About Greg Stott
The Short Version: I’m a Toronto-based photographer who works in the editorial and corporate genres and also markets his work through Masterfile and Alamy stock photo agencies. I also sell prints through gallery exhibitions and studio tours and occasionally teach photo workshops. I specialize in nature, travel and portraiture but am a sucker for almost any branch of photography. Picture taking was on the fringes of my professional life for many years and if you’re keen for details on how photography kidnapped me, read the long version below. Ah yes, I’m for world peace but know there isn’t a snowball’s chance in Haiti that it will ever happen. My website is www.stottshot.com.
The Long Version: Okay, grab a coffee, tea or cold beer - your call - and kick back. I’ve got a story to share. This isn’t going to be one of those short morse-code bios. If you’re having trouble sleeping, read on. I’m feeling chatty.
I’m a good example of what might be called “living reincarnation”. I’ve mixed and morphed several related professions over the years. It all began on a dark and stormy night in the 1960s. Through the efforts of well-intentioned but wayward guidance counselors, I got shuffled into chemical engineering in the 1960’s. It was a grand case of career incompatibility. I was smart enough or unhappy enough to bail out of that and do the smart thing: Climb on my motorcycle and wander off on a cross-country motorcycle trip to find myself. We did that kind of stuff in the sixties.
Somewhere in the western U.S. - I think it’s when I was propelled down a highway in Montana when my motorcycle and I separated at high speed after a mechanical failure - I got a sense of what I wanted to do. I wanted to write. On returning to Ontario, Canada, I spent some time trying to persuade journalism professors that I was worthy. Academically speaking, I wasn’t but one prof said he’d give me a three-month trial. If I floundered, I was out.
I didn’t flounder. I won a major journalism contest and found myself with a part-time job in a major Toronto newspaper. It was there that I met photographers, the fellow whose pictures illustrated my stories. Until then, I hadn’t met anyone who could make a living off photography. I was fascinated with this strange breed and their ability to sometimes encapsulate in a single photo what I spent paragraphs trying to convey.
For me, photography was a hobby. I picked up the pastime from my father who liked to take portraits in his spare time. I still treasure the photos he took in and around World War 11.
When the newspaper that had hired me was shut down by a publisher who saw greener pastures in television, I joined the wave. I got recruited as a television reporter in Vancouver, Canada. Again, I teamed up with people who exercised their visual instincts for a living - camera operators and editors. My dulcet tones and well-honed words were ambitious but, more than ever, it was really the pictures that told the story. I was impressed and I continued to learn the value of a good image. Photography remained a hobby but an active one.
Throughout the seventies and until the mid-eighties, I remained a television reporter but along the way, I kept a sideline. I wrote magazine articles and gradually got it in mind that maybe I could throw in a few pictures as well. Most editors didn’t mind which fed my extra-curricular ambitions. There was a distinct satisfaction (and ego rush) in creating an integrated entity of words and pictures. Fortunately, much of my photography was competent but mediocre. I say “fortunately” because photography had been teasing me for years with its potential and I decided that it was about time I raised the bar. I had fallen under the spell of greats such as Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Elliot Porter, Eugene Smith and others. I knew great work when I saw it and naively imagined that in the midst of a busy journalistic career that perhaps I could carve a little success out for myself. If I didn’t have time to rub shoulders with Ansel Adams and have some of his magic rub off on me, I did befriend a few Canadian icons. Freeman Patterson was first and foremost. His photography, supplemented by some fine writing, inspired me. So did his deep affection for imagery and his dedication to the craft. I had a role model of sorts.
In my free time, I often turned to nature with my still camera. Then, as now, it captivated me. Gradually, the allure of television reporting wore off. Often, it was more like snacking on fast food. The best stories were the documentaries where there was an opportunity to provide more insight and go beyond the basic minute or two of sound bites and superficial journalism but they were too few and far between. In 1983 and 1984, I gradually kissed a good salary and secure future goodbye and began life as a self-employed multi-tasker. Instead of climbing on board the motorcycle as I had in yesteryear, I headed for Europe, writing and photographing about adventures such as hiking the coast of Wales, hot-air ballooning over France and climbing the Matterhorn in Switzerland. In the midst of my freelance launch, a marriage fell apart and I lost my financial cushion.
