TORONTO — After a nasty fall from a loading dock ended his career as a truck driver, Michael McClure sifted through hundreds of photographs he had taken from the driver’s seat and published them in a book.

“Playing In Traffic” was intended as a personal project to show his family and friends what the trucking life is all about. But it could also be used to give prospective drivers an idea of what they’re in for when they join the trucking fraternity. It documents the various challenges of the job, from weather and road conditions, to truck-stop life and loading bay hassles.

It also shows the rewards of the job, the beauty that often passes outside the window. The book is truly a slice of the driver’s pie.
“I could share this with a new driver and say, ‘Here’s an example of a sticky situation you could find yourself in, or something you could face. This is what you’re going to be up against if you want to drive,’” he says.

McClure, who was taking a break from photography and web designing at the time, got into the trucking business through a friend and a brother-in-law, both of whom were drivers. He job-shadowed for a while to get a feel for the job, and then decided to give it a shot. After studying at Markel Professional Transport Training in Guelph, he found a job and started hauling freight. 

Michael McClure, of Burlington, Ont., published a
book-length photo essay of his experiences as a trucker.

“When I was a photographer, I always made sure I had a camera with me everywhere I went. When I was a driver, I couldn’t carry a high-end camera with me. I just carried a phone with a camera in it, or maybe a small point-and-shoot camera,” he says.

“That was part of the point of doing the book the way I did it. I wanted to make the point that it is possible to create good images with low-resolution products if you have an eye for composition and lighting.”

Though, "you can’t stop every time you see something you want to shoot," he continues. "It hurts to drive by when you’ve got a heart for those kind of things. It can be painful to let them go. You just enjoy them for what they are and remember them.”

Occasionally he found himself with the time to capture an image more deliberately – when he was at a truck stop, perhaps, or waiting at a loading bay, or while broken down on the side of the road.

Sometimes when he was stopped in heavy traffic, he could safely bring a camera to his eye and record a scene. If he was moving, however, the most he would do is point the camera in the general direction of what had caught his eye and snap a blind shot or two through the windshield.

“A number of people asked me if I took pictures while I was moving, because that wouldn’t be very safe. But I never looked through the viewfinder in those cases. It was a matter of holding up the camera away from myself and see what I get.”

He says the blurred images, dirty windshields, and bad composition that resulted helped make a point about what it’s like to be in a truck.

I’m not a purist," he says. "Most cameras don’t allow you to get an image that equates to what you saw. Usually the highlights are too bright, the shadows are too dark, the colours are not as rich as you remember them. In post-production you can bring out the things your eye saw at the time. I don’t consider that cheating.”

He says there is something of a story arch in Playing In Traffic.

‘I started out with the road: what does it look like from the vantage point of the driver. Then I move into the challenges of the road.
Then I go into some of the darker sides of the job that are difficult to deal with.”

The pictures up to this point are all in black and white. But then the book breaks into glorious color as he shows the lighter side of the job – the beautiful scenery, and the natural world around him.

“I leave it on a high note,” he explains, pointing out that sometimes after a difficult day a driver finds himself in a surprisingly pleasant place which makes it all worth while.
“You get to take a breath, look around, and say, ‘Wow, I get to be here.’ You wish you could share it with family. It can give you bit of a heartache, and I struggled with that at first, but I learned to deal with it by taking photographs.”

In the end, he says he just wanted to put together a photo essay "that depicts a period of my life that’s not likely to be repeated."
You can view Michael’s photography and order a copy of Playing In Traffic at Michael’s website at www.michaelmcclure.ca.