An eclectic grouping of photographs on the Artist's Showcase wall is on view for January and February at the Humboldt and District Museum and Gallery (HDMG).
Normally, the Artist's Showcase is reserved only for Humboldt residents, but Saskatoon-based photographer Jamie Macleod has ties to the city and "almost lives here".
"My mother's family is all from here - they are the Doepkers, " Macleod explained. "Then my fiancé, Shea Curtis, his family is all here. My grandma and my aunts and uncles are here, so we do a lot of back and forth around the area."
Macleod had always enjoyed photography, but says she hadn't thought of it as being more than just a hobby until friends and people she knew told her how good her photos were. When they asked her if she had ever thought about doing it full time - as a career - her reaction was "is that something people really do?"
When her fiancé said to her "why don't you just get into it?" she started to give it more serious consideration. Then she found a photography course in Saskatoon at McKay Career College.
The exhibit Macleod has put together includes mainly photographs from the area, some from her travels abroad, and exemplifies the way she likes to work.
"I didn't really pick a theme for this exhibit," she said, "because I don't really focus on one thing. I just pick what catches my eye. So if we're driving along the road and I see something, even if we're a mile away, I'll say, "No, I need to go back!""
As does any avid photographer, Macleod says she "pretty much always" has her camera with her.
Because there is no one theme to the exhibit, the viewer needs to take the time to discover each photograph individually, to imagine what caught the photographer's eye and made her want to capture that image in a timeless frame. And like any true photographer, Macleod doesn't like to use flash.
"I don't use a flash, especially not in buildings like that," Macleod said, indicating an interior photo of Salisbury Cathedral in England. "Sometimes you're not allowed to take pictures at all but you know, you try and get away with it, and you definitely can't get a flash in there then!"
There is an incredible hue to another interior shot, one of the inside of an old cable car, that Macleod says she came across one day in a museum.
"I stood outside of it taking pictures, thinking maybe I shouldn't go in it because it's old. But I needed to go in it, and I'm so glad I did because it's one of my favourite pictures, because of the colours. I lightened it a little, but otherwise it was the yellow cast from the light on the wall."
It is now three years since Macleod took the photography course, and she is inching her way along the path of being able to earn a living from it. She has done trade shows, and last summer had a contract to take pictures during the Fringe Festival in Saskatoon from which she sold 60 or 70 photos.
"I guess my dream would be to do it all the time, and make enough money doing it," she said. "But I work full time too, Monday to Friday, and it gets tricky balancing your hobbies, and your working and your family and a terrible-two-year-old...time management!"
