Last summer one of my friends from highschool invited me on a canoe trip as they needed a 4th person for their group. Since a canoe sits 2, you need an even number of pals in order to make a trip enjoyable whatsoever. I was told that canoeing alone is challenging and especially tricky when trying do a 3 day portage so if I were to bring anyone, it would need to be in sets of 2. I took this as an opportunity to invite along the girl I had only been seeing for a few weeks (now my girlfriend) and my new roommate who had just arrived from Australia. He was dying to go camping and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get in a camping trip and… learn how to paddle a canoe.
The assumption across the board was because of my outdoorsy interests and seemingly constant travel experience, I’d be an obvious addition to the team. Little did anyone know that outside of one time that I cried in the front seat of a canoe with my father as a child (leading me to abandon ship and swim back to shore) I had never been in a canoe. It probably would have been a good idea to tell everyone as this later caused some problems in the form of my boat being exceptionally slower than everyone else. Personally, I think I got the hang of it by like mid day on the second day but we’ll have to find out if any of it stuck when I go again this summer.
above is a collection of phone photos from the trip
I was tasked with being the group photographer as, well, that is my chosen career. I was also bringing along a couple of disposable cameras from an article I wrote for Format Magazine. My pack load was a little unnecessary. I brought 2 disposables, a cheap digital SLR and I took my Instax camera as well but unfortunately, those photos aren’t scanned yet so they’ll have to be uploaded at a later date. If I were to do it again, I would probably take half of those things but I wanted to do a good job on my first canoe trip.
Here’s the results from 3 days of learning how to canoe in Algonquin park.
Big thanks to Addie and Derrick for inviting me, to Sonja for the amazing food, to Chris for the laughs and to Lindsay for not giving up on me mid way through the first day when any normal human would have just taken the loss and moved on.
all above photos from the Fuji 800 Waterproof disposable camera
all above photos taken with the Kodak Funsaver 800 disposable camera
all photos above shot on a Canon T3i
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My name is Matt Moreland, you can see more of my photos on Instagram or keep up to date with my travels on Youtube. I’m trying to post every other day on my Blog and I write about my experiences on Medium.
If you only know anything about me, it’s likely that you know I like to go on road trips. Whether that’s with my girlfriend and our dog, my little brother, or just me and a video camera, I’m always planning for the next time I can pack up my Jeep and hit the road.
I put together a a little guide on how to prepare yourself for life on the road and what to expect when taking off for an extended period of time. You can see the article on my Medium page by clicking below.
CLICK HERE
Stay tuned for new photos coming tomorrow and a little surprise coming on Friday
My name is Matt Moreland, you can see more of my photos on Instagram or keep up to date with my travels on Youtube. I’m trying to post every other day on my Blog and I write about my experiences on Medium.
Before I get into what I’m working on, here’s a quick recap of the last year for me:
I started a Youtube channel. I left the job I had for 3 years for a new job at a marketing company. I stopped posting to Youtube. I quit my new job after a little less than 3 months. I applied to adopt a dog. I started freelancing full time. I got a job at a pizza place because freelancing is hard. I adopted a dog. I started dating the girl of my dreams. I became a full-time photo assistant. I quit the pizza job. The girl of my dreams became my girlfriend. I stopped getting full time assistant work. I went back to the pizza job. My girlfriend moved in with me. I quit the pizza job again. We moved to Hamilton. I was offered to go back to that job I previously had for 3 years. I took it.
Now I live in Hamilton, with my girlfriend Lindsay and our dog Lucy. I work remotely for a company called Format (again) and I’m still doing freelance photo & video work 3 days a week. With camping and road trip season upon us, expect to see a lot more posts on this blog.
You may have (or likely have not) noticed that I’ve been posting a lot of new content lately. This is the realization of a project I dreamed up in the fall when my freelance and assisting work was slowing down. I want to be putting out content of some sort every day for a year. The idea was to keep myself busy, hone my skills and make a lot of work that has otherwise lived in my notebooks for years. I wanted to take all of these ideas I’ve written down and see them come to fruition.
With that said, I started making content for this at the beginning of the year and as you can see from my blog history, that lasted for all of a week before I realized that I needed a lot more planning, a somewhat prepared content schedule and a whole lot of time. Here we are, summer approaching and I’ve finally started posting every day. This will include all different forms of media and will constantly be evolving. For now, it will mostly be photos, articles and playlists but I can tell you that there is both audio projects and video projects on the way.
