Sure Shots with Photographer Stan Collins

April 2020

When most of us think of social media influencers, we picture sexy young people posting to Instagram from whatever exotic locale they’ve travelled to this week. We envy their charmed lives, and aspire to live as freely and fully as they do. Stan Collins is an influencer – but he’s not what you might imagine.

Stan is a retired business executive who lives a simple life with his wife Marlene and their two small dogs in Rocky Harbour, NL. They have one grown daughter, who’s been living and teaching in Seoul, South Korea, for the last 25 years. In the past seven and a half years, Stan has slowly and steadily gained Twitter followers just by posting 10 photos a day of whatever is happening at home. It’s wholesome content, and 26,000 people (and counting) are here for it. The topics run the gamut, from stacking firewood and clearing snow, to the dogs resting by the wood stove, Marlene’s now internet-famous bread rolls and handmade quilts, views of Gros Morne and glorious sunsets over Rocky Harbour.

When he first launched his Twitter account in October 2012, at the suggestion of his sister, Stan says he thought he might get about 100 family members and friends as followers, many of the same people who’d enjoyed receiving his photos by email.

“I just never expected that it would ever get this big,” Stan says. “I often feel the responsibility of my account now. A man came to visit me last summer. He just wanted to tell me that his wife recently passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer and the best part of her day in palliative care was to see my pictures. Wow! Many teachers have also advised that they use my account as a teaching aid. A Grade 11 art teacher in Toronto recently challenged all her students to paint one of my photographs as an assignment. These things make me think of how these photographs have somehow touched so many people.”

There are hints in Stan’s Twitter account that there is an interesting fellow behind these everyday photos: his motorcycle, for one. Stan takes a motorcycle trip every summer. One of those trips led to his profile photo of him in an aviator cap and goggles.

“Five years ago I met my friend in upstate New York for the 45th anniversary of Woodstock. He has a friend who flies antique airplanes, and I had the opportunity of flying this 1925 American Standard biplane down the Hudson River. I took this selfie while I was flying. I never thought I would ever actually fly an airplane that was older than me.”

Stan is a certified pilot who served for 25 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force Reserve, and he was a flying instructor in the air cadets program. Flying runs in the family: Stan’s father was an aeronautical engineer and a test pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Stan also inherited his love of the environment and animals from his father, who he says was “an avid outdoorsman and sports fisherman.” Stan says his father would not have been surprised to see him retired to a small community in the middle of a national park.

Though you wouldn’t guess it from his posts, which intentionally promote the best things about Newfoundland and Labrador, Stan is not from this province. He was born in Ottawa, ON, and raised south of the border in Colorado Springs, CO. He studied business and hotel administration, and worked for Holiday Inns of America. He returned to Canada to help establish Holiday Inns here, and that’s how he was introduced to Newfoundland and Labrador.

“My first trip to Newfoundland was in 1966, when the four Holiday Inns – St. John’s, Clarenville, Gander and Corner Brook – were being built for Come Home Year,” Stan says. “Then I lived at the Battery in St. John’s, and I thought it was a very cold and damp place and wondered what I was doing here.”

Nonetheless, he would move here permanently in 1972, when he took a job with the Lundrigan Group in Corner Brook, overseeing their shopping centres and office buildings all over Atlantic Canada. And when that company was sold to Fortis Properties in St. John’s, Stan was appointed vice president of Fortis and served as such until his retirement to Rocky Harbour 16 years ago.

“I eventually fell in love with Newfoundland after I realized what an uncrowded, safe, quiet, pollutionfree place that it was. In those days, the two police forces did not even wear guns. Unlike most cities I had lived in, I actually quickly got to know who my neighbours were and realized that everybody helped everybody here. I was also attracted to the vast expanses of wilderness and the wildlife that abounded then,” Stan says. And he had met his wife Marlene, who is from Corner Brook.

Photography is something he picked up just before moving to Corner Brook. In 1970, he bought his first 35 mm camera. And just before he retired, he took a photography course at Memorial University. Stan says these days he foregoes bulky DSLR cameras for “micro 4/3 cameras with image stabilized lenses that are small and easy to carry around.” He carries two with him everywhere – one with a close-up lens and one with a telephoto lens. He estimates he spends four hours a day uploading photos and responding to his followers on Twitter.

As for the darker side of social media, Stan says he chooses not to go there. His online account reflects his attitude in real life.

“Very early in life I came to the conclusion that everyone has two choices. You can either sit around and complain, or you can do something about circumstances that don’t suit you. I chose the latter. I always try and find the positive result for everything and don’t spend any time allowing negative people to try and bring me down to their level.”

Anyone looking for a safe space online, a positive place on Twitter, will find it @stan_sdcollins. You might also get the recipe for Marlene’s famous rolls.