This website features a few photographs from me, a consultant, dad, backcountry camper, occasional writer, and lover of photography. I live in the village of Prospect, Nova Scotia, in the ancestral territory of the Mi’kmaq peoples.
A few words about my ethics and photography…I’m not accomplished enough to have a ‘genre’. I just take photos I like. But, I do gravitate to street photography, even though I am usually uncomfortable taking photos of strangers. I believe that street photography is an art form, with the purpose of capturing an image that is artistic or a record of social history. So I support the right of freedom of expression and the ability to capture our world through images.
However, I know there is a fine line between invading a person’s privacy and capturing their image as a snapshot of the reality around us.
I share very few of the photos I take and am selective about what images I sell as prints. While I do capture and post street images without talking first to the subject, I have mainly done that in Canada. For images I’ve taken in the Global South and shared on this website – or in my photo exhibit Southern Exposure – I generally asked for permission to take and show that photo publicly if the person is clearly identifiable.
My travels in the Global South were primarily for work as a communications specialist with an international development NGO. While there, I tried to act as a “concerned photographer,” a phrase coined by Cornell Capa to describe those photographers who through their work demonstrate a humanitarian impulse to use images to educate and change the world, not just to record it.
Regardless of where I am, I do my best to embrace the US National Press Photographers Association’s code of ethics. The code says that you should not alter your images in a way that is misleading to viewers or misrepresents subjects, nor intentionally stage the scene.
My film photos were shot primarily with the following cameras:
35mm SLR cameras – Contax 139, Pentax K-1000, Minolta X-370, Yashica FX-D, Konica Autoreflex T
35 mm Rangefinder camera – Canon QL17
35mm Film Point & Shoot cameras – Yashica T2, Pentax PC35, Canon Sure Shot 85, Nikon L35AF, Olympus Mju I, Olympus Infinity Twin, Samsung AF Slim [all were Thrift Shop finds]
120mm Medium Format film camera – Holga 120N
My digital photos were shot with the Pentax K-30 and the Pentax MX-1
Photography by Sean Kelly 