When we aren’t performing photoshoots often I am scouting locations for future ones with my brother (also known as one of our main photographers). Recently we wandered through Kensington Market, a popular area in Toronto for vintage shopping and interesting artistic stores, looking for areas that would make great shoot backdrops!

He snapped quite a few photos of the area and I thought I’d share them here. It was a very humid and hot day, so we gave up exploring any side streets and headed for the nearest cold drinks instead! 😉

The market itself has a wonderful, artistic atmosphere. Full of color and life.

There are numerous shops displaying arrays of produce like this. We thought the contrast of the beautiful vegetables and fruit against the graffiti covered background was really lovely. The meeting of urban life and rural agriculture, in a way.

Kensington Market is a great place to spot graffiti in the city! It decorates nearly every surfaces and ranges from tattered stickers and scrawls to elaborate full color displays.

Count on us to find the morbid in any area! We happened across this odd engraved metal plate on top of a cement pillar on the edge of the street. It has a sort of tombstone message engraved into it. “Victor Victor, born nineteen fortys IX died nineteen ninty six” with the misspellings and all. I haven’t found any information in my quick google searches about this, but maybe I’ll track down the meaning and post it at a later time.

A close up of stickers covering a parking sign.

Maybe we’ll go back and shoot a series of photos with one of our models in Kensington Market! Now that we’ve seen all the hidden details it could offer as a setting. 🙂

Does your town or city have a similar artistic market? 

-Tae