Scott Fraser

Scott Fraser is a Victoria, BC – based photographer. He is a native of Montreal, and is a formally trained photographer who specializes in portraiture and commercial photography. In addition to his professional work as a photographer, Scott is a curated photographer with work being shown around the world.

Scott spent many years in the marketing sector working as a writer, photographer, technical lead and in the senior roles of creative director and chief information officer. His passion for the arts and life transend into the art he produces as a photorapher.

Additionally, years of public speaking and working with musicians, actresses/actors and models of all ages have given him an effortless, comfortable demeanor with his photographic subjects.The resulting images stand out and work well, making for a long roster of loyal and happy clients.

Ask yourself “What is a photograph?”

I’ve started and stopped a few dozen times at this point in the search to what a photograph is. I’ve dug deep within my memory and psyche as to why photographs mean so much to me. I’ve looked back to those artists who I first recall connecting with, taking note of their work. Linda McCartney, Jean L. Sieff, Pierre Boutlat, Brain Duffy, and Greg Papazian. I think back to Montreal in the early 1970’s and the world I grew up in. Magazines were the medium of my generation back then. I recall the transition from a city of concrete and steel to the open spaces and mountains of southern Alberta when my family moved across the country to the small town of Pincher Creek, Alberta. From a city filled with fashion, music, the arts, culture, billboards, and sky-scrappers to a town that didn’t have cable, no FM rock radio stations, and the local general store wasn’t exactly the place to find a copy of Hit Parader or the french edition of Vogue.

I look to the photos of my family I’ve taken through-out my life and I smile at the photos that still mean as much as they ever did to me. The photograph of my grandmother and grandfather (Lola & Bob) that my mom took in the late 70’s in their living room. It’s in no way a great photo, and time as not been nice to it. It’s blurry and faded but it doesn’t matter, because when I look at it, my memory fills in the gaps in the shot. It’s a real picture of two real people taken by an everyday person with a cheap point-n-click camera. Its a picture that makes my heart feel warm and brings fond memories back. To anyone else it would mean nothing. It’s the tones reflected in the background, the living-room I recall so well, and how it was always filled with love if not money. It’s something I would risk my life to save in a burning fire.

A portrait photograph to me, is the memory of my brother and I has young boys, going for what I remember as our very first professional portrait sitting. I remember how my mother hung the large framed print in the hallway upstairs in our home on Haig Avenue in Montreal. I remember going for family portrait sittings in the very early 1980’s. Mom and I would go to visit a professional photographer, we’d pay the deposit and book the appointment, come back in two weeks for the actual shoot, followed a few weeks later by a selection sitting in which the photographer had put together a collection of proofs he had selected for us to chose from. Mom and dad would then select the prints they wanted ordered in the size they has chosen and in a few weeks we’d have new family portrait albums. To my mother, those photographs meant the world.

I’m pretty sure the kids as well as most of my family and friends have at some point hated seeing me with a camera in my hand. As my daughter once said, “it’s like living with the damn paparazzi”, but years later she’d tell me Thank You, as she came to realize most of her peers didn’t have the family photographs we did.

There’s a difference between a snapshot and a photograph. There’s a difference between style and taste. There are those people who want the illusion of beauty, and there are those who want the authenticity of beauty. There is real and there is illusion and the camera can capture both. There is the person and there is the product, and sometimes the lines between those two get fuzzy. But for myself, I have always strove to capture the essence of the individual as authentically as I can. I’ve been labelled a rebel-purist-freak because of my belief of capturing as much, and hopefully all of the photograph in the camera. My passion for life, the arts and beauty is something that shapes my style. It’s not for everyone and it isn’t suppose to be. What I capture and then finish as a complete photograph is what as an artist, is the expression of a lifetime of experience, knowledge, mentorship and years of practice and study. It is my attempt as one human being to capture with light and shadow a document of a moment, a place, an individual. As an artist it is my attempt to share something I see with my fellow mankind.

So what then is a Photograph? To me, it’s an emotion. It might invoke fond memories or maybe it invokes sadness and regret. It might shock you, or cause you to feel empathy for a fellow human being or a cause. A photograph can excite and a photograph can inspire. It is that emotion that creates a great photograph, and it is my belief that it should move you.