2020 Part Deux: 2021
The Retrospective
Alright, 2021 is done. Definitely not how we’d have wanted it, but here we are.
I’ll try to tell the story of how the year went for me, photographically, through images that I chose as I went back through the archive. I don’t think I had specific criteria and ended up choosing what spoke to me.
With that being said, the process is still lengthy. Mood and choices evolve over time, from humorous, to mundane (I love the mundane, actually), to tragic, and everywhere in between. It remains a good process to go through, to look back and what happened throughout the year, what worked, what didn’t, and to look at how my own photography evolved from the year before and throughout the year. It’s hard to do when you’re in the thick of it, but is very informative once you can take a step back.
Let’s go.
We start in the cold of January, where most of the outward-facing happenings were announcements and press conferences.
Actually, no. Let’s get all the announcements, podiums and press conferences of the year out of the way. They serve a purpose, but they don’t generally tell an interesting story.
As the pandemic was ongoing and made things very similar to 2020, my usual work with ministers remained limited in that sense, and they were the only things happening, really. You just try to find some angles within them.
An unfortunate byproduct of announcements and press conferences is the socio-distanced group photo. I can’t handle this pose anymore. I’ve always disliked the posed shots, though I assume they serve a purpose somewhere, but this awkward posing should never be seen again. It won’t in this piece, that’s for sure.
Yet, you try to find something different. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
An interesting aspect of my work with ministers is what I call community days, doing things within their ridings.
2021 did see the arrival of vaccines. One of the first clinics to set up happened to be within walking distance from my home, and I thought it would be nice to concretely show the work being done. You don’t always need a minister in the photos to highlight it.
Hmm. Bikes.
I’ve seen my fair share of technical difficulties with teleprompters, but this simple setup seemed effective in giving scrolling control to the minister.
Budget 2021 was definitely the first time in the year I was able to follow a minister around to tell the story of a day.
I really enjoy photographing the unassuming and no-fuss nature of the Minister.
In June, the Prime Minister attended a vigil after an entire family had been mowed by a man and his hatred.
As things started to open up again in June, I got busier.
In July, restrictions around travelling started to loosen up as well, and as the House of Common was done for the season, it turned out to be my busiest and most interesting month of the year.
Iqaluit, and the great North in general, are places I can never get enough of, and will always jump on any occasion to visit. Sadly I never get to see a lot of it at any given time, but every visit never disappoints, no matter how short it is. It, and its people, are just so vibrant. This visit was with Minister of Indigenous Services Marc Miller.
Let me take you along on what a week of Ministers’ coverage often looks like when travelling.
We start on Sunday, July 25th, 2021. I hop on a plane in the morning and fly off to Winnipeg, Manitoba.
From there, I grab a rental car and make my way to Kenora, Ontario, to preposition for an early start the next morning.
I get there by 21:00, to find out the hotel had cancelled my booking, and am suddenly without a room for the night. The “Wizard of Travel” Scott McCord fixed that magically, in the middle of summer vacation season. Though he couldn’t prevent the false fire alarm in the middle of the night at the other location…
You can’t rush these events. More often than not, the schedule doesn’t really hold. As it were, 3 hours later than planned, I’m back in Kenora, back in the rental car making my way back to Winnipeg, Manitoba to overnight at the airport hotel to catch an early flight the next morning. It was a short night.
By then I had accumulated a significant backlog in editing all the work since Monday. We usually do a lot of editing on the go, while travelling, allowing us to keep up to date, starting every new day with no backlog. You can’t do this when driving 3 hours to the airport.
Since Thursday was about travelling back east, flying to Toronto, and allowed me to finally catch up.
When things are “normal”, it’s not unusual for me to cobble assignments with 4–6 ministers together in a single week, bouncing from one to the next, turning into a week-long (sometimes longer) tour to maximize efficiency and minimize costs.
It also means I’m generally juggling multiple offices and schedules trying to see what fits, generally ending up in a constant standby state awaiting confirmations of always evolving schedules, launching into a tour like this not knowing which other “parts” of it will get confirmed one or two days later.
It’s exciting, you see a lot in a short amount of time, but it does get packed and busy! There’s nothing quite like being that free atom bouncing from office to office and witnessing all of these different files. Again, Scott McCord is a damn hero to help me take care of the logistics with all of these separate offices.
