Smile Guysborough, here comes your close-up
GUYSBOROUGH — On any given day this summer, when the sun is just right, you may spy a woman crouching by the side of a limpid pool or a riverbank or the broad sweep of Chedabucto Bay, snapping pictures.
She may be behind the bushes – loaded with camera equipment – waiting for the perfect beauty shot to come along: children playing; families frolicking; cafe owners arranging their deck chairs and flipping their signs from “closed” to “open”, anticipating another good day in the Municipality of the District of Guysborough (MODG).
Meet Hilary Hendsbee, professional shutterbug and MODG native – born and raised in what she affectionally refers to as the “metropolis of Guysborough town” – who recently answered, and won, the Guysborough District Business Partnership’s (GDBP) call for a photographer to document the municipality in pictures. But, not just any pictures.
“Rather than all of the really flashy tourism photos that you tend to see – the ones that are very curated and perfect,” she says, “I want to show off more of our people and what it feels like to really be here. I mean all of Nova Scotia has beautiful coastlines with all of these picturesque places. But it’s the people that really make us who we are. That’s the difference.”
It’s precisely that difference the GDBP – a municipally funded business and community development and promotional agency – was looking for when it published a request for proposals (RFP) last month for a “qualified photographer” to artfully challenge residents and visitors alike to see themselves here in a whole new light.
As GDBP Executive Director Ashley Cunningham Avery told The Journal in May, that means some staged shots; but the emphasis will be on showing the area’s atmosphere and energy. “We need a stream of photography to market communities, events and businesses “to people who don’t see this every day,” she said.
Ultimately, the project is designed to help anyone – local tourism operators, other small businesses and community volunteer groups – who may not have money to pay for professional photography.
Over the next 10 months, under contract for the GDBP, Hendsbee will be working hard to do just that. Explaining how she plans to tackle the job, she says, “I’m almost finished a [separate] project with ArtWorks East [artists’ collective] in Guysborough. Instead of doing headshots of them, I’ve been doing studio portraits – taking photos of the things they do and what really makes them artists. Doing that, you start to learn about the different people in our community, and what they’re really up to. It’s about capturing as much about them as you can.”
Nor is she afraid of getting wet – both figuratively and literally – in pursuit of her craft. “I have a lot of shots of me in a kayak following someone else. It’s not me on the shore taking pictures of kayakers; you can see the kayak and, so, you can almost see yourself in that moment. These are more of the kind of shots that I like to get. Oftentimes, viewers are looking at these on a website or social media from somewhere else and you want to draw them in, you want to have something that they can feel and then [do themselves] at some point.”
Hendsbee comes by her “life as it’s happening” pictorial perspective honestly. She returned to her hometown – after working for “a little while” in New Brunswick, mostly as a wedding photographer – with her partner, Bayne Horton (who hails from Port Bickerton) and two young boys, Wes (four) and Arlo (three) in 2020, while the pandemic was still raging.
“I was shifting away from photographing those posed, perfect moments, you know? Now, I would self-identify as a documentary photographer. When I look at my own childhood, the ones that I love the most... and the ones that look like real life... I know what I experienced here in Guysborough in the summers. But [now], I also want to know what somebody is experiencing in Whitehead and Larry’s River and Canso. This is about the whole municipality.”
Indeed, she says, “One of the big things is getting our locals to be proud of our area and excited about our area so they [begin] talking about it more... and getting people to come here more, instead of [them] saying, ‘Oh no, we go to Cavendish every summer.’ I mean, we have the beaches, too. We have the food ... We have the people.”
Hendsbee is not yet sure how many photos she’ll produce, but she’s working hand-in-glove with Cunningham Avery to get rolling on the project. “It’s pretty open,” she says. “We’ll be meeting to see what our actual execution will look like.”
Meanwhile, she says, she is wide open to anyone with ideas and suggestions: “I don’t want to leave anyone out.”
Hendsbee can be reached at: hello@hilaryhendsbee.ca.
Alec Bruce, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Guysborough Journal