With that said, today’s post is both an update and the release of my first playlist called JEEP SLEEP
I feel like the name of the playlist is self explanatory but in short, this is a bunch of songs that I like to play when I’m on a road trip and have parked the Jeep somewhere so I can get to sleep for the night.
I’ve added to this on and off over the past year or so and I feel like it’s a pretty great mix for star gazing, car camping or rainy days. It’s a lot of my all time favourites that might be a tad depressing but will definitely make your eyelids heavy.
You can find my Jeep Sleep playlist on Spotify HERE
For future playlists, you can follow me on Spotify HERE
My name is Matt Moreland, you can see more of my photos on Instagram or keep up to date with my travels on Youtube. I’m trying to post every other day on my Blog and I write about my experiences on Medium.
Last week I had an article published on Format Magazine where I reviewed a bunch of disposable cameras. This was probably my favourite article I’ve done because I got to make something I love doing in my free time (shooting film) a part of a work assignment.
I’ve added a bunch of photos that weren’t included in the article. Some personal faves, some happy accidents and some photos of friends.
There’s a bunch of photos I shot for the article that aren’t in this post because I’m saving them for later. More posts about the trips I was on while I was shooting this assignment are on the way. Stayed tuned, there’s lots to see : )
You can find this article on my Medium account HERE
follow me on Medium for more long form pieces or reposts of my published articles
I had wanted a dog since before I can remember. I had a plush stuffed animal golden retriever named “Sparky” that slept in my bed with me every night as a child. Unfortunately asthma and childhood allergies kept me from ever having a living fur-pal but my love for dogs carried well beyond my childhood.
I would dog sit for friends, take my highschool girl friends’ dogs for walks whenever I could and if there was a party where the host had a dog, I would spend more time on the floor with the pup than with any of my friends. The yearning got worse when I got a job at format.com where the dog-friendly office policy meant having at least one pooch at work on a daily basis.
I knew my days of solitude and fur-free living were numbered, I just didn’t know exactly when those days would end, until I saw Lucy.
I had made a list of 5 breeds I liked the most and kept tabs on local rescue organizations. As my obsessive research tendencies led the way, this list was created from a larger pros/cons list based on size, appearance, coat, grooming needs, athleticism, health, intelligence, and trainability. Oddly, with all things considered, my top 5 breeds all looked relatively similar just varying in size. In no particular order, they were: Blue Heeler/Australian Shepherd, Shiba Inu, Husky, Akita, German Shepherd.
Sidenote: I just want to say that I am SO glad that I didn’t end up with an Akita or other giant dog. I could handle a bit bigger as Lucy is small for her breed but I do not think I could handle that much bigger.
On the day that Lucy was posted for adoption, I had seen her on instagram, read her story and thought “she’s so cute but am I really ready to do this?”
Within 30 minutes to an hour of her being posted for adoption I had received links and messages from 3 separate friends who knew my breed list saying things like “I think this is the one!” and “She’s finally here!!!”
The application process was long. First a lengthy application form and questionnaire (took about 45 minutes to fill out), followed by a phone interview, then a home visit, then a meet and greet with Lucy, then a follow up meet and greet with Lucy and my roommates, then a follow up phone call about the two meet and greets and then I was approved for the adoption.
The whole process took a couple of months but I am glad the adoption agency was so thorough and really made sure I was prepared, understood what I was getting myself into and provided me with all the help and support I needed. They really did everything they could to make sure Lucy went to the right home where she would thrive and be happy.
I have to say though, for every cute picture and every happy memory there is equal amounts of hardship. Though I don’t know specifics, Lucy came from a rough past. She’s almost 5 and she was only house trained a year ago. Leash training was started with the foster but it’s something we’re still working on 4 months after bringing her home. Her anxiety was terrible. Doors closing, garbage bins on the sidewalk, passing cars, children walking to school, people on their front step having a cigarette, elderly people with push carts - pretty much everything was terrifying for her.
