Somewhere around the time that I started this blog I heard this hip hop poet say “Anything that is not growing is dead.”

The other day Emily and I walked through the streets alongside her house looking for my new home. We talked about the necessity of change and how much of it we have experienced throughout the years. Some of it painful but all of it positive in the end. It was a gentle remembrance that we cannot predict the changes that we need or even will want — and this is a good thing. Recently I gave up the apartment that was my home in favour of an unknown place. Through a bout of homesickness I realized that my almost insane love of Toronto and my old apartment on Dupont is really a love for the people that I have found here and continue to live alongside with. This is cause for celebration and not only fuel for my upcoming project The Loved Ones, but also a newfound appreciation for My Hometown, Your Hometown, Little City, the Royal Family, and all the other projects born out of this love.

I have thousands of photos I want to share with you. Adventures unseen, unprocessed, unshot. On with 2012.

(The photos above: Emily in the snow on an adventure her and Robert took me on when I was sick last year. And the second is an outtake from this shoot.)

I had an incredible amount of fun working on this project and am grateful for the opportunity to work with such a rad team.

Yesterday was a good day.

Have you ever woke up one morning and completely felt disconnected from your past work? It happens to me sometimes. I don’t recognize the feelings behind the images I’ve created. I can’t connect to whatever I was trying to evoke. It is as if I am looking at the work of someone I don’t know. This morning person never took photos, and won’t in the future. I sometimes wonder if that is the cost of growth, life experience and maturity. Then something curious happens — it all comes flooding back; the hurt, the love, the suspense, the grace, all the extravagantly rich feelings that previously seemed like a lost coin. The medium of photography becomes new.

Source books are a great way to work through the creative muddle. I look back at these pages from 2007 books and I’m intrigued by how much they meant to me. The crisp process of mixing and matching thoughts and ideas was much more appealing than the finished product. My friend was telling me about some ideas that were keeping her up at night — it seemed so clear to me that she needed an outlet. And then it occurred to me that I should follow my own advice. So this is where I will be, away from the computer and getting my fingers sticky with glue.

From my December 2010 trip.

And I don’t just mean “world peace”. I mean peaceful hearts, friendships, families, neighbourhoods, cities, and countries.

Yesterday I took a taxi, a ferry, a plane, a car, another plane, and then a truck all so this could be the first thing I saw this morning. After twenty-two hours on only four hours of sleep I can safely say it was worth it. Shooting in Gatineau Park (Quebec) yesterday was a thrill and I am even more thrilled to be shooting oceanside here in Nova Scotia today.

From a recent photo shoot with Dar. You can read about it over on Little City.

Does anyone else love how babies point at everything? Well, I’m not a baby but I do want to point out this ultra cute family. Little Liam was seeking imaginary “chu-chu frains” all Saturday morning as I was photographing him and his parents.

What a busy month it has been. I’m gearing up (literally) for six shoots in the next two weeks. In a week and a half I’ll be travelling to Ottawa and Halifax and then taking a little rest in Charlottetown and Cape Breton before  making my way home the first week of September. I’m terribly excited about what I’ll be shooting out east. I can barely wait.