OUTLOOK, Sask. – Joyce Nieman’s family has learned over the years not to send out the search dogs if she’s late returning from an errand on the family’s sprawling grain and cattle farm southwest of Outlook.
“It’s a joke around here that if I’m late, they know I’ve wandered off into a coulee or something.”
And if that’s what’s happened, more than likely she will have a camera hanging around her neck, tracking down the perfect landscape or wildlife photograph.
Over the past 13 years, Nieman has shot a name for herself in the farming communities surrounding Outlook with a style of photography that appeals both to those who have left and those who have remained.
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Her colour photos, which she frames herself, hang in countless living rooms, senior citizens’ bedrooms and offices across the region.
But while she has become a household name in her district, Nieman’s full-time job gets in the way of taking it much further.
“We’re still very busy farmers, so this is all done on stolen time.”
She and her husband, Garry, farm 14 quarter sections of crop and pasture land, and tend 60 cows. Their son, Brad, who farms with them, has another six quarters and 30 head of cattle. The land is spread out, with the farthest located 50 kilometres from the farmyard. As a result, Nieman often finds herself on the road, helping move machinery or delivering supplies to the men.
While it makes for a busy life that can too easily intrude on a burgeoning hobby, there is a positive side to all the running around.
“I never go anywhere without a camera.”
She is a self-taught photographer and uses only basic cameras and a modest zoom lens.
“It’s not your camera,” she said. “If you’re looking at what’s happening around you, you’ll get a good picture. It’s all in nature’s light.”
Her love of nature and her passion for photography are so intertwined as to be almost indistinguishable from each other. The credit for this connection goes to her father, a farmer from Bjorkdale in the bush country of northeastern Saskatchewan who “always noticed the little things in nature.”
When a teaching job in Macrorie, 15 km south of where Nieman now lives, brought her to the bald prairie in 1966, she thought she was leaving much of her beloved nature behind.
She dabbled in oil painting when her three children were little, but lost time for hobbies when they became older and busier. When the teenage years descended on the household, time belonged to her again.
However, instead of dusting off her paintbrush, she picked up a camera instead.
“That’s when I really had time to look at nature, and this was a faster way of capturing it than painting.”
In 1991, while preparing to take some of her dried floral arrangements to a nearby craft fair, she decided to bring along some of her photos of coulees and sunsets. The photos flew off the trade booth table and her new passion was given a sturdy shove in the right direction.
Stretching her horizons, she started photographing local bridges, churches, schools and grain elevators, as well as more landscapes and wildlife. She now sells her photographs at craft fairs within a 60 km radius of Outlook, as well as at the local health food store and farmers’ market in the summer.
Customers also drive out to the farm to look through her inventory when they need to buy a gift. The room at the back of the house is both gallery and storage room.
Framed photos line the walls, sit on the floor and occupy a revolving rack. Unframed photos and postcards fill plastic boxes while photo albums show customers what she has to offer. Photos are framed and matted at the dining room table.
Nieman treats her photography as an expanded hobby rather than as a business, and is happy that it pays for itself with a little money left over. Still, her dream is to build a gallery to give herself more room.
“We pushed it around and I was going to do it last year, and we pushed it around and I was going to do it this year, but the way farming is right now, I’m kind of afraid to.”
No matter when she gets around to fulfilling her gallery dream, it won’t include a storefront location on Outlook’s main street. For practical reasons, the farm is where she has to stay.
“I’ve got to be here,” she said. “There’s two men to be fed.”
