This location on Yonge Street closed permanently on June 30, 2007. Due to numerous petitions to keep it open, the city of Toronto declared the store to be an official Heritage Site. Shortly after the store was sold to Ryerson University.
The store closing was a bit overwleming for many people in the city. I didn't really get hit by it until I realized that the sign was no longer lit up. This sign was truly a landmark in Toronto; without this sign, the street just never looked right. The sign remained in place up until this month, although it was never turned on. Many people, like myself, WISHED that they had taken a picture of it... I always took it for granted... I LOVED the sign, but it's one of those things that you see all the time and jsut assume that it will be there forever... then suddenly when it is gone, you realize that it's too late.
At the beginning of this month, I heard that on October 6th the sign would be taken down and put in storage for over four years while Ryerson University builds a new building on the site. They announced that they would try and save the sign and put it back up, but there were no promises and also, no guarantee that it would be lit up again...
THEN I heard that on October 4th, Toronto was having an art festival called "nuit blanche" downtown toronto, AND on Octiber 4th 2008 at 8pm, the SAM sign would turn on for ONE LAST NIGHT!!!! I knew that I HAD to be there... so that night I went down there with leugim_seven that night. There were several hundred people crowded on the sidewalk waiting for the sign to turn on. With 10 seconds to go, we all did a count down, and then the sigh light up; it was AMAZING!!! I know it's jsut an old sign, and it's only been off for a little over a year... but it was truely amazing. People took pictures with whatever type of camer they had on them. Many tourists passed by confused about why we were all standing there. I took about 500 pictures from every angle I could think of with several different lenses. It was truely a night not to miss!
Ok... back to the picture... I chose this picture because I LOVE the way the fisheye filled the frame with the sign. I truely found the potential of my fisheye lens that night. This shot was taken at 1/8 second hand held and it is DEAD on Sharp at 100%. I took about 400 pictures at 1/8 and 1/6 and 99% of them are DEAD on sharp and they were all shot HAND HELD!!!... I was BLOWN away by this!!!
I have also become to realize the amazing depth of field of this fisheye lens... This shot was taken at f/4.0 and I get the same depth of field that I would get at f/8 or f/11 with my 50mm lens... it makes night shots look SO much better and they can all be shot hand held too!!! There were many other pics I took from the middle of the street... it's hard to do that with a tripod!!!
I don't care how this pic does... I just wanted everyone on this site to see the SAM's sign one last time before it's gone =)... and now all the voters have =)
for editing, all I did was open the original RAW file in camera raw several times, adjusting it differently for different parts of the image each time. Each time I adjusted it differently in camera raw, I opened it in Photoshop, then I put all the different adjustments together as different layers in one pic, then erased through all the layers to show the good parts of each layer. Then I did some burning and minor tweaking, cropped, resized, quality change, then submit.
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I missed that sign sooo much when I was last in TO. Back in the 80s my brother and I would coordinate our vacations, so that when he and his gf went off to say Mexico for 2 weeks, I'd book off work and go down to house/dog sit and of course wander around TO...though sad to say not with a camera, or at the time, probably nothing more fancy than a Kodak 110 or disk camera (remember those?)
Even so back then in my impressionable years, I knew that sign was special. So glad you captured it for us all, Eric! great work!
First impression is good. I like the sharpness, color... composition, although I wish you had stepped to your right a little more to make other lines on the other turntable more visible. With that angle, second one looks a bit bright.
Technically very nice exposed photo. Even with all that city movement, you captured pretty fast shutter speed somehow. Fisheye is a very good choice of lens for this shot, very well composed as I said, the angle of the road is just right. I like the way other side looks, very clear up to the girl on the billboard :)
I would give 6+ maybe around 6.3, 6.5 to this photo. Don't make your judgment with 5.5, I think it's a very low score for this picture.
I checked your photos. You are very creative photographer. More of a story teller than artistic way.. Keep up the good work.
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