The Unvarnished Take

  Welcome to The Unvarnished Take I've spent the last while building two things at once: a documentary called Unvarnished: Lethbridge , and a photography practice built around portraits and stories. This blog is where I bring both of those together — not the polished highlight reel, but the actual process, the setbacks, and the thinking behind the work. Why Unvarnished It started with something small and a little annoying: scrolling through Facebook comments trashing Lethbridge in ways that didn't match what I'd actually seen living here. Sure, the city has problems — every city does — but "dangerous" and "nothing to see here" never squared with my own experience walking around downtown. What I noticed wasn't just people disagreeing about the city. It was people who didn't know much about their own city at all — driving past things every day without realizing what they were looking at, then blaming each other instead of looking closer or ...