Analog Film
More sets
Photographs from a single night, trip or game, kept in sequence. The grid is the best frames. A set is the sequence they came from.
In 1997, my grandfather gave me my . I had no idea the impression it would leave. I shot a number of rolls with that camera, and I still look back on those photographs with a lot of love. My mother submitted one of them to a local fair without telling me. It won first prize.
I grew up around cameras and artists. My mother, Shauna, taught me photography, and much of my love for the medium came from her. My grandmother painted, and her work carried the same energy as a photograph, only made with a brush.
A photograph is energy held in a time capsule. I can usually tell whether one was made in the 1960s, the 2000s or last week. Something in the pixels or the grain speaks to me. If I had one word for it, it would be nostalgia. A photograph can bring back a place, a person or a feeling you thought was gone.
It can also confront you. Photography records our mistakes, shows us what is happening elsewhere and preserves moments that might otherwise disappear. In the age of AI, I think it matters that photographers continue documenting the real world. AI is a tool, and one I use constantly, but a photograph begins with something that was actually there.
Most of my career has been spent creating motion work for sports teams. That work is built to move, overwhelm and make noise. I keep coming back to the simplicity of a photograph.
Since 2014, one of my roles with Calgary Sports and Entertainment has been documenting games and the moments surrounding them. At most games, I am there with a camera, and the photographs go up in a slideshow by the end of the night. I am not a traditional sports photographer. I am more interested in the culture around the game and what binds the fans, players and city together.
This site holds the photographs I am fondest of. It is part portfolio, part archive and a celebration of what I have seen with my own eyes. Sports heroes, friends, weddings, forgotten places, unfamiliar cities and the energy within them. I wrestled with the idea of keeping it to the best of the best, short and tight. The opposite happened. There are over 300 here.
For years, I felt stuck trying to define what kind of photographer I was. One day it might be a spider on the deck, the next a moment at a game, then a temple in Japan. Documentary photographer is the closest I have come. Whether it is a film camera, an iPhone or the newest body, I always carry something. I feel most connected when I press the shutter.
In 1997, I took that first camera to a Flames game against the Ducks. All these years later, I am still doing the same thing.
Commissions, prints, or just to say hello.
@kenworthyphoto