Winter Diaries | Shayd Johnson

I can actually pin it down to one particular moment, about 6 years ago, in 2013. My three best friends and I went on our first two day hike up to Garibaldi Lake. Before then, I had gone on small hikes, but I wouldn’t have considered myself an outdoorsman at all. We were inexperienced and didn’t have proper gear, but we just went for it. It ended being such a powerful weekend. I completely ignored the immensity of the mountains prior to that trip. This was the pinnacle of me discovering that there was more out there, of how much we have in our own backyard in B.C. and how special it is… And because I’m a spiritual person, I believe that the stars aligned that weekend. I found a purpose.

I was shooting a variety of things at the time. Two summers before I had shot a portrait of Nick Offerman, the actor who played Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation, backstage at a music festival. He ended up buying the picture off me and using it as his IMDB photo - it was all over the place. I was also shooting a lot of commercial photography, whatever a brand needed, I would do. It was very uninspiring work… So, from that point forward, I started promoting myself as an outdoor photographer.

In the last year, year and a half, I’ve started shooting stuff that I’m really proud of. It took some time because after that pinnacle moment at Garibaldi, I was shooting outdoor material and I kind of exploded as a photographer…Or at least that’s what I thought. I worked with big brands and because of Instagram I had all this popularity. People were reaching out with praise, but they also wanted me to post about them on my platform. With time, I realized that my appeal was more about my following than my photography. I was super bummed out. I went through this year of not feeling very good about what I was doing. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve had incredible opportunities, but I was in a lull during which I had no idea what I was doing. It wasn’t until I got hired to photograph a First Nations group up in Northern Vancouver Island for Tourism BC and I started getting in touch with my Metis heritage that I found my flame again.

Winter for me is really an important time spiritually. There is a sense of emptiness and darkness during winter. I don’t know how to describe it, but you are in your brain a lot more and you are conscious. Winter is a time to think about life and plan things out. Last year, I lived in a cabin by myself for the entire winter season. It was a special place, really rustic. There was a wood stove and barely no insulation. That was such an important thing for me to do. I was able to disconnect, refresh and gain focus on what I wanted to be doing. During that time, I really discovered what I wanted to shoot and what I wanted to represent as a photographer.

I wrote a little bit, but honestly, I spent a lot of time doing nothing and I think that’s also important in life - to slow right down. I would cook food, which I hadn’t done in a while considering the year before I was eating out all the time. I would go into town, buy a tone of groceries and cook these really nice meals. I lived simply. I can’t say that I made any kind of big realization. My intent was to write more. and shoot personal work. But then I realized that I didn’t do a lot of that and it was O.K. not to… Just to be disconnected and to take the time to be still and live amongst the quiet is what I needed.