2022 Year in review

Barbados in April

2022 was one heck of a year. I travelled to five new countries and in between daily news assignments, was lucky to go up north to remote communities in Manitoba twice for The Winnipeg Free Press. I read 25 books and they were mostly enjoyable. I also moved into a new apartment and worked on (and published) a few photo projects I’m proud of. I was fortunate to be given a handful of fantastic opportunities but I also made a lot happen for myself. I advocated for myself more this year and it worked.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okmakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee (second from right) and then Assembly of Manitoba Grand Chief Arlen Dumas (second from left) leave Cross Lake First Nation with their team. A house fire had taken the lives of three young children the night before and the chiefs were in the community to give their condolences.

In February, I was assigned to fly up north to Cross Lake First Nation, 520 km north of Winnipeg. It was one of the most difficult stories I would photograph for the year. A house fire had taken the lives of three young children and I was sent to document the aftermath. I don’t like that part of my job involves photographing human suffering but I am grateful for the trust I was given by the communities who welcomed me into their lives this year. I am honoured to have been able to witness so many important moments and given opportunities to try to convey the story or moment into photos.

The mother and father of the three children who passed away from a house fire in Cross Lake grieve during a ceremony to remember their children while the grandmother comforts them.

Manitoba Keewatinowi Okmakanak Grand Chief Garrison Settee (left) is photographed on the plane ride back from an emotionally exhausting day at Cross Lake First Nation, where the Chief is from. Three children perished in a house fire in the community.

Jennifer Hansen is photographed isolating at her home. She tested positive for COVID-19 after two years of avoiding it.

Mom Olena Hrushytska tears up at her son Sasha’s first day of school. The family arrived in Winnipeg in April after escaping the war in Ukraine. They’ve been busy rebuilding their lives. Hrushytska started two part-time jobs and Sasha started attending a local Ukrainian school.

Makaylah Gerard-Roussin’s family and family embrace during a day-long vigil at the ATV trail where the 20 year old’s body was found.

Residential school survivor Charlie Bittern poses for a photo in front of an archival image of a residential school class. In 1967, when he was 19, Bittern was forced by the principal of his school to run 80 km in a blizzard from Portage La Prairie to Brandon. “My lungs were burning, and my legs were going numb,” he says. Bittern has scars on his right calf, as a result of a station wagon driving into him when he dodged snow drifts.

Visual artist Bistyek poses for a photo in front of a wall of posters advertising his new show F—- War. As a child, he lived in Afrin, a Kurdish village in northern Syria, until war brought him to Winnipeg.

In the summer, I went on several road trips - to Mount Rushmore, North Dakota, Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming; then to Saskatoon, Regina and Moose Jaw. Some places were new to me and were on the bucket list, but others were nostalgic trips. I found myself thinking about the person I was the last time I was there and how much had changed.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly poses for a photo at the Human Rights Museum.

Max Kerman of The Arkells is photographed during a concert in Winnipeg.

Married couple Nancy Delgado and Yair Vanegas take part in Salsa Sundays in Winnipeg during the summer.

On a longer break, I travelled to Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. I had been wanting to do this trip since before the pandemic and drove from Tirana along the coast until I reached Himare, making photographs along the way. I hadn’t travelled as much as I used to in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic and now that travel is possible again, I am making up for lost time.

Highway 73 in South Dakota

Tourists gaze up at Mount Rushmore.

Back in Winnipeg, I enjoyed the warm summer and quickly got back into the hum of newspaper life. Soon, I would begin two long-term projects I had pitched earlier in the year.

A road trip through Barbados in April.

A sunbather enjoys the waves at a beach off the Ionian Coast in Himare, Albania.

A rest stop in the Ceraunian Mountains, Albania.

In the fall, I flew to Pukatawagan to document a fly-in dentist who had been serving the community for the last 14 years. The area had unfortunately experienced a wildfire over the summer which led to their power lines being damaged. They were operating off of generators and as a result, frequent loss of electricity was a common occurrence. It was a challenge for me to document that story because of the elements I was working in, the long hours I spent photographing and also because I was a guest of a community that historically has been portrayed negatively in mainstream media, if they receive any coverage at all. I did not want to give them a reason to distrust future journalists.

Ruby feels her jaw after an intense round of tooth extraction in Pukatawagan, Manitoba, where I photographed dentist Wally Mah (left) on the job.

