Looking back is an interesting activity these days. Since I haven't been going out for camera-related purposes recently, I decided to see where I had been around this time over the past few years. Most of these photos haven't been posted before – for good reason – but hopefully the retrospective gives them some interest as a set.

One of the reasons why I brought my Theta spherical camera out again recently is seeing just how much I had used in in previous years. It's fun and very easy to carry, but unfortunately it's also the most frustrating camera I've ever used.

In 2017 I carried it on a walk along the Scarborough shoreline with Penny, where we found a sculpture by a relative of hers. I also stuck it in a tree during cherry blossom season, and took it to a protest gathering whose cause I've forgotten. The "15 and Fairness" people were in attendance, though, and they'd only show up once a minimum significance threshold had been reached, no matter what the actual cause was.

This is also around the time when I took a day trip to Niagara Falls for a series that I didn't end up completing, and spent some time on the Spit as well – the Islands were closed because of flooding for the first time. And despite all these Theta photos this was really the year of the Fuji X100F, which was what got me started with night photography.

At the end of April and beginning of May in 2018 I was visiting Spadina House after a major storm took down several old trees, and trying to find photos for a class I was taking. I also wend for a walk with my friend Stephen, where we were able to walk through a mall that never made the jump from the `80's to the present day – it's gone now – and walked though a grocery store as if it was no big deal at all. We bought some drinks after a nice lunch at a small and crowded Italian sandwich shop.

It has also been two years since my long-suffering contact at Fujifilm had to write an awkward memo to Japan. I think this was the GFX, but the XH1 had the same menu item. Both have since been fixed in firmware.

It was the summer of 2018 that saw me relocate most of my photography to the Toronto Islands, and around this time last year I'd visited on two different weekends. One was a trip to Hanlan's Point for the aircraft, where I caught this RCAF helicopter on exercises. I then walked the beach to Gibraltar Point to see how it was holding up under the onslaught of wind and waves: not well. But when I went back to this spot a couple of months ago it simply wasn't there any more.

The second trip to the island was to Centre and in the evening; it's still too cold in May to stay out overnight, so I took one of the last ferries home instead. And I've learned to keep the camera out until we actually touch the city again.

I was carrying a camera a lot last year. The Royal Ontario Museum had an excellent exhibit marking the internment of Japanese Canadians, which broke up the staid display of the Canadian gallery. It's the best thing to happen to that space in years. I just wish they made it permanent, or at least included some of its elements among the paintings of people who someone thought were important a century ago.

This period also marked my last Forum critique group meeting in Katz's Deli, which fell victim to Toronto's need for more investment properties, and an unplanned visit to the Ontario police memorial ceremony. Living near the provincial parliament means these unexpected encounters happen fairly often.

Last May is also when I parted with my Fujifilm 18-55, a lens that I sold for $400 but still miss occasionally. I had bought it second-hand, paid to have it serviced for a defective aperture control, and then sent it back in to be reassembled correctly. (It worked fine, but was rotated 120 degrees on the mount, and they didn't notice the second time they saw it, either.) I also tried to sell my Zeiss 85/4 tele-tessar at the same time, but nobody thought it was worth what it would have taken for me to give it up. It remains in occasional service on my rangefinder.

And that brings us up to the present day. Travel restrictions and social anxiety have kept me close to home; both of these photos were taken on Bloor street, between Bay and Bathurst, on unpeopled sidewalks before dawn. I've had a few other projects going on, but nothing photographic, or even particularly creative.

Now that some of the social restrictions – but not the need for them – are decreased my usual photo lab has started running again. This means that I have four rolls of film to scan, although only a few frames are recent, and a couple of the rolls are from years ago. Some of those should show up here eventually, even if I don't count them as part of my quota for this film photography year.