The announcement I was hoping to post last week, but I had to wait to get the event poster. My photo "Flotsam" (below) will be part of this show at the Nanaimo Museum in March! If you're able, you should go have a look! Everyone in the Harbour City Photography Club is extremely talented so it'll be a great show of prints.

I have to admit, "Flotsam" is still one of my favourite photographs. I'm so pleased with how the print turned out, too (with much thanks to Gloria at Canvas Plus in Ladysmith - the metallic paper really made the picture pop).

I'm very happy to have a chance to display this print again. And I hope lots of you will go see the exhibit while it's on!

Photography, like a lot of other creative pursuits, can be lonely. We're out there with our cameras, or in a studio with our cameras, or sometimes with other people and our cameras, but at the end of the day...we're with our cameras. And that's fine, great even! But I find that, well, it's difficult to grow if you're alone with no outside feedback, with no way to gain additional knowledge other than trial and error and internet tutorials.

In the summer of 2016, I felt stuck with my work. I felt like I had plateaued and I couldn't quite find my way forward on my own.

So when I moved to Nanaimo, one of the first things I did was sign up with the local photography club - Harbour City Photography Club, or HCPC. In hindsight, this decision was one of the best I have ever made when it comes to pursuing any of my creative endeavors. Not only did it connect me with the larger group of photographers in Nanaimo, but it also led me to joining a small Special Interest Group (SiG) about evaluating photographs.

This group has made a world of difference in the quality of my work. I see differently after 1.5 years in this group. I learned more about Lightroom in the first 6 months in that group than I had known in the years before joining. I found a place to share personal projects that need an audience, but a small, safe audience. A place where there is gentleness alongside feedback. We meet twice a month and those evenings are some of my favourites. I'm always excited to go and share what I've been working on, but as time progressed I became more excited to see what everyone else was doing with their time. I've watched the other members grow alongside me. It's been a truly special experience.

Other benefits of joining HCPC: being part of my first ever print show in 2017 (I had three images in the HCPC Photo Salon), going on photo outings organized by the club (means I can explore new places without always wandering around the woods alone), being exposed to different approaches, participating in learning seminars, getting to socialize. The list goes on and on. In fact, I haven't found a negative yet.

In part, I think my positive experience stems from the people that make up this club. Everyone is generous with their time and knowledge. Everyone is kind. And everyone loves photography.

If you're feeling stuck - why not see if your town has a club? Your mileage will vary based on the quality of the local organization, but it can't hurt to check it out. Most clubs will allow you to attend a couple of meetings for a small donation, so you don't have to sign up right away.

Since moving to Nanaimo in the summer of 2016 I've done a decent bit of exploring - not as much as I might have liked, but enough to get a feel for a few nice spots.

One of these is Neck Point Park.

The park offers the best of most worlds: ocean views, forest trails, rocky beaches, an area with fairy doors decorating the trees, wildlife sightings, and a variety of flowers in spring and mushrooms in fall. It's really an outdoor photographer's dream.

I'm not sure which aspect I love most. Maybe the best part about Neck Point is the sheer variety and the fact that every time I go, I find something new that surprises me. Like a deer walking through a field of daisies, or a pod of whales moving past, or sea lions hanging out in the shallows. I've slowly learned to stop taking pictures when I see wildlife there - I'm very much not a wildlife photographer and it's so much nicer to just watch the animals go past.

And anyway, even without taking pictures of all the critters, there is plenty of gorgeous scenery for me to photograph. After going so often, it's one of the most relaxing places for me to shoot. I know that a lot of the shots I take are the same ones that I took previously, which allows me to focus on trying new approaches, or on perfecting techniques. When I go to Neck Point now, I shoot for the catharsis that I find in photography. I shoot to hone my skills without any sort of pressure about getting the shot in a location I won't be able to revisit, which hopefully means that by the time I end up in a situation like that again, I'll be up for the task.

Despite going there at least once a month, it still surprises me, too. Recently, I went and there was snow on the beach.

​And a couple of weeks later I went in the middle of a storm. I got buffeted by wind and a torrential downpour and I watched the waves crash into the rocks. I felt cleansed in that moment.

Neck Point is definitely one of Nanaimo's gems and a place I look forward to exploring and enjoying for as long as I live here.

Shortly after moving to Nanaimo, I stumbled across some old, abandoned cars in Cottle Lake Park (part of Linley Valley). I still haven't found out why the cars are there, but they fascinate me. I think that there are 4 wrecks, though there are so many smashed up bits that I won't say so with certainty. Axles are strewn around along with the remnants of steel cables (maybe from an attempt to recover the vehicles from the bottom of the steep incline they might have fallen down?), and some nuts and bolts. There's a good bit of rusty metal. But what really intrigues me about the scene are the plants growing through the old wrecks. Nature is reclaiming these trespassers a little bit more each year.

I knew almost immediately that I wanted to do some sort of photo shoot at this location with these old cars. I thought about it for about a year before I settled on the idea that I started to explore with Julie from North Pacific Cosplay. The concept is fairly simple: the ghost of a woman stuck in that spot where the cars wrecked. I had it in my head that I wanted it to have a 1920s flapper vibe (probably because I recently read Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler.) I'm pretty sure the cars date from later than the 20s, but since they're so decayed I don't think it matters too much.

As befits a "ghostly" shoot, we went out on Halloween and spent an hour or so playing around with different poses and compositions. Getting to combine two of my favourite photographic subjects (people and nature) for the first time in a few years felt really great. It was a lot of fun and I'm so pleased with the work we did.

Many thanks to Julie for heading out into the woods with me. To see the full gallery of images from this shoot click here.

​Thanks for reading!

Once upon a time, there was a blog on this website, a blog that was almost never updated after the first couple of months. Writing into the void just seemed like too much effort, but things have changed. I want to write down some things just for me - so I can go back and remember a little bit better. And I should probably start keeping a personal journal again. I've let myself sink and sink and sink into a deep, dark, metaphorical hole. It's time now to start climbing back up.

Don't worry, this blog won't be about any of that, not directly anyway.

I want to write about projects, current, past and future. I want to write about goals. I want to write about dreams. I want to write about the beautiful places I have visited, am visiting, will visit. I want to be positive and hopeful, because there is too much negativity and too much despair in the world.

Those are my intentions. I know that at times I will fail. I know that I will fall down, that I will fall silent, but the important thing is that I know that I will get back up again, and I will start writing again.

And if walls of text aren't your thing, you can always find my photo-a-day blog on Tumblr or visit my Facebook page.