Let's start with the important stuff. Coffee. And an incredible building that may be the ultimate location in the world for coffee. The building is that cool. And it's in Montreal.

Canadians rushing to find great coffee first thing in the morning.

No sweat though, great coffee is as easy to find in Montreal as it gets.

Click to see big. Consider looking at the images on a big monitor.

There are some with a LOT of detail.

I traveled to Montreal in 2019 with B. She's hardly the elitist coffee addict that I seem to be. But even B. was impressed by the interior of Crew Café; enough so to linger over a lovely cappuccino. I can't remember who it was that suggested we go by and check Crew out but I am eternally thankful. In fact, when I was planning my trip back up again this year the proximity of my hotel to the café was a determining factor in my final choice. Crew Café is about a block and a half away from Hotel Gault. I can easily stumble that far in the morning to get tasty caffeine... even when I can't find my eyeglasses.

In a state of semi-consciousness I always make sure to take along my EHC (every hour carry) camera of choice, the all purpose Leica Q2. Pre-coffee is no time to be fumbling with rangefinder focusing and the embarrassment of having forgotten to remove a lens cap. As in: "Why is the image black on the LCD?" And God help you if you have to navigate a Sony camera menu before being fully awake.

On my first full day in the city I woke up right before 7 a.m., shaved, splashed my face a number of times with refreshing, cold water (here in Austin water from the "cold" tap runs about 90° (F) and got dressed in my street shooting clothes. Sturdy, dark brown shoes with a new insole, a nondescript pair of dress trousers, a long sleeve shirt with a collar, and one small camera hanging by a demure, thin, black leather strap. Toss on the eyeglasses and I'm ready to head out the door. Destination: Coffee.

Hint: To prevent the embarrassment of forgetting to remove lens caps one might consider taking the lens cap off the lens while still in the hotel room and leaving it with the little pile of gear you aren't carrying that day. 

Crew Café and the associated contract workspace adjoining it are located in an older, 

very historic bank building just a block or two east of Rue McGill. inside the old town. 

The sign is.....understated.

A note. Even though I think the building that is home to the coffee shop is fabulous (interiors) I would never have bothered to go in if the coffee wasn't great. But it is. 

The front door of the building housing Crew.

I start out each day deciding what single camera and lens I'll be taking out with me. Montreal is an easy city to get around in and if I've made what is, for that day, a poor choice in cameras or lenses I can always swing back by the hotel and change gear(s). I consider the first day in any town a "warm up" day. A day to observe how people and places look. What the "feeling" of a neighborhood is like. Even how relaxed or wound up I happen to be. All those things determine camera choice for me in the early part of a trip. 

A camera like the Q2 is great on day one because it eliminates most of the choices you would otherwise have to make while providing great files and wonderful color. It's small, relatively light and easy to use. It's one camera I can set to "automatic" and mostly trust. So, if I have no hard "imaging" agenda and just want to get my feet wet in the city it's a great choice.

I'll admit that I'd forgotten just how cool the interior of the space in the building was/is. And since a 28mm lens was the longest I'd brought along with me on the trip the Q2 was the perfect first day, pre-coffee choice of camera. 

But before photography --- breakfast. I ordered a large latté and a sesame seed bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon. Just right. I don't know what it is that makes coffees so good in Canada. Maybe the difference is in the milk? But really, I think the baristas are just....better. I sat at a community table and soaked in the ambiance while savoring my coffee and bagel. There was a mix of older tourists, a crowd of 25 to 35 year olds having business meetings, working on laptops, swilling great coffee and mostly ignoring the splendor of the place. 

When I finished and dropped my plate and cup into a bus tub I started taking photographs in earnest. My goal is to always work with a calmness and a projection of the idea that I'm supposed to be here. Supposed to be taking photographs. That this is a normal thing. It generally works unless you just stomp right up to a person and push your camera in their face. Then all bets are off and you are on your own. Don't make a lot of visual "noise" and you'll do fine.

