Having a photographer in the room while you're in pain, while you're facing your biggest fears (because let's face it - for me, the impending pain of labour was my biggest fear), while you're vulnerable and naked and possibly passing gas from strain... for some people it's just too much.
But there there is the flip side...
Read MoreThe event ran 12-6pm this Sunday, and the crew were ready to WORK HARD. There were boxes of complimentary donuts, tall cups of coffee for the artists, and a full waiting room of eager folks waiting to choose their piece and put it on skin. Oh, and an array of flash selections by each artist to choose from.
Read MoreGo grab a handful of mud and plant a tiny seed. A bean, a pea, a cherry tree; and mark it with a stick.
Then watch it grow and weed it so. And eat it when it's done. And tell the world about your seed, and give them all some mud.
Read MoreThat's the best bit about documentary photography, I suppose: being welcomed into lives as they unfold, trying my best to do them justice.
That whole bit about being a fly on the wall - who knows if that is true? Flies buzz around in your ear and unnerve you. A documentary photography experience normally has the opposite result: it calms and grounds people, and makes them thankful for the lives they live.
Read MoreI photographed the Sunflower Festival at Kricklewood farm again this year. There is a tasting alley, where chefs prepare small bite-sized dishes to load up on a plate. There is a barbecue, music, artisans and craftspeople, tons of local vendors, a silent auction, and of course - GOATS! (and a few pigs and poultry, too). (And sunflower fields, though those weren't quite in bloom this year because of the rain)
Read MoreThe Murrays are one of those families that you want to have living on your block.
Though we were never actual neighbours, my kids went to school with their kids, and my daughter counted their daughter among her besties. And whenever I saw them around, they simply brought energy and fun and goodness to the community. In short, the Murrays are good people.
Read MoreRunning, grinning, posing without prompt, a golden fidget spinner in the hand and plastic leis as vibrant crowns.
You’ll find all that and more, perhaps, should you be invited to photograph an 11th birthday party in the middle of July in Ontario.
And a photographer sitting in the grass, as a giant water balloon falls right on her crotch: risks of the trade.
Read MoreAfter watching her work her magic for a little while, I naturally assume Audrey was a chemistry whiz in school. This artisanal chocolate business is part art, part science. But no, she says. She didn’t take chemistry in school. Her counsellor told her that she’d be no good at science. He suggested she’d do something more suitable. Like being a typist.
Read MoreSpending this afternoon at the Toronto shore... It makes me miss the city. The scent of shawarma wafting through the summer air, the hum of traffic, the hiss and chimes of street-cars rounding corners, opening, and closing. Children somewhere, yelling, planes overhead, the pavement hot, the air - sticky.
Read MoreBefore I became a family photographer, I was a parenting researcher. I was interested in how parents behaved, and how their children developed.
However, most of the hands-on data collection and family visits were not done by me. They were done by research assistants who would collect the data and hand it over to us, the researchers.
Read MoreYou've seen the photos social media tells you to have. You've seen it all.
What you might not have seen is that there is another way. Another way to document your days. Where the authentic is given full reign.
Ask yourself this: why did you fall in love with your life?
Read MorePaula also has a sense of humour and a keen sense of timing: she was the lady who, at the Kingston Town Hall with the prime minister in January, after ‘tensions began to escalate' as she puts it, asked Justin Trudeau what he does with his old ties. After he fumbled for an answer, she told him, "The reason why I asked is because I’m looking at your tie and thinking it would make a fabulous dog collar"
Read MoreMy studio photos from when I was a kid - I think I’ve got a couple of those - are empty vessels. They're fully devoid of context. Other than my cute pig-tails, and the virginal white dress, I can’t answer any questions about the time and place. What was I into at that period in my life? I didn’t wear dresses except on that one day my grandmother took me to the studio, and I didn’t wear my hair in pigtails, either, I know that much. I wore "boys'" clothes and played with sticks and stray kittens and I was afraid of frogs (which hasn’t changed). None of that comes through in my childhood studio portraits. Not even a tiny bit, though I wish it could.
Read MoreWe walk around and I see that the farm is far bigger than it looks. It presents a pull, too, to the visitor, a tug that makes you want to linger and inquire, and peek with curiosity at the seedlings in the soil.
Read MoreThe punchline: I’m not brave, I’ve just got a kite that needs wind. Now let’s backtrack.
A year ago I woke up after two years in la-la-land.
I was hit with the sobering thought that we’d settled in a place where I’d never find work in the area in which I’d trained. (My father’s cautions were well-founded.) My ‘dream’ had been to become an assistant professor in research psychology. And those positions are about as rare nowadays as flying unicorns.
