My first experience with downtown Oakville was in 2002, at the PYPS Fall Convention hosted by Knox Church, where I was on the committee that ran the event. I had a blast, but like any PYPS event, I didn’t stray far from the church itself. In fact, most PYPS events we didn’t stray too far from the church. There were a couple of times when we ventured further afield, but those were few, and my focus was on the PYPS event rather than the area around me. Since then, I have gotten to know the historic areas of Oakville well, having been coming and going from the different parts since 2006. Although my first dedicated photography trip to the downtown took place in 2011 to shoot my one and only roll of Kodachrome 25, I had been through the downtown in 2008, 2009, and 2010, but that was for another youth event. For this post I went with my Minolta Maxxum 7 with the 24-105mm f/3.5-4.5 D lens and roll of Agfa APX 25 which I rated at ASA-40 and developed in Flic Film Crawley’s FX-37.
There are a few reasons why I keep coming back to downtown Oakville. First off, I’m in town almost every day, and it gives me a much nicer area to photograph than, say, the area around where I work. Although that part of Oakville is not without charm. It’s also been the part of Oakville I’ve seen change the most since I first started going. Like many historic communities, Oakville’s history dates back to the 1820s. Industries have shifted over time, from shipbuilding to milling, and eventually to fruit and related industries. Even in the early to late 2000s, the downtown was showing signs of general decline: the buildings looked haggard, and some businesses had a sketchy vibe. I was looking back at the images I shot on Kodachrome and was recognising many of these buildings, although the tenants have changed since then. Small chain coffee places are now independent; high-end restaurants and fashion boutiques dot the downtown. And the residential areas south of Lakeshore have also seen a radical change, with many old houses restored and some even torn down and replaced by modern construction.
Because I’ve done so much in the downtown (and other areas of historic Oakville, Kerr Village, Brantwood, and Tuxedo Park), I know what every building looks like in real life, which means that when I’m out there testing out a film, developer, camera or lens I always have that benchmark to compare what the medium captures and how its rendered. There is also the fact that every photo I take adds to the historical record of what Oakville looks like in every little moment I capture. The only thing I need to do is make sure everything is properly tagged online, and eventually, I need to give a copy to the Oakville Historical Society so it lives with them as well. Plus, the nice thing is that many of the locals recognise me when I’m around and will say hi and often ask how I’m doing.
And while I always enjoy seeing the familiar, I also admit that sometimes it gets old photographing the same thing over and over again. Thankfully, I can always move to a different part of Oakville; there are a ton of areas I haven’t explored at all, though many aren’t that interesting, to be honest. But there are others with interesting features worth exploring. Plus, there’s always the wealth of trails around Sheridan, my go-to McCraney Valley, but also the one that I just ‘found’ in Morrison Valley. Either way, on an average weekday, there’s always something for me to go and make photos of. The one thing I’ll note is that the roll of APX 25 I used for this review was expired, now I’ve worked with expired APX 25 in the past with excellent results, but in this case the film had been poorly stored that after I developed I ended up with heavy base fog, but I was able to pull out some decent images. Probably one of my more extensive visual records is Oakville, mostly because of the number of years I’ve been documenting the town. So you can check out all my photos in Random Oakville, over on Flickr.