Mutography. Capturing the story of life in stills.

I also wanted to be a photographer so I wouldn’t have to be in photographs—selfies are incredibly rare.

I first learned photography while in high school from an amateur photographer and architect who was very compositional and graphical in style. His approach became my approach for my first decade of shooting film.

I later enrolled in Sheridan College’s Applied Photography diploma program while at university, lugging a 40-lb large format kit from the city to the suburbs and back. I was trained in commercial studio photography on 4x5 film—in other words, I was trained in the art of taking 20 minutes to shoot a single frame.

For many years, I shot technically fine images that bored me. They felt soulless. Another amateur photographer, looking at my portfolio, asked me why I didn’t take more pictures of people.  From then on, I did, and it transformed everything about my photography. I rediscovered documentary-style photography, which was why I wanted to be a photographer in the first place.