On assignment in Pukatawagan, Manitoba

I am incredibly grateful for all of the fun and interesting assignments that I’ve had this year and thankful to everyone I’ve photographed who has graciously brought their energy and given their time to me during our sessions.

A boy in Pukatawagan, Manitoba

Now that we’re at the end of the year, I find myself reflecting on the kind of work I want to be spending time on in the new year. I’m also thinking about the places I want to explore. I travelled to my 71st (UN recognized) country this year and while I realize I have come far, I also know there are many places I have yet to travel to, and many I would like to go back to.

Kotor, Montenegro

Congrats to everyone who made it to the end of this year and thank you for joining me on this journey whether you are a colleague, editor or someone I’ve photographed. These past few pandemic years have not been easy. Hopefully in a few years’ time, we can look back and maybe smile at it all because we survived. See you in 2023!

Swimming with sharks somewhere off of Nassau, Bahamas

In J-Source: How Instagram court ruling hurts photographers and content creators

Many photographers — including myself— have had their work infringed upon and republished without permission or attribution. Often, a photograph is shared by someone who unknowingly infringes on the work. It’s a matter of patiently educating them on basic copyrights without burning a bridge. These are difficult conversations to have, especially when so much of our work as freelancers depends on word of mouth and being “likeable.” Though it is obvious that everyone has bills to pay, it is not immediately obvious to the general public how photographers make their money. And while the common counter-argument is that artists can receive “exposure” by having their work featured somewhere, every artist will tell you they cannot pay their bills through exposure.

In April, a New York court ruled that by publishing to Instagram, a photographer gave up her exclusive licensing rights to her photo. The photographer in this case, Stephanie Sinclair, has had work appear in publications such as New York Times Magazine and National Geographic. 

Mashable — the website that published Sinclair’s photograph without her consent — had originally offered her US$50 to license her photograph of a mother and a child in Guatemala on its website in 2016, which she declined. A fee like this is well below industry standard. Licensing at Getty Images, for example, starts at $150 per image or US$211 for Offset, a subsidiary of Shutterstock. However, most of the images in these catalogues are royalty-free and not usually from a body of work that is the pinnacle of the photographers’ careers. For an artist’s best work, an editorial site like Mashable, with an average of 17 million page views per month, the suggested rate is $600-$1,340 according to Getty’s image licensing calculator. 

Like many in the creative fields, photographers rely in part on licensing fees to support their livelihoods. In recent years, with declining editorial budgets for assignments and the steady elimination of staff positions in publications and wires, editorial photographers such as Sinclair have had to pivot and find supplementary income streams elsewhere. This could include leading workshops, leading photo tours, creating corporate and commercial work, licensing stock photography, selling prints and selling editing presets. For many photographers, incomes will be affected without licensing as a revenue stream. And if photographers are unable to support themselves from their work, how can they continue to create work that both informs and entertains, and inspires and educates?

Though it has been common (but problematic) for photos to be reposted online without proper attribution or compensation for many years now, this ruling sets a dangerous precedent for photographers worldwide who rely on selling their work to sustain themselves. The ruling establishes that all content posted on the popular social media site can theoretically be republished by embedding onto another site without compensation to the original creator. 

A number of professional photography associations such as the National Press Photographers Association (U.S.), Professional Photographers of America, American Society of Media Photographers, North American Nature Photography Association and American Photographic Artists have lobbied Instagram to change its rules.  It has also prompted photographers to change their account settings to private. 

Jointly, the NPPA, ASMP, PPA, APA, NANPA and the Graphic Artists Guild have released a statement and are encouraging photographers to change their settings to private and update their Instagram bios, explaining why they have changed their settings to private .

“We recommend that you include a brief statement to your ‘bio’ that explains why. Your bio is limited to 150 characters, but our recommended language below is only 85 characters: Account is private to block embedding of my images. Click ‘follow’ to request access,” it reads.

They have also created a downloadable “square”that photographers can use to explain why the settings are private.

Despite Sinclair declining Mashable’s offer, the website still went ahead and published her photo by embedding the photograph through Instagram. The photograph appeared in an article about female photographers who use their work to raise awareness on social issues.

In a perfect world, unless the licence is bought outright, artists should be able to take control of their work, including where it is published and at a fee that is acceptable to the artist.