Still, as fearless and foolish as ever, I stuck it out. I took on independent documentaries and corporate and industrial videos. I kept writing and illustrating magazine stories. And I kept nurturing the photography, falling in the good company of people like Janis Kraulis whose words and images grace this website and whose landscapes are an anchor of photography in Canada. To my surprise, I found myself contributing to books such as Adventures in Photography (which Janis engineered), A Day in the Life of Canada, The World’s Wildest Places and others.
And, along the way, introductions were made to some of the early stock photo agencies. One of them was Masterfile stock agency whose president Steve Pigeon immediately won me over for his candor, good sense, diabolical charm and gift of the gab. Masterfile and I have now invested 20 years together and celebrated and suffered the ups and downs on the stock industry. Far more recently, I began contributing to Alamy, another stock agency, one with a different dynamic but the same mission - sell pictures.
Over those same two decades, I have continued modifying my life, sometimes by choice, sometimes not. Having produced and directed industrial and corporate videos, I added corporate still photography to my toolbox. Falling in with a few good clients made it a pleasure. One week I might be capturing a CEO in a strobe-lit portrait while the next week I might be off on one my nature sojourns, trying to capture a black bear or owl in portrait or I might be making the most of a travel assignment in some far flung destinations as the Galapagos Islands or Thailand or Tuscany or shooting orchids in my home studio. Variety, as always, has been my drug of choice.
What has not been my drug of choice has been chemotherapy. In 1996, I was diagnosed with a rare cancer. The initial prognosis was grim, two years. The prognosis improved but I wasn’t exempted from what has been a daunting journey with cancer. In 2004, the journey reached a junction when remissions got shorter and shorter. I was left with one option at survival - a bone marrow transplant. The grueling recovery from that transplant continues today. My stamina and physical well-being have been undermined repeatedly but my love of photography has not diminished at all. Perhaps, as I have wondered, photography has helped me soldier on because it has provided a worthwhile sometimes joyous distraction from the struggle to rebuild my body and immune system and from the impertinent side effects of drugs.
Is it exaggeration to suggest that perhaps photography has helped save my life? Maybe but I think it can be argued it’s helped save my sanity. A couple of friends have suggested that I’ve done some of my best work in the last couple of years. I’ll leave that call to others but I say with certainty that photography nourishes me more now than every before. For health reasons, I’ve had to scale back my video and documentary business and I’ve put my writing ambitions on hold but photography is an old friend who’s always and reliably ready for a good time. Having embraced digital photography in 2002 was a pivotal moment. It freed me from the yoke of film costs and renewed my licence to explore visually. I’ve cursed the learning curve at times but the benefits have outweighed the frustrations.
Today, some of my work is more about turning a dollar than meeting my creative needs. That’s a good thing. Having to serve clients, whether it’s a photo editor, an art director or a stock photo editor can bring new challenges that demand creativity, enhanced technical skills and a good measure of discipline.
Perhaps my toughest client is me. I’m still trying to raise the bar. I savor my successes but I’m always looking to do better. Photography can be hard work, mentally and physically, but the fact that it has potential to be an endless source of stimulation is its own great reward. Lately, I’ve added gallery exhibitions and print sales to my portfolio of photographic activities. Much of my work, the stock work particularly, is anonymous or impersonal. Print sales are usually accompanied by human contact and conversation and something about the appeal of a photograph is revealed.
Many years ago, veteran photographer Imogen Cunningham was interviewed. “Your own career has spanned 75 years. Which of your photographs are your favorites,” she was asked.
She replied, “The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” Although my career is less long and stellar than Imogen Cunningham’s, we have that in common. I’m always looking forward to the photo I’m going to take tomorrow.
© Greg Stott, All Rights Reserved.
