January 2026 — The First Step
A 52 Week Photography Challenge
Chapter 1: The First Step
It is cold out. The thermostat in the truck says -2, but I had decided that today would be the day I start the Full Frame 52-week photography challenge. I am a bit late to the party, having just noticed this challenge now, near the end of February. Did I say that it is cold out?
One last sip of coffee before I tumble out of the car door. Damn — it is windy as well! Maybe the beach was not the best place to shoot today.
It was early in the morning when I left home with an old F80 and a roll of long-expired 100 ISO film. Now I am thinking the wrong film, the pics are going to be flat. I dial in 800 on the camera … we’ll push this film a bit … with any luck, this will give the images a bit of punch. Shadows are overrated anyway!
The first task in the challenge is appropriately titled The First Step. I had thought a bit about this on the drive. Maybe a random kid walking? Or a puppy? In my mind, I visualize a puppy stumbling and falling while trying to play with a larger dog. Yep, a puppy would be great — but where does one find a puppy? The dog park, of course! There is one down by the beach — which is where I am now.
As I step onto the beach, the sand is frozen solid. There are amazing little ice crystals on the surface. Frozen grains of sand are raised up, leaving little holes and crevices. The footsteps of everyone who walked in this place are frozen in time. This is what I love about photography, not ice crystals per se, but the mindfulness of the activity, the way it lets me slow down and observe, to be one with everything around me. It is a zen-like pursuit, I suppose. As I am pontificating on the joys of photography, I fail to look where I am stepping. I catch my foot in a rut and fall hard, instinctively holding the camera high to protect it. I suppose that I should have dropped it and used my hands to break the fall! C’est la vie.
Lying on the ground, I see The First Step.
Chapter 2: The Big Chill
Is not particularly cold where I live, in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver is on the west coast of North America, around 49 degrees north. For much of the year, it rains as storms move in from the Pacific Ocean. The temperature rarely gets below zero.
Newfoundland is a province on the other side of Canada, 7000 kilometres away. Here, the storms roll in from the North Atlantic, and they are cold — fiercely cold. The province gets hammered by rain, sleet, snow, freezing rain and strong winds. Right now, as I write this story, the capital of St. John’s is in the midst of a snowstorm, and the weather report reads:
Avalon Peninsula east coast could see 20–30 cm, while Newfoundland’s north shores could see up to 25 cm sea-effect snow
Gusting winds to make visibility and travel difficult
A nor’easter developing off the East Coast of the U.S. is expected to reach weather bomb status as it makes its way into Atlantic Canada on Monday
Expect widespread cancellations and blizzard conditions into Tuesday
My wife is from St. John’s and most of her family lives there. Every few years, we make the trip out to visit. It was on one of these visits that I captured this image, aptly titled The Big Chill.
The photograph was taken at Cape Spear on a rather blustery day. They say that Cape Spear is the easternmost tip of North America. Maybe it is. Maybe not. In any case, it is a windy, cold, and bleak place. Huge waves crash onto the rocks, sending towers of spray high into the air as the freezing wind howls in from offshore. Perfect for photography!
The picture was taken using an old Kodak VR35 point-and-shoot camera. This camera uses a single 9v battery — the old rectangular ones like those that you put in the smoke detectors in your house. In the cold that day, the camera barely had enough juice to wind the film to the next frame. It is rather disconcerting if you are used to the precise, sharp ‘click’ of a modern digital camera. With this old beast, you get ‘snaaaap -cliiick- grrrrrowowowgrrrrowowgrrr’. The growl of the advance goes on for maybe five full seconds. I love this camera and will never trade it!
Chapter 3: To The Point
Summer 2025. We are getting ready for a sailing trip. Not a big trip like an ocean crossing or something — just a family reunion of sorts — where a few boats meet up at some favourite anchorages for a few days.
I don’t know what camera to take. I have a few, and if you haven’t guessed, I pretty much only shoot film. I wrote a story about this a while back, which I am not going to repeat here. Let’s just say I decided to swap the complexity and precision of modern mirrorless for the simplicity and unpredictability of old cameras. I think film and old manual cameras suit my style and aesthetics better anyway.
