Joe
“Can I take your picture while you read? Just pretend I’m not here.”
“A lot of [my photography] started as a hobby more than anything, and I learned a little bit about it in school. I went to Conestoga College for graphic design and in first year. We had to still use the dark room back then! At the time I wasn’t really into the photography and did what I had to do to pass … and now I look back and wish I would’ve got a little more into the dark room, because I can appreciate the process behind it a lot more now. After I graduated, photography started to slowly evolve into a much more serious hobby, and now that I get paid for some of the work it kind of worked out. It’s an expensive hobby, I will say, but I can’t imagine not having it.”
“Last summer, KPL hired me to shoot all of the branches which was actually really cool because I wanted to be able to shoot, especially [Central] the interior. They were doing their strategic plan that they just recently released so they needed photos of all the branches and asked me to help out with that, which was awesome. I had to actually go around and bug people here that were reading and say “Can I take your picture while you read? Just pretend I’m not here.” I shoot architecture most of the time, so it was actually really fun that I could be in here with my tripod and not get in trouble for it. That was a lot of fun. A lot of good reception to the photos which was great. And it was kind of neat that I got to do something, a big project like that.
“I remember always getting drawing books here. There was a series called - it was like ‘Draw 50.’ Draw 50 Cars, draw 50 whatever, goblins, there was a whole series of them. And I used to get those all the time because I was obsessed with doodling around. I would always hang out in the arts section and looked at those sorts of books. Those are what I came for the most.”
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Interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
