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Brianne Manuel
@briemanuel
Photographer based in Canada
I can’t remember a time where art was not part of my life. My mom always told me I was drawing from the time I could hold a pencil. Whenever I was asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer was “artist”. It has been a singular focus for me my whole life; it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’m so lucky to have parents that have supported me all along, encouraging my passion and letting me take over their house with my collection of art supplies and artwork.
"My love of photography also started at a young age; my mom had dabbled in photography, and the first camera I ever used was her old Konica SLR in the early ‘90s."
It was heavy and it was manual focus only, but I loved using it as a child. That ability to freeze a moment in time and keep it forever to look back on fascinated me and I eventually received my own point-and-shoot film camera as a gift. I documented my life with that camera, and I relished the anticipation of waiting for the photos to be developed to see what I had captured. I filled album after album with these photos, all the way through my university years. At the time, photography to me was just a means of documentation, snapshots of my life.
Drawing and painting was always my first love; it led me to attend a high school that was a specialized school for the arts, where I was able to take 12 visual arts credits throughout my four years there, across a range of disciplines. It was a fantastic experience and further cemented my belief that art was my path in life. I went on to an art and design university, where I completed a BFA in drawing and painting, and a minor in art history.
"It was during my university years that I switched to using a digital camera, and taking photos became entwined with my painting."
I would use photos I had taken as the source material for my paintings. I carried my little digital camera with me everywhere I went, just in case. I found myself always looking for compositions in my daily life; my love of art permeated everything I did, which has continued into the present.
I painted a few landscapes back then, mostly from photos I had taken over the years at the family cottage, of fog on the lake in the morning or the stunning sunsets we would get across the water. This was the start of my interest in landscape photography. I had always been curious about the world; I remember I received a globe as a gift when I was young and I was enthralled by it. I would spin it around and stop on a random country with my finger and ask what it was like there. I also loved reading my parents’ old National Geographic Traveler magazines; I fell in love with the beauty of the epic landscapes and the photos of people from around the world.
I finally got the chance to go on my own adventure when I graduated from university. I booked a flight to Paris and a train pass with my boyfriend at the time (now my husband) and we spent three weeks backpacking across Europe, visiting six countries. I chose Europe as my first destination because I wanted to see all the art I had studied during four years in person, so I based the trip on visiting art galleries that held the works I most wanted to see. We booked no accommodations in advance, just letting things unfold and planning as we went. Having grown up in Toronto, I was in awe of the beautiful architecture and rich history of the cities we visited. I became hooked on the feeling of freedom I experienced on that trip; freedom from obligations and work, and the routine of life at home. My wanderlust grew after that trip and I ended up visiting 18 countries over the following three years, spending five weeks in Australia and New Zealand, doing a three-week overland trip across Africa, and five weeks backpacking through Southeast Asia and China.
Unfortunately, life eventually got in the way of traveling for a few years, and I had fallen away from doing art as well, not being able to find the time, outside of paintings for friends and family here and there. One of my classes at university was called “Professional Practice” and they basically told us during one lecture that we would have to get incredibly lucky to be able to pursue art as a career, and that we would most likely have to have another job to make a living from and do art on the side.
"Looking back, I wish I hadn’t taken that to heart and had made the effort to pursue my dream; but I also needed money to travel and I went the path of working in an office for a while."
I dreaded the thought of spending the rest of my life locked into a 9-5 job, not being able to take off on an adventure whenever I wanted, for as long as I wanted. There was so much of the world I still needed to experience. I switched to working from home as a freelance transcriptionist, where I could make my own hours and was completely independent in terms of how much I wanted to work. I became very disciplined working from home, and it helped to keep me focused knowing I was working to pursue my passion for traveling.
My love of photography continued to grow once I started traveling. On that first trip in Europe, all I had with me was my Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera, but I used it constantly, documenting every aspect of our trip. This was at a time just before Instagram, and I knew nothing about photo editing. I was simply documenting my travels, and the only purpose of the photos was to be placed into a photo album, a visual reminder of my experience. I did one more trip before I decided to get my first DSLR, a Nikon D5100, in time for my trip to Africa in 2011. I took a few classes on how to use it and got myself a telephoto lens so I could take photos of wildlife. Even though I was still shooting entirely for myself, I tried to get creative with my compositions and was determined to learn from my mistakes when my shots didn’t work out. I was never without my camera during my travels, and I probably annoyed my non-photographer travel companions with my constant picture taking.
"My current path regarding photography was really kickstarted by the uncertainty and turmoil of the past couple of years."
I have never really been a fan of social media, but I finally joined Instagram two years ago just before the pandemic and I started discovering lots of amazing photographers whose work I admired. I decided to get more serious about photography and start working to get my skills up to a level I was proud of. Yet, I committed to learning how to edit photos in Lightroom and Photoshop only about 10 months ago. I desperately needed an escape from what was going on in the world when my anxiety was affecting my quality of life, so I decided to commit to learning everything I could to improve my photography. I began practicing on my old travel photos. Not ideal since they were all shot in jpeg, but it was a great help to familiarize myself with the programs and practice what I had learned. I also finally began shooting in RAW.
