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I’ve recently been honoured to be on a team of photographers participating in the Black Press/Saanich News “A Day in the Life” series. A Day in the Life entails chronicling, in photographs, what happens within a community from Dusk to Dawn on a specific day. Over the past 3 months, I’ve been on the team to shoot 3 separate A Day in the Life communities on Southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The first Day in the Life was for the community of Saanich.
When I got the call asking if I’d like to participate, I jumped at the opportunity. Then the ‘freaking out’ period began – what the heck did I know about shooting a community? … for that matter, what the heck did I know about Saanich?
I’ve only lived on Vancouver Island for 3-years, and haven’t spent much time in Saanich; I knew it was a big community, it was very spread out, and that a lot of people lived ‘over there’.
So, back to square one … contacting my photo editor, Don Denton, and sheepishly asking him what exactly DITL entailed. He sent me some great links to the Black Press Photo Gallery showing past DITL for my reference, and then mentioned that they’d like to see at least 1 image for every 15 minutes of my shift. Holy Cow!!! …
I purchased a map and highlighted the boundaries of the community, then drove around to see what was out there. I mapped out a circle on the map that I’d use as a template for my route on shoot day.
Shoot day - June 21, 2011. Anyone that knows me knows that I like to sleep in [partially because I’m usually still up in the wee hours of the morning]. But on this day, I was up and ready to start at 6:30am … and my shift didn’t start until 8:00am. So I drove out to the first location circled on my map, and waited….
Part of the interesting thing [and sometimes the lump in the throat thing] about being a photojournalist is that you often need to approach complete strangers and ask them if you can take their picture for publication. It was a big day for that!! So while waiting for 8am to arrive, I got out of my car and approached a couple people .. and they were enthusiastic about it and let me photograph them!! A great start to the day.
The rest of day went fairly smoothly, although it was a crazy hot [I believe I went through 12 bottles of water!!] fast paced exhilarating day of meeting fantastic people in the community of Saanich. At the end of the day, I submitted 46 edited images, 17 of which were printed in the A Day in The Life Saanich publication, which you can see in it’s totality here.
Thanks Black Press for letting me be part of this!!
Some of my published images:
And here’s a few more, some which made the publication, some which didn’t. I had a great time meeting the retail clerk, the friends, the mom, the kids, the framer, the seamstresses, the trainer, cobbler, the nice lady reading in the sun, the man donating books, well…. everyone who kindly let me take their picture. What a great, diverse place Saanich is!!
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