In Canada, copyright is automatic upon the creation of a work. However, since the court ruling centred on Instagram’s Terms of Use, which grants “a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide licence to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content,” by continuing to publish on Instagram, photographers worldwide are affected by this court ruling that occurred in New York. Since being created in 2010, Instagram now has a near monopoly in social media on the photography world. To stay relevant in the photo industry means to publish work continually through its platform to show potential clients your work.

Recently, after The New York Times posted a popular photo essay showing the world under quarantine, a tweet with the caption, “The New York Times just released stunning photos of the quarantined world. They’re too beautiful to remain behind a paywall. Enjoy ” went viral. The post then continued into a thread that had screen captures of all of the photos that were featured in the original article. The original poster took the tweet down eventually, but not without members of the media shaming him online about posting the content and disregarding why the paywall was established in the first place – to pay its contributors.

Art devaluation is not limited to online; sometimes it hits closer to home.

A month ago, a friend of mine bought an apartment. She wanted to decorate her bare walls with art but didn’t want to purchase the high-resolution files off of the artist’s site that she would have to print herself. She wanted to print the web quality jpeg off of the website and asked me for advice knowing that I am a photographer. I told her that it was worth the expense to buy the files because the high-quality prints would be much nicer to look at on her wall than grainy printouts and that she would appreciate the beautiful art and her investment in the art in time.

As photographers, we cannot stop people from infringing our copyrights by printing our images. With the recent Instagram ruling, it is now unfortunately more difficult to take control of where our images appear and more difficult to ensure we are compensated fairly as working professionals who produce work that provides value to others. Photographers are now faced with a catch-22 situation, where setting their Instagram pages to private means fewer opportunities for potential clients to see their work, but remaining on public mode means no control of where the work appears and a possible infringement. We are asking Instagram to help by creating a feature that allows a public profile but disables embedding.  Without pressure, Instagram will not change, because it has nothing to gain. Consent is just as valid and important when it comes to sharing work online. Instead of making it easy for publications and individuals to disregard consent and share work by embedding, we need to make it normal across the board to respect artists by paying them for their work and supporting them.

Originally in J-Source

2019 Year in Review

Swimming in Flores, Guatamala on New Year’s Eve

2019 was an up and down year. I spent 121 days of the year travelling (33% of the year), and went to 11 new countries. But sometime in February, one of the worst things that could happen to a photographer happened to me. 

I started 2019 in the most unlikely of places in the world - Flores, Guatemala, a small lake-side town of about 14,000 people. I had met a German traveller on the bus from Belize who was staying in Flores that night. With a group of others, we went into the old town of Flores City that consisted of bars and small restaurants and watched the fireworks and lit a few ourselves. It was wild. Merchants sold their own homemade firecrackers to anyone. In the square where we all settled in at the end of the night, many were lighting long epic chains of firecrackers and fireworks to the cheers of the watching crowd. The atmosphere was loud and exuberant. At one point, I thought I would go deaf. What a way to bring in the new year.

2019 was my first full year doing pure freelance and of course in a cruel twist of fate, in the second month of what was going to be my year of photography, my camera, laptop and lenses all were stolen out of my car. It’s just like life to do that. But it’s also just like life to give you some cool surprises too mid-year while you are licking your wounds - but more on that later.

After getting back to Toronto from Latin America, it was time to get to work. I photographed a few projects I really enjoyed and was fortunate enough to be able to develop my skills as a photographer through varied news assignments.

Shortly after the theft that nearly ruined me, I covered a rally against the cut of safe injection sites around Toronto. Some of the people I photographed were mothers who had lost their children to overdose. Their child had passed away two years ago and I understood their grief much more acutely than I might have before. I wondered how long I would grieve about my own loss.

A mother mourns her son at a Overdose Prevention Rally in Toronto, 2019. Shot for The Globe and Mail.

It was a cold winter for me grieving the loss of the gear I had saved up for and worked for since the beginning of this decade that was stolen in one night. My beliefs about humanity and my country were altered that night too. I realized Canada was not the safe haven I always thought it was. While I had known there was suffering here, I had not known it was so deep that it would compel some to take away from others and cause more suffering. It was a difficult time.

But with Spring came along photo projects I really enjoyed and assignments I loved doing and thrived at. I am grateful to have worked with new editors, new clients and also to have met new photographer friends.