So, the big space on the first floor is divided up between the coffee shop and, on the other side, a work space where you can rent a desk or a small conference room, etc. by the hour or by the day or by the week. You have to be escorted into the space by a host who manages the rentals. But you can see the space through the glass walls from the café. I spent a lot of time (for me) documenting the great ceilings in the coffee-side space but I also wanted to photograph the office space on the other side. 

I approached the hostess and tried in my best mangled French to ask permission. She looked baffled. I tried again in English and explained why I needed to photograph the ceilings on that other side to have a "complete documentation" of the space and she decided that this could be allowed. I smiled at my first imaging "victory" of the day.

I'm going to bet that your local Starbucks doesn't have a ceiling like this one...

I've admitted many times that I am not an architectural photography but that never stops me from being impressed by buildings, their designs and their interior decor and finishes. I can only imagine that a true architectural specialist could spend at least a full day doing justice to the overall space and the details here. But for me it was the ceilings and the arches that worked so well. 

There are pervasive arguments all over the web that the lens on the Leica Q, Q2 and Q3 (all the same) isn't really a 28mm focal length but is actually wider. Closer to 24mm or, maybe somewhere in the middle, like a 26mm. I have no way, and no inclination, to test the exact focal length of the lens but if it is a bit wider than advertised I'll certainly welcome it. That helped me get in more ceiling than perhaps I would have gotten if I'd brought along the M240 and the Zeiss 28mm instead.

When you have a wide angle lens on the camera and you concentrate on the ceilings for a while no one seems to notice when you decide to instead document the entire room. This area, now housing the café was once an ornate bank lobby and some of the artifacts remain. Such as all the teller windows located along the right side of the frame.

More typing below.....

For a tourist this interior is wonderful. I come from a city where everything is new. Anything older than about 25 years is in the process of being torn down and replaced with an ever more utilitarian structures bereft of even vestiges of soul. To have something saved, restored and repurposed is such a novel concept for a Texan living at ground zero of corporate greed. Just saying. 

I imagine that residents of the area get used to the grandeur of their coffee house and eventually become acclimated to it. And that's fine because, as I've written, the coffee alone is worth the visit. 

But I get bored with even the best architecture in a short amount time. My plan on first seeing the space was to have every breakfast of the week here. But on the next day I found myself exploring new options. Ah well. Intentions are malleable. 

One of the many remaining touches that say, "this was once a wealthy and powerful banking institution." 

Over on the bright side is the office area. 

When the hostess escorted me into the office side I was ready to photograph. I can hardly imagine how cool it would be spending my working days in an office like this one. Especially if I thought working in an office was cool.  Grand and glorious. So much space that it's almost medicinal. Yeah. I know. I have some key-stoning in the frame. Try to think of the overall image as documentation... or look just below.

It was interesting for me, over a week later, to finally look through the images and see what I had really taken in the Crew Café space. Many of the images from the café side were shot at between ISO 2000 and 8000 and I think they still look quite good. Of course, I could be forgiven since I tried making photographs with cameras like the Nikon D2X back in the day and struggled mightily with super noisy images even at ISO 400... It's different now.

I find the Q2 to be very sharp, even when used at wide open apertures. The whole hoopla about how people will react upon seeing "the red dot" or the Leica logo is fantasy. No one in the course of my seven shooting days even so much as glanced at my camera or made any indication that they knew about Leica, coveted Leicas or wanted to steal my Leicas. It's a myth that's hung on from a time in which cameras were thought by the general public to be valuable. Now they are nothing more, really, than a generational signpost. Camera over shoulder? Fifty and older. Camera cinched tight cross body? A very nervous tourist over sixty. 

And here I'll have to admit that I used my iPhone as a camera from time to time on the trip and was always very, very impressed by the images I was able to get. In fact, on my next adventure I may just take an iPhone 15 Pro and forget the "accessory" camera altogether. Not as sexy for my generation but probably, in all, a better imaging choice. 

After breakfast and interior photography I headed back over to the hotel to change cameras. I went out for a full day of Metro riding and exploring. For that I decided to use the M240 and the CZ 35mm f2.0. By way of immersing myself one step at a time....

More to come.