Old sunglasses at Abbas Gro­cery, Ottawa

Well, my brain is cooked.

I am in Toronto again this week­end, the third time in a month.  I should have ren­ted an apart­ment!  I’m in town for a work­shop with Don­ald Weber, Cana­dian doc­u­ment­ary pho­to­grapher and mem­ber of the VII Network.

Don reviewed my work in 2007, at a con­fer­ence called the Great White North Work­shops. I showed him a port­fo­lio of my “I am Free” series (ori­gin­ally called “Departs”). Nobody else at the con­fer­ence really “got” my pic­tures at the time, or engaged me hon­estly. Don did, and his advice at that time changed my dir­ec­tion in pho­to­graphy. He told me to start pho­to­graph­ing people. He told me to get over my fear, and get closer. Two years later, at a con­fer­ence last month, he remembered my work.

Scrap metal at Baker’s in Ottawa

This time, he kicked my ass a bit. I have been shoot­ing people. I’ve been get­ting a lot closer lately. I’ve worked hard to be cog­niz­ant and crit­ical of my sur­round­ings, and the people in them. What Don did, and what I am grate­ful for, is called me out for not shoot­ing true to my vis­ion. He is right.

Some­where along the way, I trained myself to ignore my instincts. I focused on style and tech­nique over sub­stance and mean­ing. I lost focus of why I love pho­to­graphy. I’ve been sup­press­ing the emo­tional, non-technical, and intu­it­ive way of shoot­ing that is actu­ally my strength. Des­pite count­less hours work­ing on other types of pho­to­graphy, I keep com­ing back to doc­u­ment­ary pho­to­graphy. I can’t stay away, and it’s time for me to be hon­est with myself about that. It’s time for me to make the jump, I just needed a little push from Don­ald Weber.

So if it’s all about the people (or, more spe­cific­ally, rela­tion­ships), why did I choose two pho­to­graphs without people in them?  I just star­ted a new pro­ject. These pic­tures are part of it, but I have to keep the people pho­tos to myself for a while.