I have zero clinical psychology training, and clinical training is a real selling point. Heck, I didn’t even have a psychology B.Sc., having instead wiled away my undergrad years dabbling in computer science, zoology, philosophy... my favourite course in 3rd year was “Lives and Societies”. I studied crickets, naked-mole rats, poison dart frogs, rats, and fruit flies... But never humans, until my PhD. So, hm.
The short version: I was unemployable, though with a solid CV. Like having an uber-fancy kite on a planet with no wind. I hung around the local psychology department, teaching courses, working 9-5 at the shared adjunct office, and hoping for a lucky break. Two years later, I stopped dreaming.
During this whole time, I had also been applying for administrative positions, any and all research associate contracts, and even online translator gigs. Heard nothin’ from nobody. (But wait, I promise, my CV was solid!)
I’m proud and stubborn, so one day I’d had enough. And then I turned to photography. From photographing my kids to photographing families and weddings and people I didn't know.
When you feel the need to tell me how brave I am, or how inspiring my journey is, I’ll tell you the plain truth: I had no other choice, really.
I’m not “taking a leap of faith” (or maybe I am, in the way you leap forward in Frogger, when the log you’re on floats all the way to the edge of the screen and you’ll fall in the water if you don’t).
Since I am proud and I am stubborn, I - to continue with the odious metaphors - kept hopping and leaping and found the logs or otherwise managed to tread water, and made lemonade from those lemons, and found the silver lining, and went with the flow, or maybe it was against the grain...
And so far, I like where I landed.
Finally. My kite’s taking off.
Oh, and here is a photo of me, at a stairwell junction, on one of my first paid gigs as a family photographer (Distillery District, Toronto):
She zips around the kitchen of St. Paul’s Church like a ninja. A ninja with muscled arms. And also a very friendly ninja. She’s making cheesecakes, and cheesecakes in a jar, and mixing, scraping, pouring, baking, cooling, washing. To the untrained eye, it looks like a lot of work is going on.
Read MoreI really didn’t know what to expect as I drove in her driveway on a rainy April morning. What I found was someone who - while taking a great deal more pride and craftsmanship than HomeSense in creating, say, a wooden tray - is humble, genuine, and kind. Not that you need to be a great person to have a good strong business, but it certainly makes for a better local community.
Read MoreRecently I photographed three birthday parties in nine days.
One of them was a surprise party. Two of them were 50th parties. Two of them had cats. One of them had two cakes. One of them: salami whips. One of them had a fully consensual boob-grabbing shot that I took in a dark room
Read MoreWhen my "Year-in-the-Life" family took their two sons bowling, there were a few predictable glitches. Having an older brother and two parents who are bowling Gods (everyone looks like a pro when you first start bowling) does nothing for one’s ego. Will gave it a valiant effort, then there were some near-tears, then a change in strategy or five. Afterwards, he ate some fries and gave it another honest go. There were double underhand throws, and squat throws, and rotational slams, and anguish and thrill. It really doesn’t matter what the scoreboard ultimately said: the kid persevered, and that’s all anyone needs to know about that day.
Read MoreIn reading Gerry Badger's 'The Genius of Photography', I came across a beautiful photograph of a couple in a rowboat, picking waterlilies in a lake among the reeds. The photograph was taken by Peter Henry Emerson in 1886. Something about that photograph's softness made me pause longer than I normally do. If you have a spare moment, you should peruse some of Emerson's images of rural idyl.
Anyway, Badger recounts Emerson's attempts to selectively focus the frame on a specific part of the image, rather than on the whole thing. Emerson, much like modern cognitive psychologists, believed that the human eye does not see everything in sharp focus. Or rather, modern cognitive psychology might tell us that we selective attend to only parts of the whole. This is why we are so 'good' at missing details in a frame: we cannot pay attention to it all at once.
In the end, Badger continues, Emerson's attempt at selective focus was "just another kind of photograph to please those who believed the sharper the image the less artistic it was."
This early school of thought - that blur and softness are more 'artistic' than sharper images - has persisted and is also seen today. I see examples of this when I peruse 500px galleries for 'fine art', for instance. Or look at contemporary fine art wedding photography.
Resolve for 2017: to find an answer to the question - when is blur too much?
And an aside unrelated to blur, but related to grass-cutting: Peter Henry Emerson apparently once said, ‘No machine will be invented which will do the work as well as the scythe.’
Now, I'm glad he was wrong because - despite our best efforts and the purchase of two artisanal scythes with Swiss blades of the highest quality, plus three grazing goats, upon moving to our homestead - we could not have made even a dent in the mowing without our hand-me-down ride-on mower. And still it takes us hours to get the job done.
I am a modern documentary family photographer in Kingston, Ontario. I photograph families, weddings, people, life. On-location, unposed, effortless, candid photographs. Also serving Toronto, Ottawa, Belleville, Mississauga, Oakville, Hamilton, Prince Edward County and beyond.
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