20 questions

1 What is your full name?

Dennis Eugene Minty.

2 When and where were you born?

I was born in 1947, May, in Twillingate.

3 Where did you go to school?

We moved to Toronto when I was quite young, when I was about two, so I did all my public schooling up there, and I began high school up there, and then I came back to Twillingate when I was a young teenager and finished high school in Twillingate, and went to Memorial University.

4 What is one act of rebellion you committed as a youth?

I guess I tried smoking a cigarette that I found, still smouldering on the sidewalk, and I immediately got ill. I knew it was way, way against the rules for my house. We were a non-smoking and teetotalling family, actually. I’m not teetotalling anymore, but we were then, and smoking was definitely out, but I had to give it a try. I immediately got sick and didn’t do it again.

5 What got you into photography?

I started photography when I was 12 years old, believe it or not, with a little Brownie camera, and immediately got results that people praised. And so I just never stopped. I kept on going, and all through my youth I just kept doing it, and I just loved it and I still love it. It’s become almost a lifestyle almost as much as a career. It went from it being a hobby to real enthusiast and then to professional. I had many other careers in my life – I trained as a wildlife biologist and worked that way for a long time – but photography was always, always there for me. This was my way of connecting with the world.

6 Was the intention always to do a Newfoundland book and a Labrador book? What prompted you to photograph Labrador?

These are not my first picture books — I’ve done other picture books in the past, but it’s been quite a while. And what prompted me to do the two books, let me talk about it that way, was a call from the publisher, Rebecca Rose at Breakwater, who said they had an idea for a new photography book that would be small in format and accessible in price, as opposed to your standard coffeetable, which is very hard for a publisher to put out. They’re very expensive and you have to put a price tag on them, and so they tend not to be ones that you sell a lot of . ... It was her idea, not mine, but it just so happened she phoned at a time when I was really interested in doing another book, because there’d been a long lapse between books.

7 What’s your next project?

There’s going to be an exhibit this year at Salmonier Nature Park, an electronic exhibit, a multi-screen display. That’s going to be happening sometime this year, that’s sort of occupying me right now. But during the summers I’m very involved with travel and I’m doing five trips, two trips ourselves and three trips with an organization I work for called Adventure Canada, and these are small ship-based expeditions, and so that’s starting mid-June. That’s what I’ll be at. I do have another book in mind, but I don’t want to talk about it yet (laughs). I don’t want to jinx it.

8 Do you have a favourite movie?

I’m sure I do. That’s a hard question for me. I’d almost have to look at my stack of movies to think of that.

9 Is there any sort of movie or TV work that accurately depicts what it’s like to be a photographer?

(laughs) I can’t even think of a movie in which a photographer’s been depicted! Oh, there was the one with Clint Eastwood years ago, “The Bridges of Madison County.” That’s the only one I can think of. Well, I think more of the book than the movie, and I thought the photographer was well-portrayed in that.

10 Are you reading anything right now?

I am. I’m reading a book called “Thirteen Moons,” by Charles Frazier, which I think is a wonderful book. My wife put me onto it. It’s one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever, ever read. It’s not new — I think it came out in 2007 — and it’s the story of a young boy whose parents are dead and his uncle and aunt send him out west. He’s 12 years old and he’s sent out west to operate a trading post on what was then the edge of America.

11 What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

I can’t remember anyone actually saying this to me, but it’s something I live by, and greatly affects my photography, and that is “live in the moment.” I might have read that somewhere. I don’t remember a particular person saying that, but it’s all about being fully present and making the best out of each day.

12 Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

In 10 years I’ll be nearly 80; I’d like to have a nice rocking chair and a nice fireplace somewhere, a nice wood stove. I’m very active still, and I’d like to slow down. I’ll do photography until I can’t do photography anymore; I don’t see myself stopping doing that, but I’d like to be less dependent on it as a way of making a living. I will probably be spending a little more time of part of the year in a warm place. The winters are becoming a bit of a slog in Newfoundland.

13 What’s the best part of the job for you?

The best part of the job is the joy that feeds me when I’m out and about and actively looking at the world around me, and it just really, really feeds my soul. Actually getting wonderful pictures is the cream on top of that; it’s the process of making the pictures that I really, really love. When I really get something outstanding out of it, well, that’s like a reward, but that’s not my purpose. In photography, for much of my life, it has been about making pictures, but now I’m sharing that experience with a lot of other people through the teaching process, and I’ve learned that I like that almost as much as making the pictures. The process of helping other people make their pictures as good as they can be as well is a real boost for me.

14 What’s the most stressful aspect of your work?

The most stressful aspect is easier to think of, actually; it’s the business side of photography. I’m not a great businessman, and so marketing and selling and getting the work out there, that’s the harder part for me.

15 If you could live in or visit another time, where would you go, and when?

For me it would be my boyhood in Twillingate. I really, really loved that, and I must say, every spring, there’s very, very strong nostalgic feelings about being back there again.

16 What is your most treasured possession?

I’m not all that attached to material things. I’m attached to land, I’m attached to places. We’ve just finished building our house here in Clarke’s Beach and I’m very much attached to it. It’s certainly not cameras; cameras to me are no different than a saw to a carpenter. They’re just a tool to be able to do something with.

17 What is your greatest indulgence?

I guess I think of food when you say “indulgence,” and there’s a couple of foods that come to me. A good curry I can eat till I hurt. I love well-done sticky cinnamon buns in the morning, and fruit pies: apple pies, berry pies, anything like that. Those are things I really like food-wise.

18 What bugs you?

The current situation in Newfoundland politics bugs me right now, but that’s just because it’s top of mind. Not a lot bugs me, you know. I’m pretty easygoing, I’m pretty accepting of other people’s behavior as long as it’s respectful. People that don’t respect other people, that really bugs me.

19 If you were premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, what is one thing you’d try to do?

I would love to see the smallscale fishery come back, but that’s a pipe dream that I’m pretty sure, even if I was premier, I couldn’t make happen, because the fishery is controlled by others beyond our shores. I think it some ways it was a mistake to have let that happen, that Ottawa controls the fish around our shores. So whatever I could do to restore some level of management of the fishery would be high on my list. I’m also quite keen on tourism but in a way that respects and maintains the kind of culture that we already have, and so careful tourism would be something that I’d be very much behind.

20 Who is one person, living or dead, you’d like to have lunch with?

Ansel Adams. He put landscape photography on the map, and he was certainly the best of his day, and I think the challenges he faced as a photographer were so much harder than what we faced today. He was trekking around 50 or 60 pounds of gear and getting to these places where few people have set foot. And it was a lot of work, but I think that affected the photographs that he made, because the slowness that he had to go helped him perceive the landscape better, and I think it’s one of the things that’s missing in photography today. It’s become so convenient that we are in a rush all the time, and his style of photography was the slow walk, and that’s what I think it takes to perceive the world around you.