Elections were different for me this time around. I remained on caretaker mode at PMO (a skeleton crew to make sure there’s still a presence), doing mostly archival and maintenance work on the equipment. I would occasionally grab my old equipment for local candidates, but stayed out of it for the most part.
The transition period after the elections is a bit weird, wondering who’s where and doing what and looking for information on what’s going on, because the files are still very much active.
But, as minister’s offices go through the ‘Hunger Games’ period where most of the staff is in limbo waiting to see which job they’ll get in the next Cabinet, it becomes harder for me to stay on top of things to know what to cover and where.
Cabinet day! The swearing in of the new cabinet is a busy, but somewhat fun day. For me it’s less so about the actual signing event, but more about all the Ministers interacting with each other, before and after the formalities. Also Sean Fraser is tall. Very tall.
At events like this, you have to make a planning choice before it starts. Here, it’s the arrival of the ministers. This time around I chose a different position that the ones that were setup for the photographers. Sometimes your choice works, sometimes less so. In this case, it was a mixed bag. Some worked wonderfully with some great moments, others are just very standard. It was a wet one either way…
I try to leave the PM’s stuff to Adam, he’s got that market covered. But sometimes the light just screams at you. On occasion I will lose myself in the light, forget my surroundings and get in trouble, but sometimes it’s worth it.
Minister Anita Anand ended up with the Defence portfolio, and I’m glad I was able to be there for day one at the office.
Whenever I attend a remembrance day ceremony, it always ends up hitting me by surprise. I show up for work, not thinking about it at all, but as soon as the horn plays the Last Post and Amazing Grace, it hits me like a ton of bricks and I just start crying. I don’t know why exactly, I don’t have any specific memories getting triggered. It just all comes out. Gave me an extra hard time to focus this year.
Mr. T goes to Washington! This year marked my first international trip. Four ministers were going with the Prime Minister, it became a great opportunity to see how we could cover such an event with both Adam and myself.
The trip was busy and hectic, but interesting. I do have to admit, though, that my favorite part of it was meeting the White House photographers. Lawrence, yes, but also Cameron Smith, who helped me get a nice angle and a great tour of the White House, and just such a nice person, and a big shout out to Erin Scott, who went and got me some very clutch iced coffee at the White House cafeteria. Thank you both and I hope I get to return the favour when you come visit!
I also tried to vary it a bit with the Throne Speech this time, different positions, different angles. Adam was in the Senate Chamber, so I figured I’d avoid the pool location and just try something different.
On December 13th, Minister of National Defence Anita Anand, along with Chief of Defence Staff Wayne Eyre and Deputy Minister Jody Thomas, delivered an official apology to the victims of military sexual misconduct, from the Pearkes building in Ottawa, Ontario, on Monday December 13th 2021. It was very emotional for all involved but I am glad I was able to witness and document this moment. There is still a lot of work to be done, and hopefully this is a step in the right direction.
Side personal note: Chief Defence Staff Eyre was the commanding officer of Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar on rotation 0107 (first half of 2007), and our unit took over for 0307 (second half of 2007). Small world.
We pretty much started this retrospective with the Budget, so why not end it with the Fall Economic Statement?
The statement was adjusted at the very last minute to be done virtually after a close call with COVID.
2021 was challenging in its own right. On the home front, our child was diagnosed with ADHD in the spring, which explained my difficulties with home learning in the winter. It then also prompted me to get tested as well, and to no one’s surprise around me, I too have ADHD. It’s recent but this should allow me to deal with every day tasks with a better understanding of how my brain works. We’ll see what it all means, if it changes anything, in the upcoming year. But my child has been doing so much better since, and I’m looking forward to see how dealing with it can help improve my photography.
There are a few things I’d like to experiment with and push a bit more for 2022. I will try and shift the stories from the Ministers themselves to the actual work, and hopefully document the result of this work to highlight it, beyond trips and announcements. I believe there’s so much more potential for story telling in this, from the government’s perspective. I think it’s already noticeable in the way I tried to tell the story of 2021, where I tend to place the ministers in a bit of a background role.
I think that about covers it for the year. Don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you have any question about the work that we do. I’m not talking about gear here, but everyone will tell you I’m a big nerd and gearhead and will gladly bore you to death about it all if you chat me up.
Here’s to the sunrise in 2022.
Cheers.
