Ron (Explore)
I noticed him standing and chatting with an acquaintance as I passed through a food court in downtown Toronto. What caught my attention was his stylishly hip, somewhat eccentric style of dress – casual, yet carefully put-together.
I was immediately interested in meeting him and inviting him to my project but didn’t want to interrupt his conversation. I stood at a distance and just as I began to fear looking like a loiterer, I could see that the conversation was winding up. I approached him and introduced myself and my project and asked if I could photograph him and introduce him to the Human Family Group. He said “Sure, I don’t mind at all.” We shook hands. Meet Ron.
I suggested we walk through the basement shopping area to a corridor which I knew would provide some natural light from the parkette nearby. As we walked, we chatted. When I told Ron that I was documenting the diversity of those of us who call Toronto home, Ron said “I like that. So you’ve got your work cut out for you. 3.5 million photos is going to be a big project.” We laughed together.
Ron was very personable and seemed confidently friendly. I took a few photos of him standing in the middle of the corridor, making use of the sidelighting. We looked at the images and I said I would like to include his hands with the bold rings, one of which was a skull matching his skull necklace which hung on his chest with a cross.
Ron was intrigued by the notion of more creative posing and we stepped from the middle of the corridor to take a few more photos against the polished stone wall with the light coming from behind me. He tried to help out by striking a pose with his finger on his cheek, showing the rings. At this point, Ron was getting into expressing himself in front of my camera and it was becoming abundantly clear that he is a bit of a character. He struck an astonished pose with both hands against his cheeks and then opened his jacket to show his necklaces and his “Dope” t-shirt. He made the distinction between drugs and the current usage of the word “dope” meaning “cool.”
It’s not often that we meet a subject as outgoing and comfortable in front of the camera as Ron was and this encounter had quickly taken on a life of its own with Ron striking poses and me trying to keep up with my camera. It was a lot of fun.
Photos taken, we exited the building into the parkette to sit at a picnic table and chat while Ron had a smoke. He is 65 and when I asked if he was retired he said he has been retired since the age of 45. I commented “You must have done well to be able to retire at 45. What did you do?” He said “When you help write the business plan that helped shift the business world from analog computing to the digital age, you could say you did well.” He described his career as having been in International Marketing and Business Planning” and made reference to having worked for a Dutch company. He described having been in a position to see prototypes of the modern cell phone before they were on the market and seems to have been very close to the technology explosion that has marked our age.
Ron was born in Scotland but the family moved to Ireland where he spent his first six years near Belfast. They then moved to Canada where he has lived since then. The move was motivated by the desire to escape the religious and political violence that marked Ireland. He told a joke that revolved around the Irish struggle, but he was clear that the violence was no joke.
When I asked Ron to share the greatest challenge he has faced, the told a fairly detailed story about how in his long-range business planning, he had failed to account for how slowly the public and business community would trust digital data and record-keeping. He seemed to hold himself and others like him partly responsible for the amount of paper that the digital age has consumed on the way to the paperless society and expressed real concern for the impact this has had on the planet and its inhabitants.
I asked him how the people who know him best would describe him he grew pensive for a few moments before saying “I don’t know… and I really don’t care.” I smiled and said he had just told me a lot about himself.
When I asked Ron if he had a message to share via the Human Family project he said that by the time he was 18 he had had the opportunity of visiting and experiencing six different countries. He feels it was his good fortune to have been that widely traveled at such a young age and it left him with a sense of the unity of Mankind. He said that his international experience has taught him we are really the same wherever we live and that we need to treat each other as the brothers and sisters that we are. Furthermore, he said, he believes that the various Deities that all the world’s religions look up to can only be the same Supreme Being; it doesn’t make sense that there would be different Gods if we are all members of one family.
That was the perfect note on which to end our fascinating and fun encounter as it mirrored many of the humanitarian values that underlie our Human Family project. Thank you Ron for taking the time to visit and pose for the photos. I hope you like them.
This is my 142nd submission to The Human Family Group on Flickr.
You can view more street portraits and stories by visiting The Human Family.