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Back to the camera choice … I decide to take the Nikon FE. A wonderful camera that does pretty much everything I need. Lately, I have been coveting a wide-angle lens. The widest lens that I own is a 24mm, and I want a wider field of view. I don’t know why. Luckily, there is a camera store in Vancouver that stocks a bunch of rental equipment, and they have a 16mm Nikon lens that I want to try — so this is the lens for the trip.
It is a short sail to Sidney Island, a picturesque island that we have visited many times. The island has a beautiful sandy beach that wraps around much of its shore before tapering to a long, narrow spit extending to the north. This place feels absolutely tropical on a hot summer day. The water is a bit cold, but swimmable, and there are many birds and sea creatures to watch as you lie on the beach and let time pass.
Sometimes I am a lazy photographer. This was one of those times. I could have strolled the island and taken pictures of an old abandoned brick factory, or tried to capture the perfect image of the sandy spit disappearing into the distance. Instead, we built a sun shelter, climbed inside, ate snacks and drank a nice cold beer. Every 30 minutes or so, someone would stroll past and I would take their picture. Or not.
To the Point was taken on Ilford HP5 and developed in Rodinal.
Chapter 4: Over the Top
This pic is from a gala during the Seven Nights of Sin — a week-long event that was held in Vancouver in the early 1990’s, celebrating what we now call 2SLGBTQIA+. The gala was in the Commodore Ballroom — and it was completely Over the Top!
Groups of people staged elaborate skits to promote their choice for the gay emperor of Vancouver. It was kinda like the drag queen reality shows on TV, except this was before reality TV, it was completely unscripted, and well, I guess there were just a lot fewer rules back then.
A friend had told me about the event, saying “… you have to go … it is insane … you can take pictures …”. So I packed up a kit and off I went. The event was packed with people, most in drag or costumes. Think ‘fetish themed party’, complete with leather, whips, buttless chaps, chains, studs, feathers, boys dressed as girls, and girls as boys. Remember, this was 1992. We didn’t have browsers and such to discover things like this — and you certainly didn’t see anything like this on cable TV — at least I didn’t.
The room was filled with smoke (smoking was still allowed indoors), and there was the constant throbbing of music, yelling, partying, drinking, dancing, and general debauchery. I vividly recall one fellow with two very, very large live Pythons. Yes, real live snakes, in a nightclub. He was dressed in a loincloth, I believe, lathered in oil. Just someone in the crowd.
I had gone in with 4 rolls of film and a Nikon 6006 — the only camera I owned at the time — and here’s the wonderful thing: everyone wants to be seen, and everyone wants to be photographed. No one really had cell phones in those days — and other than the occasional press photographer who came and went, I was the only person with a camera. I used all of my film in the first hour or two, so I had to run out to find more, which, of course, was available at the closest corner store.
The entire scene was completely Over the Top.
Chapter 5: Ordinary People
I don’t watch many movies. It’s just not really my thing. This is not usually a problem for me, unless the photo challenge task is
Ordinary People — Like the movie or not
I have never seen this movie. I suppose I could lean hard on the “or not” part of this task, or I could watch the movie, or — as I chose — I could look up the plot highlights online and see what this movie is actually about.
Not knowing better, I had constructed a pattern in my mind of a rather boring movie, maybe a rom-com, with some beautiful people doing beautiful things, with love and happiness, with children and a dog — possibly a golden retriever or something small and fluffy.
I was feeling a bit nauseous as I imagined this movie, and had already decided I would instead post a picture of some sheep, shackled and trapped, with nowhere to go. Ordinary people, I would call it.
Then I did my quick internet search and to my surprise:
The film examines themes of suppressed grief, the breakdown of the American nuclear family, and the difficulty of navigating trauma.
Okay! Not what I expected at all! Sorry, sheep, you’ll have to wait for another task.
I won’t tell you what you see. It is for you to decide.
This night image is composed of eight handheld, defocused exposures, shot with a zoom lens at 200mm. I used FP4+ film because that is what was in the camera. I wish it had been Tri-X. That’s the thing with 35mm film — you get too many frames on a roll and IMO it is best to use up whatever is in the camera. I have been known to rewind and then reload the film at a later date — just so I can change to something more appropriate for the scene — but usually the film ends up in the fridge, and I forget about it. Medium format is nicer, imo, with 8–12 frames — just right for a scene or two.
And there we have it! My images for January 2026. I hope you enjoyed them!
