February 2025 — Street Scenes, Set Life & Stillness in the Cold

February was a strange balance—movement and stillness braided together.

Video production season was in full swing, and I kept pace with it. More shoots. More locations. Long days on set, chasing light between call sheets and cables. But somewhere in the middle of the work, I found myself slowing down. Breathing more. Looking longer.

When I wasn’t on set, I started riding the bus again. It’s something I’ve missed. Since COVID, my time on public transit had dropped off, but February pulled me back into it—and I’m glad it did. The bus has always been a good gauge of the city’s rhythm. It moves at a human pace. It reminds you that this place is alive, layered, and full of stories you don’t see when you’re just driving through it.

And it’s been eye-opening. I’ve been seeing more of the rough edges—the quiet weight of homelessness, the daily grind in winter coats and tired eyes. The cold doesn’t hide anything. It just makes it sharper. Riding the bus let me witness the city from inside out, not as a passerby, but as a part of it.

That perspective carried over into my photography. I started walking downtown more, shooting street scenes in the quiet freeze. No project. No client. Just the instinct to document what felt real. The salt on the sidewalks. The steam coming up from grates. Faces tucked behind scarves, and eyes that told better stories than words ever could.

I shot on both my Fuji X-H2S and my iPhone. The Fuji gave me depth and detail. The iPhone gave me speed and stealth. They complemented each other—two ways of seeing, one intuitive, the other intentional.

Outside of that, I gave myself space to stay in. To rest. I didn’t fight the cold. I let it be a boundary that told me to slow down. February had a quiet kind of permission in it. To not force things. To observe more than act. To create without pressure.

This month’s dump is made of those moments: the stillness between productions, the streets breathing beneath ice and exhaust, the lives you see when you stop looking through a lens and just watch for a while. It’s a mix of motion and meditation.

February didn’t rush. Neither did I. And there’s something healing in that.

Photos below
(Shot on Fuji X-H2S & iPhone — downtown, on set, and in between)