This is one of my classmates. Like me, he obviously prefers shooting portraits! 
The details in the architecture at UofT are absolutely stunning. I can't believe that I've worked there for so long, and only now have come to appreciate the fine details at almost every entrance way:
The below door has a fabulously haunting story behind it:A Russian stonemason, Ivan Reznikoff, worked on University College, during its construction in the mid-19th century. Reznikoff was betrothed to a woman named Susan, whom he loved madly. However, Reznikoff ’s happy existence came to a brutal end late one night in 1856...
He had failed to notice a cruel joke that the project foreman, Paul Diablos, was slowly playing on him, right under his very eyes. Diablos had spent weeks carving a pair of stone gargoyles. One morning, while Reznikoff was admiring Diablos’ handiwork, the foreman asked Reznikoff if he recognized one of the grotesques. Reznikoff was aghast: one of the gargoyles was him. Diablos had carved his face into a hideous stone mask. Reznikoff swore he’d get his revenge. In the middle of the night, he returned to the gargoyles (which you can still see today by the southwest corner of UC) and began to carve Diablos’ visage into the other one.
Then, Reznikoff suddenly disappeared without a trace. He simply vanished, and the foreman replaced him with another stonemason.
According to a student journalist, Louis Sokolov, Reznikoff reappeared on a chilly, foggy evening in 1889... That night, a student was walking across campus when he encountered a tall man clad in black, with lank hair spilling out from under a pointed witchlike hat. The stranger told the student he had a story to tell. The night was cold so they decided to talk in the student’s residence room. There, the two finished a bottle of rum, while the ghost of Reznikoff recounted how he had died so long ago.
“One night I stayed late, working feverishly to finish the gargoyle,” he began. “I heard a girl’s laugh then Diablos’ voice saying, ‘See the dull-witted Russian.’ I crouched on the scaffolding and looked down. There, below me, stood Susan embracing the wily Greek, Diablos. Rage gripped me, but I could do nothing.”
“The next morning, steeled by alcohol, I attacked Diablos with a double-bladed mason’s axe. My first blow missed. My axe stuck in a wooden door. Diablos slipped through the door, but I pursued him. He ran up the stairs and hid near an uncompleted ventilation shaft. I did not see him until it was too late. His knife plunged into my side. He then hid my body in the shaft and said nothing about it.”
In the morning, the student awoke with a hangover and an empty liquor bottle in his room. His mysterious drinking buddy had vanished.
Two years later, much of University College burned in the Great Fire, but the door with the axe-wound in it can still be seen in UC’s southwest corner. And workers digging through the rubble discovered something strange: inside a ventilation shaft a skeleton wearing a belt with a buckle stamped with the stonemason’s emblem... eerie!
Again, I couldn't lose the colurs...
I took photos of these monkeys during our night shoot a few weeks ago - something drew me to them, and it wasn't until I got home and uploaded them to the computer that Kirby pointed out the lion in both photos!
I'll leave you with a little love.
xo K
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