To The Edge Of The World - 14 Day Photography Road Trip With One BIG Goal
Mauzy - From Pixels to Paper
Our first feature length documentary film that we shot and produced for our YouTube channel documents a 14 day photography road trip across the island of Newfoundland, Canada.
Growing up as photographers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Chris and I always dreamed of creating our own hard cover coffee table book filled with landscapes from our home province.
I started shooting photos shortly after Chris and I started dating in 2003. He was shooting BMX videos at the time, and while I didn’t have the risk tolerance to hop on a bike, I found myself drawn to their shoots. I picked my dad’s film camera around 2004 and started shooting everything I could! As time passed and digital cameras became more common, I saved up and swapped out the Minolta SLR for a Canon Digital Rebel. Yes, the original digital rebel, that’s how long ago this was! I became obsessed with photography. I’d shoot anything from BMX and paintball, to fashion, landscapes, bands, and weddings (we all started there didn’t we?)
With experience, I started to nail down my “style” and found myself drawn to shooting real estate and portraits, and that’s what I stuck to. I’d shoot headshots for companies, conceptual advertising shots for marketing agencies, and I started my own portrait project too. On top of that, I’d shoot new real estate listings weekly and managed to get in with a few local companies to shoot their interior design projects.
Making a photography book filled with landscapes sounded like a blast, but I am not and have never been a landscape photographer.
Chris on the other hand had started shooting photos to capture high resolution time-lapses for his BMX videos, and ended up getting really into photography. This eventually led him to becoming the photo editor for his university newspaper from 2005-2006. He loved the challenge of making something seemingly mundane appear interesting while racing against a quick turnaround time.
After high school, I wanted to move to Toronto to study photography, but because of cost, I ended up going to school for graphic design locally instead. I loved design so much, and the thought of being able to be a photographer AND a designer made me so happy. At 19, I dreamed of having clients that would need a document designed from scratch, but would also need custom images for said document, and I’d be the one to do it all. This is sort of where that coffee table book dream started. Fast forward more years than I care to admit, and I’m basically that client for myself (thanks YouTube)!
After some life changes, we ended up moving away from the island to Buffalo, New York. But that idea of creating a print piece about Newfoundland was still in the back of both of our heads! After two years of not being able to visit home because of the pandemic, we decided to take two weeks and road trip across the island to try and capture as many images as we could to FINALLY try to make this coffee table book a reality.
So we packed up two large camera bags with three camera bodies and six lenses, and we set off for our trip to Newfoundland with one BIG goal…
Make the coffee table book
One goal sort of turned into two. Not only would we make this coffee table book happen, but we decided to make our first feature length documentary style film for our YouTube channel to chronicle the whole process.
We took the trip in May 2022 and here we are publishing our photo book and our first feature length documentary film for our YouTube channel four months later. Nothing like a quick turn around deadline to get you back into the swing of things! This was all reminiscent of my days as a designer. We’d get a large client project (like a multi page book or annual report) and have to start a design from scratch with graphics, text, and images, then have that proofed and ready for the printer less than a week later. Although this project was SUPER challenging, it was really fun dusting off those skills again.
So here’s another launch blog post to fill you in on what we’ve been up to! I love making these large projects and series for our channel and feel super thankful that I get to do this for a living! If you want to watch our film it’s linked below, and if you’d like to check out our book, we’re running a preorder as we speak which you can check out here! We’re hoping to have the books shipping out by the end of October. Preorder ends Sept 23rd.
Like always, we can’t just drop a project and then bounce, so over the coming weeks we will be sharing tons of behind the scenes content, tutorials, and blog posts related to the film! Keep an eye on our socials for the release of those!
BECKI AND CHRIS
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beckiandchris
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/beckiandchris
Twitter: https://twitter.com/beckiandchris