All Over The Place

When I started taking pictures, as a kid, with my Kodak Trimlite 18 Pocket Instamatic 110 camera, I took photos of everything.

Of my friends. Of my sisters. Of our house. Of school trips. Of the buildings in downtown Ottawa. Of so much more.

When I graduated to a 35mm SLR—albeit, my father's—I was one of the photographers for my high-school yearbook club. I took portraits of students and faculty. I took candid shots of people goofing off or chatting with friends, not knowing I was peeking around the corner.

In college, studying journalism, I learned how to photograph more. Still life. Stories unravelling. I had my own camera, newer than the 1960s SLR that my father let me borrow, and I could do more with it.

In the years that followed, I experimented more. I liked long exposures and night photography. I could work comfortably in colour and in black and white. I would try zooming a lens whilst exposing the subject. I would perform double exposures by pressing the rewind button whilst cranking the advance arm forward, and then recomposing my shot.

In the age of digital photography, I've done even more, usually in editing, after the photo was taken. And in the past couple of years, I've incorporated some AI tweaking into the finishing touches.

I don't have a style when it comes to photography. I don't prefer landscape over studio shots, portraits over architecture. I don't have to necessarily tell a story with every composition in the frame: I just have to capture the moment or moments that inspire me to raise the camera to my face.

Yes, sometimes my photos tell a story. My best example is of a woman, in New York City, walking on the platform at the 23rd Street subway station, her eyes on her smartphone, seeing oblivious to her surroundings—not that she had to be aware of anything, as she was the only one on that platform.

But I also take photos that tell no story at all. I take the shot just because I like what I'm seeing. Like this landscape shot in the Peruvian Andes.

My photography is all over the place. And yet, I don't think that I'll ever do anything to change that. I don't need a label attached to my photography.

But I hope that when people think of me and photography, they say something like, "Oh yeah, Ross. He was a pretty good photographer."

It's getting to the end of the year and the time where I share what I feel are the best photos that I took through the year. I'll also be making a YouTube video where I share the same photos and give a similar commentary.

But as I review the photos that I've taken, I see that I don't have a lot from which I can choose. I went on a couple of vacations and I attended three model meetups (and the meetups had similar themes, but with different models).

And not much else.

Ninety percent of my favourite photos from this year cover these events. I'm usually a lot more diverse in my photography but I really didn't get out much in 2025.

I need to start experimenting again. I need to get out more often and take my cameras with me. I have enough of them, after all.

I have ideas for 2026. But those ideas don't mean a thing unless I execute them.

And hopefully, I'll be all over the place again.