As an Old World immigrant I am obviously not native to Canadia, but I’ve resided in the Greater Toronto Area for a while now – and love it here. This is one vast country, with wild nature, dense multicultural cities and a multi-layered history which is still being peeled back. In my allotted time on this tiny blue dot I hope to roam around even more than I already have as the luxury of space and opportunity offered to me here is surely beyond my wildest dreams.

This online publication is in essence a photo blog, albeit in a more fleshed-out article form, to give some context to the photographs as to when, where, how and why they were taken. That said, I do try to be somewhat active on ‘social media’ (what a terrible idiom that is), and have moved from the dread that is InstaBarf to Pixelfed, for ownership and federation reasons.

Lastly, the nom de guerre “Sneakerzoom” refers to my outspoken preference for not using zoom-lenses. As you may have noticed I also have a penchant for old-fashioned rolls of film and am fairly agnostic to which it is or what it’s in. I’ve been doing this picture-thing for quite some time now and keep returning to the unpredictability of film photography, as there’s something about emulsions (like cooking recipes) that makes me feel good about creating something ‘real’ – as flawed as it may be.

Thank you for visiting.

If you’re at all interested in how photographic film comes to be and the insane engineering magic that its creation requires, I highly recommend you have a look at a 3-part YouTube series Smarter Every Day made on how Kodak makes film. I think it’ll be very much worth your while. Here are the links for part 1, part 2 & part 3. And here’s a link to another Smarter Every Day episode when visiting Kamerastore in Finland (no plug), which illustrates the global challenges faced to source parts, repair and test gear – if at all still possible in this day and age. Lastly, Team 2 Films has a great explainer video on the same film manufacturing process which goes deeper into the chemistry involved in film production, though it’s geared more towards cinematic film.

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