The Journey of Cedric Swaneck

00 · Back to Back · 1993 - 1998

I was born in the urban jungle of Toronto. I grew up in the golden era of 1980’s Canada. After the Blue Jays won their second World Series, my world turned upside down. I found myself on the other side of the planet, in Santiago, Chile. Those first few months were tough. I grew up fast, in a country that was somehow mine and not mine. Everything after this happens in two countries.

“My whole world basically turned upside down with the move. Thankfully I knew Spanish. I wasn’t fluent, but I was good enough that I could get by when I got there.”

01 · The Darkroom · 2002 to 2003

I was studying philosophy and theology in Toronto when the whole world changed in 2001, and my thinking changed with it. I picked up an old Canon AE-1 and shot expired black and white film. No school, no internet, no YouTube. I learned from a handbook, from a friend who had done a semester or two of photography, and from a lot of trial and error. Another friend had old equipment sitting around. We put it in a basement and I started printing.

“I was re-evaluating how I saw truth.”

02 · Four Megapixels · December 2004 to mid 2005

I was working a bar, a bookstore, the liquor store, learning on my own and saving. I bought a small digital camera, four megapixels, because that is where the world was going. Then an airline ticket. I was going through some shit and I needed out. Christmas 2004, my great-uncle’s place in the south of Chile. I stayed for months and reflected: my studies, the work, whether photography was the thing. A road trip north, family, then Uruguay. The camera ran the whole time.

“It just kind of solidified my desire to pursue photography and art in general.”

03 · One Hour Photo · 2005 to 2006

Japan Camera. I printed the whole trip there, learned colour processing, one-hour photo, volume workflow, and I bought my first digital SLR at cost. Started learning about Photoshop. About a year of that.

04 · Montreal · 2006

Then Montreal, helping a friend start a business: renovations, then landscaping. That year taught me how a business gets built, not how to make pictures. Once it was running I needed back in. Two ads in the paper wanted photographers: a portrait company working the far north, and the Canadian Army. I hounded the first one until they said yes.

“I hadn’t really made up my mind until I was carrying heavy rocks and slinging mud and waking up with sore muscles and callous hands, and I wasn’t the photographer or the musician that I was hoping to be. So yeah, that lit a fire under my ass.”

05 · Flying North · 2007 to 2009

First professional gig, 2007. Flying north with a green screen, photographing schools. It was a job. Then it became nine tours over five years: first Northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, later the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Nunavik in northern Quebec, plus a few times into Nunavut, not often.

"First shoot of my professional career: training day in the middle of the fridge aisle of the Northern store. A blanket thrown over milk crates. Little kids' chairs, a green screen, two lights. Tigger. And me and Shane, really hungover."

06 · The North Coast · 2009 to 2011

I read about the history of the communities I flew over. On my own, I walked the land, taking landscape photos and learning its geography. History came from the reading and the stories around the dinner table; the walks gave me time alone with the land.

“Seeing the infrastructure with my own eyes, seeing the people and the communities that make Canada with my own eyes, having them sit in front of the camera ... that's what stayed with me the most”

The Northern store, Sanikiluaq.

07 · The Rental House · 2012 to 2013

I slept on a friend’s couch, started a band and worked a wine shop for pocket money. Up north I had only ever shot flat lighting: one umbrella left, one right, everything even. I wanted to learn all the rest of it and I refused to go back to school for it. So I took a job at a rental house, and learned about medium format digital cameras, professional lighting gear, and who the photographers in town actually were. A year of that, and then I went out assisting.

“I needed to go back to the big city and be a big boy photographer.”

"I carted Broncolor packs and flash heads home and set up shoots in the house, pushing all the gear to its limits."

The wall outside the rental house, 2012.

08 · The Studio Years · 2014, and still going

A year of bouncing around, playing gigs, then I heard a studio five blocks south wanted a first assistant. I walked down and knocked. Plexman Studio: three to five days a week, ten and twelve hour days of corporate portraits. Five years in, I was travelling to other cities on his jobs. What I took from him was work ethic, how to connect with the person in front of the camera, and how to be open. Mentor, and a bit of a father figure. Still going.

“There’s more room for creativity and collaboration, as opposed to traveling around the north by myself, taking the same photo over and over and over again.”

"Night and day, man. Night and day. Up north I'm dusty, muddy, in flannel. Down here it's a fully produced shoot."

09 · El Rancho · December 2016 into January 2017

A decade on. My parents retired and built a house down there. We call it El Rancho. I had money in my pocket, so I bought a proper camera again, and back to Chile: el Valle del Elqui, then high into the Andes on a guided trip, lagoons at altitude. I shot panoramics for the first time. In La Serena I shot the city like street photography, the way I started.

“It always seems like when I go back, there are these moments where I can just take the time to reassess and reflect.”

10 · The Pandemic Pivot · 2020 to 2021

March 2020, and nobody was coming into a studio. Just before it hit I had built a course at Seneca College, advanced digital workflow, seven weeks, and I taught it for about five years until the program was cut. Through the shutdown I got my drone certification and practised for months in empty parks. Some drone work, some video. Mostly it was a lot of empty months with a phone that didn’t ring.

“So business just stopped, man. Nada.”

"During the pandemic some photographer friends started a group meeting on Zoom every weekend. Almost two years of it. That was a bit of a lifeline."

11 · The Drive Loop · winter 2020 into spring 2025

December 2020, an email out of the blue, and then a wait. I was the photo asset manager, which means everything the cameras produced came through me: processed, tagged, uploaded, backed up. What got me was the monotonous sameness, and how long it goes for. The grind reminded me of the north. The volume forced the automation. Then I started going to set as the digital tech, running tether on medium format cameras.

"Meet the photographer on set. They hand over a hard drive full of the day's shoot, I hand back an empty one. Wash, rinse, repeat."

"Text expanders, simple AppleScripts, templates and presets across every piece of software I touched. This was just before AI came around."

12 · The Invisible Work · 2021 to now

That job made me rethink everything. I started thinking behind the scenes: systems, automations, volume. Now I run my own company out of everything that came before it. Years at the studio and on film productions showed me how the high end actually gets made. Years of playing music built the sound and audio side. The photography frames the video. And AI has changed what one person can hold. All of it is arriving at the same table at once.

“As I learned from the switch from analog to digital, to be successful and to survive you really need to stay on top of the technological cutting edge and incorporate it into your business early.”

"It's kind of like that Jungian idea of integration, where everything is just coming together. Volume portraiture, high-end production, streamlined back ends with organized libraries and archival quality backups."

13 · The Next Chapter · now ...

Everything small I did along the way turned out to be building toward this. The darkroom, the north, the studio years, the film sets: a synthesis, and an evolution. Right now that looks like a one-year seasonal documentary on the Kawartha Lakes watershed, and Portrait of Canada, built so other people can be in it. It has me excited.

“I realized I was never gonna be able to do that on my own. So that’s why Portrait of Canada exists.”