Maritime Photographer Captures Landscapes, Hat Tricks, and Hurricanes
MONCTON — When most young Maritimers think of getting their career started at the hockey rink, it’s as a player. But for John Morris, it was as a photographer.
Morris had always been interested in photography as a hobby, taking landscape photos across his native Prince Edward Island. But it was in the hockey arena that he decided to take that hobby to the next level, shooting in what can be one of the most challenging environments for a photographer.
“I always loved hockey,” Morris explains in an interview with Huddle while en route to photograph the Prime Minister at an announcement in Moncton. “I was shooting a little bit of hockey just to learn photography because hockey is the hardest thing you can learn.”
Between the speed of the athletes and the terrible rink lighting, being 100 per cent engaged the whole time to anticipate and capture that perfect image is a very difficult job.
“I had no clue what I was doing,” he confesses of those early days. “Some of my images got noticed by the right people… and I met an incredible individual who took a gamble on me and said ‘well, why don’t you shoot some hockey for us?’”
From that beginning, grinding out those high-speed action shots in the corners along with the players on the ice, Morris has developed a career capturing other high-intensity events.
Although media only makes up about 10 per cent of his work as a freelance photographer these days, the assignments can be extreme, as photographers push themselves to capture images that the rest of us are hiding from.
“I was shooting [Hurricane Fiona] for Reuters and somebody from the Globe and Mail emailed me and said ‘John I hope your house on P.E.I. is OK,’” he recalls. “I thought ‘Oh my God’ [because] I was in Newfoundland.”
Despite the worries about what was happening literally in his own backyard, Morris pushed through to get those Newfoundland Fiona images that shocked the world.
While not storm chasing, being a sports photojournalist, or on assignment to capture a politician deliver an announcement, Morris spends the rest of his time pursing his original interest – landscape photography. But this time with a much larger audience than just himself in mind.
Morris has his business divided into two facets. John Morris Photo is the banner under which he does his media and other stand-alone or assignment photographic work. Lens Make a Picture is where he applies his eye for landscapes and other outdoor pieces of scenery to things like calendars, postcards, and coffee table-style books like “Covered Bridges of New Brunswick.”
Although Morris has built up quite an inventory of photos of the region from his over a decade as a photographer, sometimes that perfect shot doesn’t always translate into the perfect product.
“Since the Maritimes is so small, if there’s an image that I don’t have and I want, I will go shoot it,” Morris says.
“That gets a bit tricky because the image I wanted to use for my 500-piece puzzle of New Brunswick was at Fundy National Park. I have [the same] image from Fundy National Park but I can’t use that because of technical reasons.”
Morris explains that due to the dimensions of a puzzle, only extremely high-quality photos will work. Even though he has a large array of cameras and lenses, many of them will not take a high enough resolution photo to work. The image that is good enough for the calendar can’t be used for the puzzle.
“You can never increase the size of a photo. You can always decrease it without losing quality. But if you increase it, then you lose quality — and with puzzles people are examining each piece,” he says.
“You have to use a very high-end camera and I didn’t. So this summer I know I’m going to go photograph that.”
In June, Lens Make a Picture will release another 500-piece puzzle featuring a Maritime location, as well as the 2024 calendar collection featuring images from across the region and country. These items, along with Morris’ other products, are for sale at his main gallery at the Confederation Court Mall in Charlottetown, on Amazon, and Etsy, as well as in various gift and general stores throughout the region.
Although it’s taken years to build his businesses and his reputation in the photography world, Morris is proud to say that he makes his living as a full-time photographer.
Even now, Morris is still paying bills back at the hockey arenas where he got his start. He’s nominated for an Atlantic Journalism Award for his coverage of the 2022 World Juniors and later this year he’s headed to British Columbia to do more hockey work for the Memorial Cup.
“I have the best job in the world. I really do,” he says. “You get to see a lot and it’s a lot of fun.”
Alex Graham is a Huddle reporter in Saint John. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].