The year is young, but already the lineup is strong -- the barkeep, the pool shark, the bluesman, the crossing guard, the late riser, the cartoonist, the snow shoveller, the sushi chef, the family doc, the inner-city teacher, the passionate preacher. And dozens more.

They're the cast so far at Hamilton365.com. That's where photographer Larry Strung -- fresh from Liverpool and in love with this factory town -- has committed to taking one good picture every day this year of a Hamiltonian.

It's a big job, and some mornings he awakes anxious. Will he find that photo? So far, he always has -- in Gore Park, the bingo hall, Hess Village, the deli shop, on Barton, the bus, the campus, the Sally Ann truck.

It's an unusual project. Here's why Strung's doing it.

He grew up in Toronto, went to Ryerson, ended up working for Magna for 20 years, an automotive design engineer, earning six figures.

Magna sent him off to Liverpool for a three-month job that stretched into four years.

Liverpool, beyond The Beatles, is an old industrial city that took a real hit. It's nearly half-a-million people. It's on the water. Football is big. The rest of the country sometimes makes jokes about it.

Any of this sound familiar?

But Liverpool is coming back nicely, and the population is climbing for the first time in decades.

Strung pedalled all over the city, all over Britain. That is how he likes seeing this world. Eventually, that gig came to an end and he returned to Canada in the fall of 2006.

He and wife Monica lived a time with family at College and Bathurst in Toronto, where the semi-detached next door was for sale at $575,000 -- and it needed work.

Strung didn't want to take on that kind of mortgage, considering his long career with Magna was over. They gave him a good severance, but engineering jobs in the automotive sector are scarce now.

Maybe, entering his 50s, it was time for a new life, time to get out of Toronto. His brother had recently moved to Ancaster. His parents, retired, had followed.

Strung and his wife found a house near Gage Park, on Balmoral Avenue South, beautifully restored, and moved in just over a year ago.

Strung's first plan was to buy a small Toronto custom-bicycle manufacturing operation and move it here. At the 11th hour, the owner decided he didn't want to see that happen, so Strung had to rethink his future.

All his life, he had been into photography. And here in Hamilton, he loved to explore the city on his bike, with his camera.

His picture of Hamilton had been of a hard steel city. He got past that and found the charms of Liverpool here. It was partly the architecture, but mostly the people.

"You see somebody on the bus who's as rough as you can imagine. Then he gets up to give his seat to an old lady. And then he gets off and says thank you to the driver."

Strung took many pictures around town, mostly buildings. "But as I got more courageous, I talked to people and took pictures of them, too."

Last year, he was on the Mac campus and overhead a conversation between two students.

"You ever go downtown?" one asked the other.

"No way. Too many scuzzy people down there."

That got Strung thinking. He had heard of a fellow in New York who took pictures of people every day. Maybe he could do that, too. He would shoot all types, including some who'd fallen, and would "try to show them as people of character." Not just scuzzy.

Yes, he would do it. And if he really wanted to become a portrait photographer in this city, it would be a good way to get himself known.

He produced a professional pamphlet outlining the Hamilton 365 Project to hand to people he wanted to shoot. On Jan. 1, 2008, he went down to the waterfront to find his first one -- a beauty, a mother and child new to Canada's winter.

Strung's site gets up to 3,000 hits a day. And yes, he now knows the Hamilton365.com name is not precisely right. When he bought it, he'd clean forgotten that 2008 is a leap year.

StreetBeat appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

pwilson@thespec.com 905-526-3391