I still remember the day I took her for a walk and we passed a house that was having the roof re-done. For some reason the sound of the nail gun sent her into a terrified fury where she tried running in every direction choking herself with her leash. I had to literally pick her up and hold her so she couldn’t run anymore. I walked home with her panicking and whining in my arms for the next few blocks. It was a terribly depressing experience and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Her socializing has been slow but consistent. We started with having a friend come over, then a few friends at once, then we took her to meet some of our friends’ dogs, then home to meet my family, away for a weekend at a cottage with my roommate’s family and their family dogs, then to the dog park, then the off-leash trails and slowly but surely, her fears have turned into cautions. She’s happy to see new dogs instead of confused or scared, she quietly lets out a mumbly growl when a stranger comes over for the first time instead of her previous incessant panicked barking. Every day she gets a little more confident.
We found her happiest self on our first big road trip together. She was so comfortable in the car, so happy at any stop we’d make and so excited about hiking. I really cannot describe how excited she was about hiking. I’ve never seen a dog run so fast, I had also never seen a dog so excited to jog ahead and then run back as if to say “come on, it’s so great up there!”. Her reservations, her timidness, her anxiety, it was all gone. This was truly the greatest gift for her and for myself. I finally felt like I was doing something right and that I was able to make her happy.
In the first few weeks of having her, I was so worried about her. Worried she wouldn’t get better, that I wasn’t a good enough dog dad, that I couldn’t show her that the world wasn’t out to get her. Every car that passed, every door that closed a little too loud, every garbage bin on the edge of the sidewalk, it all seemed too overwhelming to handle but time and patience has done wonders beyond what I could have possibly expected.
Just as she appears in the photo to the left of this text, she is happy. She’s excited about every day, she’s willing to let a new person pet her, she’s cuddly and she’s so damn affectionate.
There have been very few things in my life as rewarding as getting a dog. No job, no accomplishment, no plane ticket, has paid out exponentially the way that Lucy’s little smile has. As I write this article now, she’s cuddled up against me, asleep and making little noises as she dreams.
I read somewhere that dogs most likely only dream about their owners and the world around them. That when they’re whimpering or wagging their tail in their sleep, it’s most likely at thoughts about you and the things you’ve done together. The thought of that alone makes me a little emotional but the reality is that I do the same.
When I think about my future, she’s there. When I get home from work in my dreams and I have my own house with a big kitchen and a backyard, she’s there and she’s out playing in that backyard. When I go home to visit my family, they’ve started to expect she’s coming through the front door with me, even saying “is that Lucy at the door?!” before I’ve even said hello. She’s the biggest part of my life now. She’s the first thing I see when I wake up and the last thing I see before I go to bed.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I used to dream about having a dog but really, I’m still dreaming about having a dog every night. The only real difference now is, she’s dreaming right next to me.
I did an overhaul on my Society6 store and I’ve put up a collection of photos from my time in the desert as well as some of my personal favourites from driving the Highway 1 on the west coast. There will be lots more content to come from this road trip, but for now, you can get prints of the following images right here in my store!
Desert Photos
Highway 1 Photos
While we were out shooting on the first night with the Toyota Tacoma, we really got into a groove and I was really happy with the photos we were getting. I felt like I had more than enough imagery to work with while the sun was still up but didn’t want to waste the light before starting on the evening shots for the truck.
We took about 15-20 minutes to do an impromptu portrait session. We tried some different poses, directions and backdrops and by the end of it, I was pretty pleased with a lot of the stuff I got. I think in total I took around 250-300 photos of Jamie that night and here’s what we got out of it.
If you’re interested in doing a portrait session, whether that be for acting head shots, a new portrait for your linkedIn profile, a long overdue update for facebook or any other reason you might need a still image of your likeness, please email me at matthew.s.moreland@gmail.com
this one was my favourite even though I can’t really use it for anything
Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege of doing photo work for some really awesome car brands. When I was a kid, I had car posters all over my room, I had more toy cars than I could count and I still, to this day, dream of owning a classic Porsche at some point in my life.
The opportunity of becoming a car photographer has been the proudest moment of my photo career thus far and I have to say, picking up a brand new car to take out on a shoot never gets old.
Here’s some photos of the Toyota Tacoma this past summer. This was by far my favourite car shoot that I’ve done, one because the truck was this great bright orange colour but also because I had my brother assisting me on this shoot.
Models
Jamie Moreland
Breann Smordin
Andrew Sinclair
Bug
One of the things I wanted to start doing in the new year was eating breakfast again. This was something I had to do to make it through my days when I was working in home renovations and later when I was working the morning shift (7am) doing customer support at Format.com.