Ron (Explore)
I noticed him standing and chatting with an acquaintance as I passed through a food court in downtown Toronto. What caught my attention was his stylishly hip, somewhat eccentric style of dress – casual, yet carefully put-together.
I was immediately interested in meeting him and inviting him to my project but didn’t want to interrupt his conversation. I stood at a distance and just as I began to fear looking like a loiterer, I could see that the conversation was winding up. I approached him and introduced myself and my project and asked if I could photograph him and introduce him to the Human Family Group. He said “Sure, I don’t mind at all.” We shook hands. Meet Ron.
I suggested we walk through the basement shopping area to a corridor which I knew would provide some natural light from the parkette nearby. As we walked, we chatted. When I told Ron that I was documenting the diversity of those of us who call Toronto home, Ron said “I like that. So you’ve got your work cut out for you. 3.5 million photos is going to be a big project.” We laughed together.
Ron was very personable and seemed confidently friendly. I took a few photos of him standing in the middle of the corridor, making use of the sidelighting. We looked at the images and I said I would like to include his hands with the bold rings, one of which was a skull matching his skull necklace which hung on his chest with a cross.
Ron was intrigued by the notion of more creative posing and we stepped from the middle of the corridor to take a few more photos against the polished stone wall with the light coming from behind me. He tried to help out by striking a pose with his finger on his cheek, showing the rings. At this point, Ron was getting into expressing himself in front of my camera and it was becoming abundantly clear that he is a bit of a character. He struck an astonished pose with both hands against his cheeks and then opened his jacket to show his necklaces and his “Dope” t-shirt. He made the distinction between drugs and the current usage of the word “dope” meaning “cool.”
It’s not often that we meet a subject as outgoing and comfortable in front of the camera as Ron was and this encounter had quickly taken on a life of its own with Ron striking poses and me trying to keep up with my camera. It was a lot of fun.
Photos taken, we exited the building into the parkette to sit at a picnic table and chat while Ron had a smoke. He is 65 and when I asked if he was retired he said he has been retired since the age of 45. I commented “You must have done well to be able to retire at 45. What did you do?” He said “When you help write the business plan that helped shift the business world from analog computing to the digital age, you could say you did well.” He described his career as having been in International Marketing and Business Planning” and made reference to having worked for a Dutch company. He described having been in a position to see prototypes of the modern cell phone before they were on the market and seems to have been very close to the technology explosion that has marked our age.
Ron was born in Scotland but the family moved to Ireland where he spent his first six years near Belfast. They then moved to Canada where he has lived since then. The move was motivated by the desire to escape the religious and political violence that marked Ireland. He told a joke that revolved around the Irish struggle, but he was clear that the violence was no joke.
When I asked Ron to share the greatest challenge he has faced, the told a fairly detailed story about how in his long-range business planning, he had failed to account for how slowly the public and business community would trust digital data and record-keeping. He seemed to hold himself and others like him partly responsible for the amount of paper that the digital age has consumed on the way to the paperless society and expressed real concern for the impact this has had on the planet and its inhabitants.
I asked him how the people who know him best would describe him he grew pensive for a few moments before saying “I don’t know… and I really don’t care.” I smiled and said he had just told me a lot about himself.
When I asked Ron if he had a message to share via the Human Family project he said that by the time he was 18 he had had the opportunity of visiting and experiencing six different countries. He feels it was his good fortune to have been that widely traveled at such a young age and it left him with a sense of the unity of Mankind. He said that his international experience has taught him we are really the same wherever we live and that we need to treat each other as the brothers and sisters that we are. Furthermore, he said, he believes that the various Deities that all the world’s religions look up to can only be the same Supreme Being; it doesn’t make sense that there would be different Gods if we are all members of one family.
That was the perfect note on which to end our fascinating and fun encounter as it mirrored many of the humanitarian values that underlie our Human Family project. Thank you Ron for taking the time to visit and pose for the photos. I hope you like them.
This is my 142nd submission to The Human Family Group on Flickr.
You can view more street portraits and stories by visiting The Human Family.