If there’s one thing I’ve learned wandering through waterfalls, abandoned machines, northern towns, quiet lakes, Toronto back alleys, and even construction zones, it’s this: being a photographer isn’t about the gear you buy—it's about the three things you keep doing. Practise. Passion. Projects. That’s it. The whole secret sauce.
And I’ll tell you how I learned that, one photo at a time.
1. Practise — You Only Get Better by Doing the Reps
Whether I’m standing in front of a roaring northern waterfall with mist soaking my Sony, or shooting the tangled wires of Toronto’s transit lines, it all comes from one thing: showing up with a camera in my hand.
Practise is messy.
Practise is blurry shots.
Practise is deleting 200 photos so you can keep two.
I didn’t magically learn how to photograph motion, or capture the mood of an empty alleyway downtown, or expose a bright sky over a calm lake. I learned by trying. By shooting in bad weather. By shooting when the light wasn’t perfect. By shooting an old rusted tractor in the woods even though most people would just walk past it.
Every shot teaches you something—composition, patience, timing, where to stand, when to move, when to wait. Practise builds instincts, and instincts are what makes you lift the camera at the right moment.
2. Passion — The Fuel That Keeps You Walking
You can’t fake passion.
If you don’t love photography, you won’t chase it.
Passion is what makes me stop in Chapleau just to photograph the only traffic light in town hanging in the middle of the road. It’s what makes me sit quietly at a lake, waiting for the clouds to line up just right. It’s what lets me walk Toronto’s backstreets for hours shooting in black and white—just because a shadow or a doorway or a lone figure tells a story.
Passion doesn’t care if your views are low or high.
Passion doesn’t care if the photo fits a camera-club category.
Passion is the spark that makes you carry your camera even when you “just ran out for groceries.”
Some people paint, some people write—me, I document. I look for stories in the world, whether it’s a sketch artist on a park bench, or a train yard tangled like a metal spiderweb, or the calm hush of northern water.
Passion keeps me curious. It keeps me looking.
3. Projects — The Thing That Gives All This Meaning
A photographer becomes a storyteller when they have a project.
My northern Ontario road trip.
My Toronto lane way project—10+ years strong.
My everyday street stories.
My transit construction series.
My quiet-lake photos.
These aren’t random shots. They’re chapters.
Projects give you purpose. They guide your eye. They let you grow because every time you shoot, you’re building something bigger than one photograph.
Even finding that old rusted tractor in the woods—that becomes part of a larger story about forgotten machines and northern history. A project doesn’t have to be fancy. It just has to be yours. Something you return to again and again, refining it, understanding it, documenting it.
Practicing teaches you how to shoot.
Passion drives you to shoot.
Projects give you a reason to keep shooting.
Put those three things together, and you’re not just someone with a camera anymore.
You’re a photographer.
And like I always say—if you take your camera out, even on the days when the light is bad or the photo doesn’t jump out at you—you’re doing the work. That’s what counts.
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