The upheaval that has been happening has really made me realize what’s important to me in life, and what I want my priorities to be going forward. Life is too short not to pursue your dreams, and although I wish I had started sooner, I don’t think it’s ever too late. I realized how unhappy I had been for years working in an office without having a creative outlet, and have seen great improvement with my mood since I started devoting my spare time to photography. As someone who struggles with anxiety and mental health, I find photography and post-processing to be very calming. It’s become a kind of therapy for me, where I lose myself in the process, not worrying about anything else, just being in the moment. Art and photography are so fulfilling for me because it makes me feel like myself, true to who I am, and always have been. It feels like what I’m supposed to do. Making art has been an innate desire for as long as I can remember. It is fulfilling to create a visually appealing image that I’m proud of and even more so when others enjoy what I create as well. My love of photography has also evolved from my love of painting, and I find that what I learned from painting has translated easily into photography.
"I have found that editing photos feels very akin to painting, shaping the image to my liking, sculpting with light and shadow, adding an artistic touch to reality."
"I’m inspired by the technique of chiaroscuro in painting, which is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, used by artists like Caravaggio."
I find I am drawn to bold, bright colors as I was when I painted, but at the same time, I love playing around with a more moody, atmospheric style with more desaturated colors. I would love to branch out with my editing and get more experimental with it, perhaps trying out a more painterly look for my photos as an homage to my background in painting.
However, I feel cannot define my photography style at this point. There are so many styles I would love to experiment with, and I don’t want to box myself into one way of doing things. I’m also not sure I’ll ever settle on one particular style; I’m incredibly indecisive and often make multiple versions of my images, playing around with different techniques, going for a more subtle edit or a bolder one, altering the image to fit my vision. I find I like to play up the drama of my images, playing with depth and the contrast of light and shadow, whether in landscapes or wildlife images. Most importantly, when editing a photo, I want to convey the sense of wonder I feel when standing in these places that I photograph, to transport the viewer there and share that moment with them. I use my background in art to work with complementary colors to add impact to the image and play around with other color harmonies.
"Lately, I have been enjoying creating more dreamy images, and I’m excited to continue learning new techniques to achieve the effects I want."
I pay special attention to those parts of the image that caught my eye in the first place when taking the photo and try to enhance those aspects. I’m also excited to learn more about Photoshop in the near future and employ it more in my editing workflow. I never want to stop learning and improving my skills.
Photography makes me happy, as does traveling, and I think it’s important to be true to that. In an ideal world, I would devote all my time to it, but I am also hesitant to make photography anything more than a hobby or at the very least a job on the side, as I fear if it became an obligation it would no longer be the escape that I value so much. I need to be able to pursue art in my own time, at my own pace. But making a living from art has always been the dream, so we’ll see what happens in the future. I’m open to opportunities and happy to let things unfold as they may – it is still very early on in my photography journey. I’m excited to see where this journey takes me.
This fall my husband and I rented a campervan and drove across Canada to the Rocky Mountains. This was my first trip with my new camera gear (I upgraded to a mirrorless system this year) and my first trip since making the decision to start learning more about photography, and my first time taking travel photos in RAW format. Editing these photos and getting to put my new skills to use has been so fun and such a great learning experience.
Traveling has given me so many special moments to remember, from diving at the Great Barrier Reef, watching the sunrise and sunset over Uluru, taking a scenic flight over the Southern Alps of New Zealand, marveling at the power of Victoria Falls, experiencing life in a village in Malawi, bush camping in the Serengeti, experiencing the Songkran festival in Laos and participating in a giant water gun fight with everyone in the streets, exploring the temples of Angkor, hiking the Great Wall of China at sunrise, to having my husband propose to me as we watched the sun set over Kirkjufell in Iceland. I am grateful to have been able to experience this as well as freeze those moments in photographs.
"I gained a greater appreciation for this beautiful world we live in as a result, as well as I learned a lot about myself. Travel shaped a lot of who I am."
You get to know yourself in a unique way, putting yourself in unfamiliar and sometimes stressful situations. You have to adapt and be patient and allow yourself to go along for the ride. Not everything is always going to work out perfectly, and actually, most of the time it probably won’t. It teaches you to have an open mind. My most life-changing trip was my three weeks spent on the African continent. When I talk about getting out of your comfort zone, this is the trip that comes to mind. I had never gone camping before, but I decided that three weeks spent camping while traveling from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe to Nairobi, Kenya was a good way to throw myself into it. I was anxious going into the trip: What if I hated camping? What had I gotten myself into? It ended up being such an incredible experience. I find it hard to put into words what this trip meant to me. I learned that I don’t mind “roughing it” when I travel and that getting out of my comfort zone can be a very rewarding experience.
"You don’t know what you’re capable of if you don’t push yourself to do things that scare you, and it can open the door to more unique travel experiences."
"Travel has created a persistent nostalgia for places I long to return to but I don’t know if I ever will."
Nostalgia for these moments and experiences that are forever etched in my memory, things I can remember as if they were yesterday. Photography helps me hold on to those memories. However, the things I have felt while traveling are something that I can never adequately convey – That sense of awe and wonder at seeing places you have dreamed about, of being such a small part of this great big beautiful planet. The world can sometimes seem like a dark place, but traveling has overwhelmingly shown me the beauty of the world, something I want to be reminded of often. When I’m not traveling I almost feel a kind of homesickness for places I have never been. I want to experience as much of the world as possible, though sometimes I think my travel plans could fit into two lifetimes.
I strive to share my love of nature and the diversity of this planet and the beauty I see all around me and inspire people to get out there and see the world, broaden their horizons, follow their dreams. I try to do justice to these beautiful locations I have been fortunate enough to see. My goal with photography is to document the places I see, to preserve memories and freeze moments in time that will never exist again and at the same time, turn them into works of art so I am not the only one who can enjoy and benefit from my travels, but many others as well.
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