You've earned your place in the room. Your image should say so before you walk in.

Your photo … well your photo tells the story of who you used to be. There’s a disconnect between who you are what you’re aspiring toward and that costs you in so many ways. 

And not because it's bad, necessarily. But because it's inaccurate.

What does that actually look like in terms of branding photography and fine art work?

It's complex but simple. Non-resistance looks like equanimity and equanimity is a form of power. Inner stillness is the guide. When you stop feeding a problem, when you withdraw the worry and rumination, space opens up. That's where solutions arrive.

I'd been visiting Allan Gardens Conservatory every week for 52 weeks for this project, and I'd visited before I started and have continued to visit since. Somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like a location and started feeling like a place in which I immersed myself.  It became my muse. 

Why I waited a full year to develop my film On delayed gratification, analogue process, and what uncertainty teaches you

Have you ever done this?

I took photographs for a full year and didn't look at a single one until the year was over.

No previewing, no test rolls, no reassurance. Just fifty-two weeks of going to the same place, photographing with the same film camera, and putting the rolls away in a bag when I got home.

People ask me if I was scared. I was nervous, especially at the beginning. There's a particular kind of anxiety that comes from not knowing. It wasn't a dramatic fear, it was the background noise of whether or not I exposed correctly, is the camera working, what if none of this is usable?

Toronto in January is gray. Heavy and unrelenting.

I started going to Allan Gardens in April, so by the time winter arrived I was already deep into the project. And what I discovered was that the conservatory in winter is something completely different from the conservatory in spring. It's a refuge. You walk in from the cold street and suddenly you're warm, you're surrounded by green, there are flowers. The light comes through the glass roof and softens everything.

We talk a lot about screen time, about digital detox, about being more present. But we rarely talk about what presence actually gives u. And what its absence costs us.

When I started going to Allan Gardens every week with my film camera, I wasn't thinking about any of this. I was just doing a photography project. But somewhere in those 52 weeks, something shifted.

Working with film means you can't scroll through your photos on a digital screen. There's no instant feedback loop, no urge to adjust and reshoot immediately. You make more thoughtful choices about your composition, what attracts your eye because you’ve slowed yourself down. You press the shutter and then you move on.

The ritual, the fear, and why letting go is part of creating

In 2024, I made a decision that went against everything our digital culture tells us to do. I put my digital camera down and used my analogue camera to begin anew.

Most people think branding photography is about getting “good photos.”

It’s not.

Branding photography is about building a visual toolkit that works for your business long after the shoot.

When your images are intentional, they don’t just sit on a website.

Before almost every branding session, there’s a quiet conversation happening inside my client’s head.

It sounds like:

• “I should lose five pounds first.”

• “I don’t know how to pose.”

• “What if I hate every photo?”

This week, one of my clients wrote something so honest in her newsletter that I asked if I could share it.

Because what she described? It’s universal.

Do people get bored of their photographers, shop around for a deal, or simply not know what they want?

Here’s the truth: most people jump from one photographer to another not because the photographer isn’t good enough. 

They jump because they haven’t figured out what they actually need. And if nobody helps them have the right conversation, confusion masquerades as dissatisfaction.

A year in a garden conservatory showed me how it could hold worlds we would otherwise rush past.

In the Hours of Light, my current project, grew out of this exploration. I spent a year at Allan Gardens with a film camera, rekindling my personal awareness and artistic vision — a continuation of the approach behind my earlier work, Nature’s Idyllic Call.