RETAILERS

FILM + – 327 Symington Ave. Small, but best hours in the city and best staff. Great rentals.

HENRYS – 69 Queen St. E. Love amateurs. Great used section. Website has links for camera manuals.

VISTEK – 496 Queen St. E. Biggest Canadian camera store. Heavy on professional tools (and not real fond of window shoppers). Huge rental department.

HARRY'S PRO SHOP - On-line retailer for Canon (grey-market)equipment. Good selection of used. Based in High Park. A good guy.

LABS

ELEVATOR DIGITAL – East-end custom archival black and white, color and digital, and even framing. (Quality work, but not cheap.) Good people.

PIKTO – processing, prints and an amazing set-up for DIY scanning and output, great people and a cool gallery. In the Distillery district.

STEICHENLAB – 500 Richmond St East, (the pink house 1 block west of Parliament on Berkeley) Pro E-6 and C-41, prints & scans.

WEST CAMERA - 514 Queen Street West (near Bathurst) 416-504-9432. Quality prints, rental darkrooms.

RESOURCES ONLINE

DPREVIEW.COM – Great camera reviews. But stay away from the forums, unless you like debating more than shooting.

LUMINOUS LANDSCAPE.COM – Toronto photographer and educator Michael Reichmann's phenominal site. Best thing on web for serious photographers.

PHOTONOTES – Online dictionary of all things photographic.

PHOTOSHOP TECH VAULT – Every link to info about Adobe's great image-processing software.

U.S. NAVAL OBSERVATORY – Tells you when and where the sun and moon will be, anywhere in the world. All you need is a compass.

WESTSIDE STUDIO – The best advertising studio in Canada. Check out the portfolios of some incredible photographers. They taught me all I know about light, and about pulling together a first rate job.

TORONTO GALLERIES

STEPHEN BULGER – 1026 Queen St. W. Check out the Larry Towell show in May. Amazing work from a Canadian photographer.

CORKINSHOPLAND GALLERY – In the Distillery district. Beautiful space, usually some great work. 55 Mill St, bldg 61

YDESSA HENDELES ART FOUNDATION Sat noon-5 pm or by appt. 778 King W. 416-413-9400. Great space and incredible variety of art.

GREAT PHOTOGRAPHERS

Hit your local library (or big bookstore) and check out the work of:

Ansel Adams (amazing b/w landscapes).

Diane Arbus (People photography)

Henri Cartier-Bresson (The "decisive moment" in street photography)

Annie Liebovitz (portraits for Rolling Stone in 80s/90s and now Vanity Fair).

Robert Mapplethorpe (Great still life, provocative portraits from 1970-80s).

Freeman Patterson (Canadian color specialist).

Irving Penn (Great people and still life).

Cindy Sherman (self-portraits)

W. Eugene Smith (Life magazine documentary photographer)

Edward Weston (fine art in the 1930s-

Margaret Bourke-White (Life magazine photographer).