Just There: Lessons from streetcar scenes in Winnipeg

I'm always impressed by the detail in old black-and-white photos. Scanning them and enlarging the resulting images seems to always yield interesting details and surprises. 

Over the past few days I've posted a few images of Winnipeg's Portage & Main that my uncle shot in the 1940s. Each included a streetcar, so I decided to blow up the streetcar section to see what there was to see. Over there on the left is the intersection of Portage & Main with a streetcar on each thoroughfare.

And here are a couple of streetcars on Portage, obscured by automobiles and pedestrians, but still clearly visible.

And finally, here's a streetcar just peeking out of the left side of the image near The Bank of Hamilton on Main St..

I think what's important in all three is that they include streetcars not by deliberate choice, but because they happened to be there when my uncle was shooting pictures of other things that interested him. They were an everyday part of the world in that era, so naturally they're just there. It's that feeling of 'just there' that I'm looking for in my model photos. Just there if I'm looking out of an office window. Just there if I'm walking across an intersection. Just there if I'm going to the bank. Just there.