Carmel Shopkeeper Canvas Print

NOTE: The logo watermark will not appear on purchased products.

This cat named Serena keeps watch over her shop on Lincoln Street in downtown Carmel. Perhaps her stern expression has something to do with the fact that Carmel is known as a dog-friendly town. This portrait was made in August 2009.

Photo Copyright James B.Toy.

In the fall of 1959, Mr. Toy entered this world at a place called Carmel on California's Monterey Peninsula. Nine years later his family pulled up stakes for the rain-soaked city of Salem, Oregon where he never quite fit in. When he was 12, he and his mother viewed an exhibit of photographs by a Salem newspaper photographer, which inspired him to take his first photography class. During his teenage years he gradually developed his eye for composition and his skills with light and exposure. Though he did not pursue photography as a career, he has continued to document his observations of the world on small frames of film. In 1984, Mr. Toy and his wife Heidi returned to the Monterey Peninsula where his heart belonged. In 1997, on a bit of...