Artful Vision | Andrew Knapp

"The secret to getting ahead is getting started." -Mark Twain

You can choose to love the life you have or change it but (most of the time) it's not changing everything that makes for happiness. I prefer to look at it as a chain of reaction: change one thing and evaluate the impacts on everything else. Andrew Knapp, traveller and freelance photographer currently based in his hometown of Sudbury, Ontario decided to change a few things in his life about three years ago. "My life became this pattern of coming home, leaving, coming back and leaving again." At the time, he had bought his grandparents' house, lived with his dog Momo, had worked a few 9 to 5 graphic design jobs that he'd almost always let go after a year and would travel during the winter fulfilling his urge to take off, drive and do his own thing. "I really wanted a career that wouldn't tie me down to one spot", he recalls, "and the more I gravitated towards clients I got along with or clients that had work that I wanted to do, the more I realised I just wanted to do my own thing."

Knapp sold his house, bought a Volkswagen van, gave most of his belongings away to friends and packed the rest. He was just about to leave to explore the west coast of both Canada and the United States accompanied by no other than his loyal friend Momo. Knapp says he was lucky: around the same time, his Instagram account started to gain traction and the Find Momo project kicked off as he signed a book deal for which he had to take photos. What he originally had planned for his trip now took the turn of a documented one to which the response was great. Knapp was subsequently offered to tour his first published book and started working on a second one.

Today, almost three years later, tired of scattering his time between photography and community arts projects, Knapp has decided to push his way of sharing moments with people to a full-time commitment, letting go of all hometown projects. Still a little bittersweet about the decision, but amazed by all the great souls he's met along the years, he claims that, after all, his dog and his van are the two things that have changed him the most. "[Dogs] help us connect as people and learn about each other which then creates opportunities and changes our lives." And while it might seem shallow to outsiders, for Knapp it's nowhere near that; "it's about the connection that we make because of these things we decide to include in our lives."

Andrew Knapp, traveler and freelance photographer from Sudbury, Ontario, for this week's Artful Vision.

Instagram: @andrewknapp

Find Momo: http://andrewknapp.com/find-momo/