Camera Revival podcast. I first started this idea last year as an end of year way to just get together have fun and do some talk about the next season for the podcast. This year our numbers were reduced due to illness and a broken ankle, but even with just the three of us good times were had in downtown Hamilton, Ontario.
Hamilton and I have a long history, having a grandparent who lived there for much of my younger years, and my return while I was exploring the multitude of abandoned buildings the city once boasted. Sadly where I could once spend a whole evening and get four buildings in before heading to National Pizza for a post-explore snack, there’s really only one abandoned building left from those glory days, as the rest have either been demolished or restored. The slate grey skies of late did not help, but it got bright enough out there to make colours pop and enough to shoot my last couple rolls of Kodak Plus-X.
For the most part, we stuck to the James Street Corridor, which offers some amazing old buildings which downtown Hamilton still has, plus we ventured off into the side streets to gather some shots of some other areas that I only recently discovered, remains of Hamilton’s industrial past that still happen to be in the city’s core. We had originally planned to take in the Viviane Myer exhibit that was on at that Art Gallery of Hamilton, but the light, despite the ugly grey sky, had improved since I first got there, so we took to the streets anyways. I took along my Rolleiflex 2.8F and Contax IIIa, and managed to put three rolls through, not bad for a short period of time.
Sadly the original plans to take in lunch at Merritt Brewing failed because only their bottle shop was open, an omission on their website. Next stop at 33 Bowens failed also because they didn’t open until six in the evening. Thankfully we found a cosy stop at the Pheasant Plucker up on Augusta which was open and has a decent beer list. Thankfully the rain held off until I had to walk back to my car, but at least we got some dry weather in.