Hi everyone this is a series I would like to add to my blog, to update once every month. This is meant to be a summary of what I’m doing in Newfoundland and what I think of it all.
Taken on the road to Corner Brook
I’ve been living in Corner Brook NL for two months now. I came here in order to spend more time with family and to start a new project documenting the city and province that I visited when I was younger. Newfoundland is a place which holds a lot of great memories because me and my family came here a lot when I was younger. Almost every year for summer vacation we came here and spent time with my grandparents going to my great aunt and uncle’s cabin, going on boat rides in the lakes, and going for hikes up the beautiful Newfoundland mountains.
Corner Brook NL
I’m still waiting for spring to roll around to go hiking and boating in the lakes, but until that time comes I can always take photographs of the city in the midst of winter. This might sound weird but I’ve really learned to love the winter, there’s nothing prettier than fresh snow in the morning when there hasn’t been a single car on the road and the streets are white and pristine. I often think to myself there are people in the world who have never seen snow before, and have never experienced seeing the whole world around them covered in frozen water.
these are “snow squalls” when there’s so much wind the snow blows around and reduces visibility
I also enjoy photographing the city when it hasn’t snowed in a few days and the snow gets brown from dust and dirt. This way everything looks more gritty, and less like a tourist-y picture perfect snapshot. Photography is all about finding beauty in everything, if you don’t try to find beauty in the imperfections then you’ll always be searching for some ideal scene to photograph. But the truth is there are no ideal places to photograph, only photographers who have realised the beauty in where they are.
Lark harbour
Last month I made a trip out to Lark harbour, a very small community that’s basically just a few roads, There isn’t much there besides a fishery, and a corner store, lots of residents around the area go there in order to go fishing. There’s something pleasant about really small communities. It feels a bit odd to put it in words but there’s something about the lack of stuff going on and businesses everywhere that it feels like a little retreat from city life. A small garden of eden in a world increasingly focused on economic expansion and building bigger buildings. Because of its small size there isn’t much to photograph, but in a sense that is something to capture in itself, the lack of things to photograph.
dories in winter
When I was in San Francisco I attended a workshop by a great photographer named Vineet Vohra and he taught us that whenever we go out taking photos we need to see the world with “fresh eyes” and to look at everything like a child discovering something for the first time. This can be excruciatingly hard to do, I often have trouble when I go out taking photos around my home to find anything that I deem “good enough” to photograph, but it may be the very act of judging whether something is “good enough” that causes the creative block in the first place. There’s always something to photograph no matter where you are in the world. But any kind of artistic creation is a numbers game, if you spend enough time working towards your goal then you’re bound to overcome any kinds of temporary blocks and start creating at your full potential again. Henri Cartier-Bresson once said that he only ever takes about one good photograph a month and he was a man who spent decades practicing his craft, and still only took one good photo a month.
Well that’s all for today, next month I hope to have some more stories to tell about other photography excursions.
-Jeremy