Moving Pictures
The Fire
Lyndon Paavola Captures Light and Motion
Story by Bonnie Schiedel, Photos by Lyndon Paavola
“No one is going to believe what’s happening,” is what Lyndon Paavola remembers thinking as he saw the towering wall of forest fire flame and smoke as he and other community members of Namaygoosisagagun First Nation (also known as Collins) fled in small boats. So he pulled out his phone and snapped a few hurried shots, later posting them on his social media accounts. Those are the powerful images that flashed onto screens around the world in July—and hit particularly close to home for us here in TBay.
While those shots were taken with his phone, Paavola almost always uses the mirrorless digital cameras that are never far from his side. He got into photography shortly after returning to his childhood community north of Lake Nipigon three years ago after a stint working in Toronto. “I was depressed before I got a camera. Photography helped me through that,” he says. “It was a creative outlet—being able to express myself, I suppose. A lot of [those] photos had a very eerie look so maybe that’s how I [saw] the world at that point.”
Entirely self-taught, Paavola is inspired by his love of movies, especially crime dramas and sci-fi. He tries to capture some of that atmosphere while also putting his own spin on it, such as adding motion blur (that is, using a slow shutter speed to intentionally smear or streak part of the image). “It means there’s something else going on in the photo, rather than just being completely still. I like to see those imperfections,” he explains. “I don’t like it looking too clean.”
About a year ago, he purchased a drone and learned how to get aerial shots and videos. Near Namaygoosisagagun, he started taking images of abandoned houses. “That’s another subject that I like. I like old, broken-looking things,” he says, adding that the drone gave him another angle and perspective for his work. And it was his drone work that alerted the community that they needed to evacuate, after Chief Helen Paavola (his aunt) asked him to send it up to gauge how close the fire was.
Photographer Lyndon Paavola
Today, Paavola is partly bothered, partly amused by the fact that he’s getting recognition for his forest fire images that were taken with his phone. “My most, let’s say, famous photo was from my phone. I always criticize phone photos!” he says. “But we’re at a point where we are getting better now, so we’re laughing about certain things…just coping with the situation.”