I photographed the Canadian Barista Championships in Toronto for The Globe and Mail and it was one of my favourite projects this year. I go to so many coffee shops and love coffee but rarely talk to the baristas, though I should more often.

After a few photo projects under my belt earlier in the year, soon enough, it was time for me to chase after personal goals by going to India.

The Taj Mahal moments after sunrise is already crowded with tourists

I had placed India on my “To-Do” bucket list in 2012 after seeing a friend’s photo of their visit to the Taj Mahal. I also wanted to see this majestic building, one of the seven wonders of the world for myself. For years, I had waited for the perfect opportunity to go with friends or a partner, but every time I wanted to go, my travel companions who also wanted to go India would either have no money, not enough vacation time or our schedules wouldn’t agree.

Jaipur at sunset

I decided in the end to make the journey solo because I had waited long enough for everything to ‘fall into place’ and it did the opposite. Patience might be a virtue but so is taking action for what you want to do in your life.

I was rewarded with many beautiful scenes, delicious Indian food and a first-hand, unfiltered experience of India. I spent my days exploring many cities, lounging on Goan beaches and taking long, beautiful motorcycle trips alone. It also felt fantastic to finally check something off my bucket list. And in a surprise bonus, I had the fortune to meet a travel partner I would take many trips later in the year with. Thank you, India!

I capped off India by going to Sri Lanka, then Georgia and Ukraine on the way home. It was bliss after my harsh early start to the year.

Elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka

My road trip through Georgia was momentarily halted by sheep traffic, but who cares?

The top of Tbilisi, Georgia, one of my favourite destinations this year.

After a month of exploring India, Sri Lanka, Georgia and Ukraine, it was time to go back to Toronto. It was now summer which meant sailing season, barbecues and road trips. I started shooting film for fun.

Holga film photograph taken in Northern Ontario

Cabin days just outside of Ottawa. Some of my favourite days this year were spent on the road.

In the Fall, I applied and was accepted into the Missouri Photo Workshop - an absolute game changer in terms of improving my documentary photography. Through the process of getting there, I also got to see parts of America I had never seen before through a week-long road trip. 

Farm life in Missouri

In Missouri, I documented a veterinarian/farmer and was lucky enough to meet/work with experienced editors and other photographers. As someone who never studied photography formally, this workshop taught me the basic process and also really helped ease my debilitating serious attitude I have for my work. I chose the most straight-forward story I possibly could (no drama) that I was unfamiliar with and aimed to get the visuals technically right. There’s always more time later on in a career to delve into hard-hitting topics or emotionally complicated narratives.

Rigi, Switzerland

Then it was time for a long-awaited trip to Switzerland, Italy, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Slovenia and the Baltics. The Baltics had been on my list for the longest time and I had tried to go earlier in 2017, then in 2018 but conditions were never favourable enough (read: it was rain season). Highlights of my European trip included travelling by train through mountainous regions, tasting cheeses and chocolates; and a road trip through Italy and Slovenia. The last time I was in Switzerland, I only went for three days and slept on a couch because that was all I could afford as a new graduate. This time, I spent a full month and also travelled around to surrounding areas. I am grateful for the last decade which gave me opportunities that allowed for professional development, to pay off my student loans and also to see the world and capture it all.

Seeing the Gruyere region in Switzerland

Freddie Mercury statue in Montreux, Switzerland

San Marino, a country beside Italy

Having travelled the Baltics this year, I have now been lucky enough to see 80% of the countries of Europe. I have a better understanding of the continent and a greater appreciation of the varied history and cultures. I am hoping the experiences make me a more understanding and empathic photographer as well.

Santa Teresa, Costa Rica

I capped off 2019 by artificially extending summer and going surfing in Costa Rica. Costa Rica gave me an opportunity to rest and rejuvenate for 2020 and the next decade. I plan to keep travelling to places I’ve always wanted to go to (this world is huge!) and hopefully work on more exciting photo projects. I am so grateful for everything I’ve learned this year, all the places I’ve travelled to and the people I’ve been fortunate to have met through photography. This journey has not been easy, especially this past year, but I’ve learned a lot and I’ve lived a lot. I am hoping the next decade will bring more exciting adventures, beautiful memories and kind-hearted souls into my life. Will you join me?

Lake Ontario earlier this summer