This story was previously posted on StratfordToday.ca.
Any photographer will tell you that there’s always another opportunity for a great photo just around the corner. Especially when it comes to nature photography, that could literally be the case.
And if you’re a perfectionist, chasing ‘the perfect picture’ could become an obsession if you let it. For Chris Arthurs, the cameraman behind Love Thy Nature Photography, he admitted that he used to feel that way.
These days, however, not so much.
“I’m constantly like, ‘oh yeah, there’s always something better right around the next corner or something on the other side of that bridge,” Arthurs said. “But that’s another lesson I’ve learned, letting those missed opportunities go. If you interviewed me two summers ago when I was down here and all these things were happening, I’d have to tell myself to focus. I’ve learned to relax and kind of accept that you’re not always going to get everything all the time.”
People who are regulars on Facebook’s Stratford-area pages might think otherwise, as Arthurs is one of a handful of local photographers regularly posting his work in those spaces. Seeing the local world through his camera lens shows just what kind of wildlife and natural splendor is just outside our doors, and it’s a world where Arthurs grew up and didn’t really see for what it was until he was gifted a camera in his late teens.
“I took some photography at Central (Secondary), so I learned a little bit there that sparked enough of an interest that I decided to study photojournalism,” he said. “I did the two-year program at Loyalist and then I did some freelance work for newspapers after I graduated. But it wasn’t until I spent six months in the Yukon where the marriage of photography and the love of nature came together. Up there, you have nothing but nature.”
After coming back from that stay in the Canadian north, Arthurs continued picking up newspaper work before eventually concluding it wasn’t how he wanted to spend his time. He loved to travel and see new things in new places, so he found a job teaching English in China; he packed up his camera gear and then spent the next 15-plus years as a teacher, with frequent side trips around the country to indulge his passion.
“The great part about it was I would only be teaching for maybe 20 hours a week, so there was lots of time for me to be out taking photos,” he said. “I eventually joined a start-up company to help build their English curriculum from the ground up, and that really took me away from photography for the next eight or nine years.”
It was returning to his hometown that helped him pick the camera up again on a regular basis. It was coming back to the playground of his youth – the area surrounding the Avon River – that once again helped something click inside Arthurs. And he points out a decision made long ago that is paying fantastic photographic dividends now, much to his delight.
“Some of the changes the city made back when I was a teenager that are now bearing fruit are coming in handy, specifically that they’re letting things go a little bit more wild around the river,” he said, pointing to the longer grasses and reeds that can be found up and down the banks of the Avon. “It used to be a manicured lawn right up to the edge of the water, but now that decision all those years ago has helped bring back a lot of the wildlife we now see here.”
Given the rich detail in some of his works, you could be forgiven if you think Arthurs has a detailed plan from which he operates to get these kinds of shots. But you would be mistaken.
“I’m not a planner – I would rather just spend my time doing stuff,” he said. “If I’m going out for sunrise, I’ll wake up well before and keep my eyes out the window to see if there’s anything even worthwhile going on. I’ll spend time scouting locations, because Stratford has got a lot of beauty but it’s also a small town and there’s a limit to how many different kind of spots there are. You have to be creative with the angles and lens choices and focal compression – all of those things that you can use to make wonderful photographs.”
He’ll pay attention to events that are widely known, things like weather or solar events that he’ll mark on his calendar. But on a normally quiet Sunday morning, he likes to shoot from the hip and let spontaneity rule the day.
“It’s almost like street photography but for wildlife,” he said. “I’ll hop on my bike and go on a mission to see what’s out there.”
While there is no such thing as the perfect picture in Arthurs’ eyes, there are times when you can find it right outside your front door – quite literally in this case. Arthurs was getting ready to head out to look around when he noticed the brilliance of the early evening sky one night last year. It was right place, right time and Mother Nature was cooperating.
“I live across from Confederation Park and that’s usually my starting point for my walk,” he said. “I went through the park at sunset, and I could already see through the trees that the entire western sky was the most electric pink you could ever see. And it was going through the pine trees, and the street lights were already on and everything was just perfect. There was a light snow on the trees, so all the conditions were exactly how I wanted them and I was able to bring my skill to the table to make it work. But every photographer knows that Mother Nature might play nice one time but she’ll get you the next.”
It goes back to the lesson about something better around the corner; Arthurs knows to let that thought go and be happy snapping away in the moment.
“This is fulfilling for me because it gives me a quick, easy outlet for my creativity,” he said. “I’ve dabbled in a lot of other media before and I have some talent, but with photography you can see your results right away. I see the feedback and can dissect it a lot quicker.”
Taking pictures has afforded Arthurs a view on life that has given lots back to him, not the least of which is the ability to know how to keep an open mind. They are things that he enjoys knowing now, but would also tell his younger self if he ever had the chance.
“There are lots of technical things, photography lessons that I would probably pass on to myself, but I think the big thing is don’t close yourself off to possibilities,” he said. “Specializing in something can be great, but it can also close doors off, so staying open to things is something I think anyone can benefit from.”