As my hours got a bit more relaxed and my days started around 9 or 10, I opted for sleeping in instead of eating breakfast. This isn’t the best habit I’ve built so I’m hoping to break it and get back to my breakfast eating ways.
This is all a part of the bigger chore that is trying to take care of myself a little bit more each day. This means eating breakfast, keeping my room clean, not sleeping in on days I have off, and of course, keeping up with my blog and constantly making work. Even if I don’t have jobs going on, I’ll be posting work, new and old, every day.
So I’d like to make a toast (breakfast pun) to 2017, accompanied by some photos of pancakes from a visit with friends in Montreal back in the summer. Cheers, to memories made and more to come!
As much as most of my work is solitary, the best part of a lot of my work over the past 2 years has been travelling and working with my brother, Jamie.
You can follow him on instagram here
He has been my navigator, my photo assistant, my voice of reason and my support system when we were an hour outside Calgary 2 days behind schedule on our road trip across Canada with a flat tire, broken oil pan, and a deadline to meet only a few hours away (full story to come in a later post). He always knows what to say and when not to say anything at all. He knows when to remind me about our schedule and what shots we still need to get before the sun goes down. He started out as a travel companion, ended up becoming my assistant and somehow brought us closer together through all of this without either of us resenting each other. That in itself is a greater accomplishment than most people I know can claim to their name.
Photos of Jamie from our trip as well as a few shoots that he’s assisted me on
In the summer of 2015, my brother had graduated high school and was trying to find some direction in what he wanted to do with his life. We spent a weekend camping on the Niagara escarpment about 45 minutes from our hometown. After a day of hiking and making some pasta with our new camp stove, we started talking about the future and what he wanted to do after high school. One of the things he told me was that outside of a few family vacations we went on as kids, he had never really seen anywhere other than southern ontario and he really wished he could do some travelling before going off to college.
I had been in the process of planning a road trip across north america since I was about 16 and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally make it happen. We made a deal that he’d get a full time job to save up for the trip and we’d keep this a secret until closer to when we were leaving. We didn’t need to have anyone try to talk us out of it and we both agreed this was exactly what we wanted to do.
Photos from our trip from Toronto to Los Angeles
We originally planned for Jamie to travel with me all the way to Vancouver. His leg of the trip would be a month long and I would continue on for 2 months after doing the west coast and the southern United States. By the time we got to Yellowstone, we realized that if we kept going at the rate we were travelling, we were going to make it to Vancouver in 3 weeks instead of a month. To the logical person, that would mean going home early and saving some extra money but to us, it meant we could keep up this fast paced travel and he could see some of the west coast.
First we rescheduled so that he would fly home from Seattle, then it changed to Portland, then we finally decided he’d stay with me all the way to LA. By the end of the 6 weeks he was with me, we had crossed the continent and driven the entire west coast from Vancouver right down to Los Angeles, hitting all of the national parks along the way.
I learned a lot when I was travelling with my brother but I learned a lot more after he left. I learned that the greatest places you’ll see are only as good as the people you share them with. My favourite locations I visited in my trip were in Arizona, after Jamie had gone home. However, my favourite memories from my trip were the ones I made with my brother. We had learned how to live together in a Jeep on a tight budget and a shower or two a week. We were living the most simplified life we could possibly manage and we only ended up closer after all of it.
Photos from a few of the shoots that Jamie assisted me on
When I got back from the trip and started getting a lot more photo work, there was only one person I wanted to work with and only one person I trusted to help me stay on schedule and make sure the entire shot list was accounted for. To this day, he’s still my first pick for help any time we can manage it. We still make videos together in our free time and we’re planning more trips for the future.
So if I have any advice for someone who wants to start travelling more it would only be to find someone you can travel with. Someone you know well, someone you can trust, someone who knows when to help and when to let you figure things out for yourself.
Jamie and myself on peak 1 of the Stawamus Chief
As much as I loved seeing the sunset at the grand canyon, the memory was a fraction of what it could have been if I still had my brother with me. Trust me, being in the middle of nowhere (Montana) with a friend is better than being to the place of your dreams (Horseshoe Bend) by yourself. At the end of the day, you still have to go get dinner, find somewhere to sleep and figure out the route for the next day and those all get pretty boring when you’re taking them on alone.
