Rocking to the (rural) Alberta advantage

So my pitch in Toronto at the start of the month when I was off strutting my stuff was in essence, ” Hire me – I’m not from round here…”. God knows TO, as well as being the centre of the known Canadian Universe, is stuffed full of obscenely talented photographers. In fact I was lucky enough to come home with a Chris Gordaneer print from Heather Morton’s party that I’ve been in love with since I saw it in Applied Arts a couple of years ago.
But back to me – I have a skill or two (I’m sure!) and want to get the message out that when it comes to image creation out in this part of the world (The Centre of the Canadian Financial, Mountain and Winter Olympian Universe) it’s best to go local. So I was pretty happy that my portfolio review at Canadian Business turned into “oh, can we put that picture on the cover of next week’s issue?”. “Oh, go on then…” I haggled.

Having spent the first ten years of my working life as a petroleum engineer, it’s pretty fun to bring my creative eye to the oil patch. Fort McMurray is a whole other kind of planet and Canadians need to know a pile more about what’s going on up there – both good and bad. There’s an utterly alien beauty to the landscape, too much value in the ground to pretend leaving it alone is an option and a little town with a metropolis-worth of money flowing through it. In other words, near endless photographic potential.

Not quite as current news, but just as pleasing, was getting some big exposure in the January 2012 issue of Outside Magazine. Making a living from your passion is one thing. But getting to combine them is even better – being paid to photograph backcountry skiing is about as close to nirvana as it gets. The conventional photographer’s dream involves lots of naked women and sunny beaches, which I am in no way averse to, but it’s wise to be pragmatic in one’s definition of heaven. From the contents page:

But that’s not all! The new bible of backcountry skiing in Canada is also rocking a sporty Nicholson original or two…

Seems blogs of late have come with a moral to the story. I’m certainly trying to play my game rather than getting confused worrying about everyone else’s. But some times it’s just nice to stop worrying for a moment and enjoy where you’re at…