Chris Cramer prowls the streets, looking for humans.

When he finds one that intrigues him — could be a girl with flowers in the park, or a stout man on a motorcycle — Cramer moves to capture them. On film.

The 41-year-old German-Canadian is one of a handful of photography enthusiasts who routinely embark on excursions through the city to take pictures of characters in the streets. The photos are posted on the Facebook page Humans of Toronto , a local variation on an idea first employed in New York City in 2010, wherein pictures of the distinctive inhabitants of a particular urban milieu are posted online for the world to see.

“What inspires us is to document, to be a census, of the lives that are lived here,” said the jovial Cramer strolling with his camera near St. Lawrence Market on a Sunday in June. “Toronto is a fantastic, cosmopolitan city, and I think it’s worth documenting.”

Eugen Kertesz, a 50-year-old building operator and lifelong photographer, decided to start Toronto’s version of the blog theme more than a year ago, after his daughter realized Hogtown humans weren’t represented among the throng of websites mimicking Stanton’s original.

“Out of a joke, I told her, just make one. And she did,” said Kertesz, who started going out in Toronto looking for interesting subjects.

Kertesz and Cramer have met numerous Torontonians whose stories stuck with them in the months they’ve been working on the site. Kertesz encountered an old Polish man in a west-end park who said he’s haunted by memories of killing a German soldier during the Second World War. There was also a homeless man who said he never begs, and has lived on the street since his wife allegedly killed his two kids.

“The moment he opens up to tell you his life story, you don’t know what to do,” said Kertesz.

Once they got some more street-photographer experience, however, they started to refine their vision and focus exclusively on positive stories. The idea is to highlight the beauty and happiness amid the normal life of the city.

“It’s just a little snapshot of an ordinary life, but it’s something different than you would normally read in the news,” said Cramer, showing photos he’d taken of a middle-aged couple with parrots on their arms.

Most often, he asks his subjects to tell him the happiest thing in their lives, or what positive message they’d like to send. Their responses are used as a one-line caption for the photos on the web page.

“The media usually concentrates on murder, crime, politics,” explained Cramer. “There is no so much space about the wonderful things in ordinary life.”

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As they juggle their day jobs with their passion of their moonlighting street photography gig, Cramer and Kersetz said they’re hoping to host an exhibit at a local gallery to display their work. Until then, their excursions will continue, and they’ll work to capture more and more of the humans of Toronto.