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Making a Mark. Here with my first SLR, a Pentax Spotmatic II “borrowed” from my parents and the original camera they used to document the family growing up. I still use it today.
Twenty years. Two decades. One score. A significant number.
This year – 2020 – marks a few milestones for me:
20 years since I graduated from the Photojournalism program at SAIT.
20 years living in Vancouver, BC after moving from my hometown, Calgary.
20 years since I started my professional career as a photographer.
20 years in business for myself.
20 years ago I met and became close with many of my current best friends.
Looking even further back, I realized it has been about twice that period of time since I got my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic X-15. Yes, I was wee. Figuring some of my earliest snapshots were of my just-born brother Kevin, I can confidently say I’m right around:
40 years as a photography enthusiast.
A very rough estimate counts 10,000 slides and negatives from years shooting 35mm. Digital dominates after 2005, with at least 300,000 frames captured. This includes huge batches of editorial, commercial and event work plus archives from traveling 15 countries. Not to mention the hours of video clips, hundreds of film scans and camera op gigs along the way. I may be underestimating. Whew!
So. This feels significant.
After a tumultuous 2019 and to start the decade with intention, I wanted to honour some of these milestones in my life and pay tribute to the time passed growing, learning, exploring, playing and, above all, shooting pictures.
I made a mark. I took the focal plane symbol from my camera body and found a ‘stick & poke’ tattoo artist to mark my trigger finger. The symbol represents the physical spot inside the camera where the image is made and that finger connects eye, mind and shutter. It was a meaningful start to the year and a permanent reminder of what I do and where I came from. One of the threads weaving my life together from childhood through adolescence to the, ahem, mature man I am now.
Twenty Twenty. Here’s to a few score more.
Capturing a wedge of light in the studio Nov, 2019. Thanks for your support!
Meeting Fires Creative 
Congratulations Dave, proud of you and the great work you do and love the tattoo. By the way you can keep the camera.
Ah, thanks Dad. That means a lot! Just ran a roll through the ol’ Pentax, it’s in good hands :)
Amazing work Dave. You’ve accomplished so much over these last 20 years, I love the way you’ve summed it up here. And the tattoo is perfect. Here’s to the next 20! xo
Thanks so much Crystal! Here’s to many more – cheers!