Journalism has been in my family for several generations. As a 17 year old I got a job as a copyboy at The Canadian Press News Agency and was assigned to the photo department.
I am self-taught from the ground up. I remember shooting pictures in the backyard with my mother’s Brownie Hawkeye when I was about 11 or 12.
I was still a copyboy at The Canadian Press when the photo editors decided I had learnt enough to try shooting a job. I covered an NHL hockey game with one camera: a Nikon F with a 105mm lens and no motor drive. I got a decent photo that was used on the wire and made sports front of a local paper. I realised photojournalism was my future.
My style hasn’t changed over the years, but my approach has changed along with the technology, from film to digital and from darkrooms to laptops.
A single image is potentially limited in the same way as a single sentence from a story. Yet on many occasions a single image can say more than any story. Still, as they taught me many years ago: "A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it still needs a caption!"
While editing I have sometimes found the odd gem I didn’t know I had. If I’m on deadline I download and then scan through the images quickly. Usually I have one or two in mind that I need or want and go straight to them. Then I go through the rest looking for something I may have missed.
I love the freedom of the job, not always being tied to one place.
Ten years from now I see myself still taking pictures the way I have loved doing for the last 40 or so.
I am inspired simply by a love of taking pictures. I always have been and always will be.
