I have shot a lot of fashion for the past 5 years and it was losing its glow for me. I began using the images to make continuous line images as a way of keeping my interest going to continue to shoot fashion. I have now created over 500 drawings and a repurposed clothing line featuring those drawings.
You can see the line here www.freeadmission.ca/shop
Or here on Etsy
I have had several editorials published in fashion magazines and this time I thought I would combine my fashion images with my illustrations for submission to SKYE Magazine
Finding my way to documentary photography came after a lot of thought and rumination. I have always used my camera to see the world since I was 12. Part of what I enjoyed about fashion photography was the connection I made with every model I shot. Some I still shoot for creative projects many years later.
The connection is key for me and also I feel the root of documentary photography. The photos that stir show a connection in the frame that invokes emotion. An emotion I have been chasing so I choose to turn towards it and make it my pursuit.
Then the world stopped so I have had to once again seek out how to portray the passion I have for my camera (permanent callous on my right thumb I spent decades sucking). I have an award-winning photojournalist as a mentor and have been soaking myself in images that tell stories. The ones that move the most stand-alone and keep you looking, they are the ones where you see something different each time you look at it. Or maybe feel something different too.
I have taken courses with Jennifer Moher, Kristen Lewis, and am following the current Black Lives Matter feeds with so many incredibly evocative images that are pushing this movement forward.
I am giving a lot of thought to how to move forward and know that the answer won’t come easy because I want the next step to show a connection-an authentic connection for the viewer to see. For me, connection, the only real element of life that sustains us is something I seek out to portray in my photos.
Moving forward into this next chapter I don’t have big plans but I do know I am going to pick up my film camera again and slow myself down. Finding a way to focus and ‘see’ through the viewfinder rather than using my digital camera machine gun style while shooting portraits. I am going to ‘see’ in a new way, getting used to the new normal we are all trying to figure out.
