How We Arrive At My Photography Portfolio & Blog Site

You know that person in your family, that never wanted to be in the picture, and always wanted to take the pictures? Ya.. That was me. And here I am all these decades later with my John Fraser photography portfolio, and blog site.

In my family, we had a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. It’s still in the family, in that chest my mother uses to harbour all our mementos. For a flash, you'd buy these blue bulbs. As you took the picture, there would be a loud pop, some sizzle, and then the smoke with a smell. If you've never seen one, they looked like this.

I can remember like it was yesterday when I came home from Boy-Cubs and told my mother I wanted to earn my “Photography Badge.” I was seven yrs old when I won that badge. I wish I still had that picture. It was a shot I took of a friend of mine, standing in front of our house.The dawn of my life-long passion for photography.

During my mid-teens, I acquired a Minolta SR-T 101. What a camera that was. Built like a tank. Manual focus, manual film advance, and manual shutter and aperture settings. I went everywhere with that camera. Unfortunately, a series of events during my early 20’s resulted in me losing the camera, and all my old negs.

I completed a certificate course from the New York School of Photography in late 70’s. Was able to create a professional photography portfolio. I was surviving on little shoots for a period. However, life has a way of telling you.. “you need something more stable.“ I switched careers but returned to photography full-time, about 12 yrs later. Ahhhh a starving artist once again.

By his time there was a distant murmur of this new thing called a “filmless camera.“ Crazy we all thought. How??? We all wondered. The world was about to change forever. At the time I was working in early days of Digital Imaging. This allowed my a sound understanding of digital files. I spent the better part of the next 15 years, working full-time as an Event Photographer in the entertainment industry in Toronto. Tenures on staff with The Toronto Film Festival, Hot Docs, The Jewish Film Festival, The Downtown Jazz Festival, Staff for numerous Street Festival, and freelance for many City of Toronto events, trade shows, symposiums, conventions, etc. All shot on film, as the world around me, was rapidly going digital.
 
 

Of all the photographers I know, I was one of the last to get into digital cameras. I knew better, when they were $8,000.00, for a 3mp sensor. I jumped in during the mid-2000’s, and haven’t looked back.

Today, I service a few clients from my old customer base. I’m no longer pursuing new photography clients. However, I do take on new clients if they come from one of my long time clients. Now, photography is back to my days of shooting, just to shoot. I’ll share those excursions with you here. Please enjoy my blog.


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