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Danielle Eagleson
@daniellejeagleson
Photographer based in Canada
I’ve always been surrounded with the kind of “chase your dreams” attitude. I’ve been very lucky growing up with supportive parents that help balance me out. My mom is very practical while my dad is definitely a dreamer. He was a musician so I think that hearing the emotional and creative aspect of how my dad sees and experiences the world caused me to develop a similar feeling on my own. Ever since I was young I’ve had an overactive imagination and I’ve always felt like I’ve been unable to fully communicate my feelings at times. I’ve been involved in arts and creativity since I was a kid, and I slowly began to realize that the visual medium may be the area where I can finally communicate these feelings. I live very close to the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, where we used to go skiing with the family in winter. I always loved the feeling of being in the mountains and I was completely in awe of them, but it wasn’t until I was 17 that I saw them during the summer months.
"This experience gave me a whole love for the place, and it happened to line up with when I began using the camera and feeling more inspired to shoot."
"Still, this was when I was first starting to figure out what those feelings meant for me."
I’ve been shooting since I was in tenth grade but it wasn’t until I began my university degree four years ago that I heavily went after it. An American photographer whose work I loved commented on a few shots of mine on instagram and it made me think “If I like his work so much why don’t I do that?” Thus, I started watching tutorials on Lightroom and photographing before getting two of my closest friends to head out to Emerald Lake, BC with me to try it out. It turned out to be one of the most fun days of my life so everything just snowballed from there. This was about a year and a half after I’d had that first experience hiking in the Rockies in summer.
After high school I applied to a Bachelor of Interior Design and got accepted. I always felt like design was a different world from photography and I had a different love for each but felt torn between the two at the same time. As the four years passed and I graduated, I realized that I learned so many storytelling and abstraction techniques in design that I incorporated into my photography. I took the time to reflect and looked at how I had improved on both fronts simultaneously because they each taught me so much about design, communication, and mainly myself.
"So these four years were where I began to uncover who I am and how I think and experience things, which has bled into my work in both design and photography and allowed me to improve the strength in communication visually."
"After shooting and adventuring with friends for two years, I had more people from the creative community in Alberta begin to connect with me on social media."
I started hearing more and more about meetups and camping trips for creatives, as well as beginning to personally talk to and forge relationships with people I had connected with online. One photographer from Alberta that was travelling and working full time began chatting with me, and ultimately convinced me to come to a camping trip meetup in August of last year. I grabbed two close friends and we headed out, excited but nervous to meet everyone. Needless to say, this experience changed my life. I met loads of creatives that not only inspired me, but also became some of my best friends. It was this trip that motivated me to keep pursuing this, and that reminded me that I could do it if I committed to it. This weekend had such an impact that when I had the first mountains I hiked tattooed on my forearm, I included the date as a reminder to stay positive and stay motivated. I also credit a lot of my ambition and drive to my parents because they’re very easily the reason that my attitude has developed into one where if I want something I go after it.
"You always hear things like "that would be such a cool job" or "I wish I could live somewhere like that" and to me I've always thought, "why not just do it then?"
This is largely why I’ve pursued media creation and traveling. Both have taught me a different level of deeper communication that I can use to visually connect with other people, and I love that feeling. I hope that I can be the bridge between those that don’t have the opportunity to travel by creating images that put people into the locations and experiences that I am lucky enough to capture. My goal has always been to emotionally and mentally transport the viewer so that they have even a moment of escape and connection to the image. When I create images or video,I can evoke an emotional response with a story, and finally have viewers fully understand what’s going through my head in that moment, place, or experience. Recently, I’ve been working more towards videography and began writing concepts for shooting music videos. This helped me to learn a lot about who I am while feeling close to my dad because music has had such a heavy influence on my life as well.
I love to combine nature and portrait photography because it captures the experience of the place rather than just the place itself. Giving the viewer someone within the frame that they can relate to helps to identify with the experience and puts them into the moment more than just a landscape to me. I also love to be able to switch it up. When you’re shooting in similar locations but you have a subject, you have a little more room to change up the story with control over the subject rather than just the natural elements or the weather.
"My editing is reflective of the story I'm telling or how I felt in that moment."
Sometimes I’ll hardly edit a shot and it will be exactly what I want, while other times I change something in every part of it. If I’m shooting personally without a concept or story of what’s going on currently, I’ll edit for how the location made me feel. As said, I want viewers to be able to connect with that feeling and understand the place in the same sense that I did in that moment. Storytelling wise it can vary, if I’m following activities planned throughout the day it will relate more heavily back to the emotional experience of the place, but if I’m shooting a planned concept I often have a vision in mind for the way the images will look. I like to think of concept shoots like a design, where I plan the content and then I shoot and edit to match the emotion that I want that story to tell.
"Either way, my work is always emotionally connected, depending on the all-together experience."
I enjoy early mornings in the winter and sunsets are usually more of a summer vibe for me. In winter, I love grabbing some friends and other creatives to drive out to the Rockies for sunrise. It’s incredible because we get the light dew and sometimes an early fog over the peaks and lakes, which creates such an insane scene. Then we have the whole day after to move around and experience some other spots. In the summer, I’ll usually head out for a day trip and spend the day swimming and exploring new spots, before finally meeting up with a bunch of creatives and friends to shoot sunset as a nice way to end off the day.
"I think my favourite shot right now has to be either the shot of my friend Jennae from Moraine Lake, or the one of a friend of mine in Bragg Creek at Elbow Falls."
Moraine Lake is always beautiful and we had an insane blue hour shoot, but Elbow Falls was such an unexpected payoff for a really close and small location. Unexpected and spontaneous experiences very often stay with you for a very long time. I remember when I was in Maui in my teens with my family we drove out to a private owned bay for snorkelling. The owner allows tourists and residents of the island access as long as they are respectful, and after walking through 20 minutes of beautiful rainforest you reach this insane cove. We had barely even swam out very far before there were countless turtles and a pod of wild dolphins. I still remember it vividly because of how beautiful it was. I’d definitely love to get more involved in underwater photography for moments like these!
I feel so fortunate to live in such an incredible place and have such close friends that these moments spending time and shooting outdoors just make me feel so genuinely fulfilled. It’s like pausing for a moment and being grateful, and realizing how lucky we all really are to have this life. They often say gratitude even for the smallest and most basic things is the key to happiness, and I genuinely think that is true. Reminding yourself every day of what you are grateful for is such a powerful practice!
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