Published in the Winter 2006 401 Richmond Update
Since the age of twelve , Ron Wood, with camera in hand, has been capturing images of “decisive moments.” His mentor , Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote “my passion has never been for photography in itself, but for the possibility — through forgetting yourself — of recording in a fraction of a second the emotion of a subject, and the beauty of the form." Ron has had what he refers to as the “privilege” of photographing over 1,600 weddings , capturing countless monumental moments on one of the most significant days in peoples ’ lives.
His company, Heartline Pictures (Studio 228) shoots close to 150 weddings per year, with Ron doing about one hundred of them himself. After twenty years, Ron still finds excitement in every wedding he photographs. “Everyone comes to a wedding with an invitation and the expectation of celebrating. Capturing that celebratory experience is what I do.”
Photography is in Ron’s blood. When he was eight years old, he bought his first camera with six Orange Crush bottle caps and two dollars. Since then, his imagination has been dominated by the act of creating images. His first camera, which sits atop a book case in his office, is well worn, but its distinctive shutter snap shows it still works. When Ron was twelve years old his older brother, whom he idolized, got into photography and built a darkroom in their house, starting a life long passion and career for both of them . Ron (as well as his brother) studied photography at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Today, Ron is a Professor in the Photography Department at OCAD, where he teaches Basic Photography. He says, “I love the energy of my students, and I am pleased to be an integral part in their introduction to photography.”
Ron’s on-going relationship with the camera doesn’t stop there. He also finds time to go into the back rooms and storage vaults of museums to shoot artifacts for use in exhibitions, exhibition catalogues and marketing materials. His clients include the Bata Shoe Museum, the Textile Museum of Canada, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. “Photographing museum artifacts is totally different from the wedding industry. I get to use a different set of skills and aesthetics.” The differences between Ron’s professional practices are part of what keeps things fresh for him. He has managed to find a way to make what he loves into a successful career, and to find ways to continuously introduce challenges. One such challenge, was switching from film to digital. After waiting until the film labs were able to properly deal with processing digital images to the standard that he expected, Ron jumped in with both feet and is elated with the results.
“I am very excited about my new work. The digital medium is opening up many new creative opportunities for me. I love the fact that I can shoot something, have a look, and if I’m not happy with the image, I can try something different. I particularly like how the digital medium can quickly record the narratives of people.”
It is staggering that amidst all of Ron’s teaching and business commitments he is able to find time to work on his own creative projects. He participated in last year ’s CONTACT Photography Festival with an exhibition he held in his space titled Globalization at the Altar. The show was a collection of images that Ron has taken that beautifully express Toronto’s incredible diversity through inter-cultural weddings. He and his partner Annie Wood also ran a series of seminars called Wedding Workshops as an alternative to the huge wedding shows that cater to the forty thousand brides and grooms that tie the knot each year in Toronto. The workshops brought together ten of Ron’s colleagues and friends to share knowledge about flowers, food, dresses, and of course photography. The workshops were sold out, and Ron and Annie have plans to run a second installment of the series.
Ron’s fascination with shooting “moments in time” has influenced all his work. He was one of the first photographers in Toronto to photograph weddings in a documentary style – an approach that is quite trendy today and has become a staple of wedding photography. It has also inspired his own creative projects including plans to travel to the Balkans in 2007 to visually document the untold story of the twenty-eight thousand refugee children who were evacuated from Northern Greece during the Greek Civil War in March, 1948. “Children ranging in age from infancy to young teens walked over the snow and ice-covered Perin mountains into Yugoslavia, and once there, they were dispersed throughout Communist Europe never to see their families again. Many of these children, as adults, eventually made their way to Toronto. They are very excited about having their experiences recognized through a photo narrative.”
With no shortage of project ideas, including a documentation of the other forty-three Ron Woods in Ontario and their shared experience of having the same name as the Rolling Stones guitarist, Ron will be keeping himself, and his camera, very busy.
Photographer Ron Wood
Image from Globalization at the Altar
Celebrity Shoe. Courtesy of the Bata Shoe Museum
