This is a little bit about how I found myself to be in the photography business.
I remember my first camera I ever used. It was my dad’s Pentax and it greatly intrigued me. He showed me how to look through the viewfinder and check where the exposure needle was to see if it will expose the film correctly and also how to focus the lens.
Not long after that our family went on a trip to Disney World in Florida and my brother had a brand new point and shoot which I was super jealous of. I constantly took any opportunity I could to steal it and use it myself. I didn’t really understand the inner workings of it but I was captivated by the ability to freeze a moment in time and keep it forever.
Then I finally got my own camera. A black Kodak Ektralite 10 that took 110 film. I was in heaven. It was so easy to use! I took stupid photos of car bumpers and trees and rocks and the most boring photos you’ll ever see and loved every minute of it.
Fast forward to high school – I joined the yearbook committee. I had a little experience taking photos but now I was learning how to develop them in a dark room. An exciting and daunting experience when the whole school is relying on you. Well, as it turns out, I mixed up a couple of the chemicals and ruined all the 35mm black and white film that I had shot on. It was devastating and humiliating! And since I was one of the only photographers for the school that year all the images look muddy and flat. But I continued to take photos of friends and anything of interest to me. I wasn’t particularly good but I enjoyed it a lot.
During my high school years I tried a couple of different co-op placements. First one at a veterinary clinic (hated that) and then another one with a potter where I learned more about sculpture and throwing on a wheel. I actually really enjoyed that one but it was a little too solitary for me. When I applied to different art schools it was evident that my ceramic work was superior to my photography but I’m a people person and I didn’t want to work by myself all day long and then have to sell my work at craft shows on the weekends. It just didn’t appeal to me.
So I applied to art colleges and managed to get into Humber College in Etobicoke. I remember the entrance interview vibe clearly. It was one of the photography teachers and he was grilling me to see how determined I was to do this as a career. He said, “Are you willing to do this?”, “Are you willing to do that?”. It was almost as if he was trying to get rid of me because I didn’t look like a typical photographer and my work really was fairly basic. But it showed potential! I answered his questions with determination in my voice and I got into the course. It was a two year program called Creative Photography. During that time I learned so much about technique, composition, colour, lighting, and photoshop. But it was a long time ago, before digital cameras were invented, and after I graduated I learned so much more as I assisted other photographers on their shoots and started shooting some of my own jobs.
I was super lucky during my college years to be able to co-op with the successful Toronto fashion & editorial photographer Chris Nichols for a week. It was like a huge dose of dopamine to be on his shoots and it spurred me on to complete my education and do more assisting of big Toronto photographers who did these bigger kinds of shoots.
After college I assisted several different photographers but it was inconsistent work and wasn’t quite enough to pay the bills so I ended up finding a commercial photographer named Lorne Chapman in Markham that was well established and wanted a full-time assistant. I stayed there for a few years and leaned so much about the business, client interaction, gear maintenance and prepping photo shoots. Around this same time the photography world was slowly starting to introduce digital cameras on to the market. Lorne snapped up one of the very first types of digital cameras. Probably cost him a fortune, but he was always looking to the future of the business and this seemed like the next big step. It was a CMOS camera, took three shots separately (one for each RGB colour channel) and then combined them together, and was really only useful for still life. It took so long to take a shot, it felt like an eternity! However, I also felt really privileged to be a part of something new like this.
Eventually I moved away from there when I got married. I moved out to Brantford and focused more on my own photography, assisting only occasionally in Toronto. I loved the energy of the big shoots downtown but I really didn’t want to move there and it was a killer long commute. So I started building up my own business.
Over the years, I’ve tried a variety of differently types of photography, but I’ve narrowed it down to a few I really like: Portraits, Architecture and Lifestyle. I’ve really honed my retouching skills too. So now I mostly do work in Southern Ontario (Hamilton, Burlington, Kitchener/Waterloo, Guelph, Mississauga, London and so forth), but some projects take me farther abroad too.
This is what I love to do! I’m so fortunate to be able to spend my time in an exciting and challenging field of work. Its a real privilege. Thank you to all the clients out there that have entrusted me with their projects – it’s been a real pleasure. I’m exited for many more years of it to come.