When we were assigned this post, about who we are as
photographers and maybe an explanation of how we got here, I frankly had no
clue what to write. I don’t have a great photographic journey with generations
of family whose lives were played out in darkrooms and art galleries. In fact,
with the exception of one aunt who lives on an island and paints massive, abstract
canvases, my family is fairly scientifically-minded and not really one to cater
to the namby-pamby world of the arts.
This says nothing about my own photographic journey though,
other than to say that I have no photographic history. I’ve never set foot in a
darkroom and only seriously picked up a camera in 2008. I was a book-smart
student all through school, acing the early grades, skipping grade six, and
eventually graduating from a highly academic high school with an International
Baccalaureate diploma. I did no optional courses other than band class. I
yearned to do the creative things: participating on yearbook, taking an art
class.
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| The day after my high school graduation, June 2005. |
But that was considered verboten. To my parents (and really
to me, through years of being told that art was good for toddlers learning what their hands were but useless
for jobs) art was a weekend activity. I had to follow in the footsteps of my
siblings: a PhD-level biotechnologist, a math/science teacher, and a research fellow in
public health were the career paths of my three older siblings. Science was
where the jobs were, where the future was.
So that’s what I did. Four years later, I graduated from the
University of Alberta with a degree in biological sciences. I had a minor in
mathematics, something that boggled my friends. Why math? Why not, is my
typical response. I loved the ability to solve a problem. I’m convinced this is
why I enjoy photography. When I line things up, compose things properly, and get
that image, the right image, I feel the exact same as when I finally solved
that partial differential equation.
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| University convocation, with my parents, June 2009. |
Science got me nowhere. I could go into the gory
details of failed jobs and unhappiness, but I won’t. The only credit I’ll give
myself for doing that degree is that it made me realize that I wanted to so
something different.
I lived in Scotland for a year after graduating university,
trying to figure out what I wanted. I travelled and worked a grim hospital job,
cleaning up biological fluids and dealing with the drunks of the night.
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| Portobello beach, Edinburgh. December 2009. (Seagulls, not sensor spots.) |
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| Hogmanay celebrations, December 2009. First event I ever shot in a photojournalistic manner. |
I knew things had to change, and so I turned to my second
calling, something that actually interested me a bit.
And there it was. I looked into a way that I could use non-portrait
photography to make a living. Funnily enough, I remember wanting to be an
editor when I was young; this might be the closest I get. Loyalist, with its
personal level of teaching photojournalism, is where I feel I should be. Of
course, I get frustrated with assignments and my overly strong need for
perfection often causes me to never be happy with a shot, but I know this is
something I want to do, for once. This was cemented this past summer when I
worked a 12-week internship for two weekly newspapers in Alberta, the
Strathmore Standard and Hanna Herald.
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| My front pages from the summer. |
I rarely mention what brought me here because it’s nothing
exciting. I could talk about what I like shooting, like sports, documentary,
and news events. I could even talk about what I have less of a fondness for
(portraits, babies cooing, cheque presentations), but this is more about my
journey here. It’s one that took some very long, expensive wrong turns, but one
that I know ended up in the right place at the right time.
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