The Daily Photoist: Passing By

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve!

As the city's first decent-sized snowfall of the season (a long overdue one, at that) dropped yesterday, some people woke up and reached for the dials on their heaters, some for extra blankets, and some for the snooze button, while a few, like PDPhotography in our Flickr Pool, grabbed their cameras instead.

This photo, which appears to have been taken outside of the abandoned buildings on St. Thomas Street between Charles Street West and Sultan Street, is one of many that the photographer took around the north-east sliver of the U of T campus yesterday afternoon. These abandoned buildings sit right beside another incomplete luxury condo (that these photos were shot from the roof of), and will themselves be destroyed shortly to make way for another condo -- signs in front of the houses note the future development. By this time next year, they won't be here.

In the pixels, there's a lot to look at and a lot to consider: the man walking past (and what looks to be his breath as he exhales), the footprints on the sidewalk, the snow coming down and accumulating on the ground and in the trees, not to mention the tags and boarded-up windows on the side of the building. The photo is at once active and passive, permanent and fleeting: it juxtaposes the moving, active subjects (the man and the falling snow) with the still subjects that suggest things past (the building, tags, and previous tracks in the snow). It's also, simply, a pretty photo, and -- in spite of the snow -- there's still something completely and utterly warm about it. Happy belated winter, Toronto.