By Susan Zhao
Mr. Jim Packer is best known as Collingwood’s intrepid Head of Transportation, but he is also a great photographer. During this interview, Mr. Packer was happy to share his artistic side: “Art is for everybody, art is to be appreciated rather than used, art is what bring pleasures to me. Do what moves you.” Mr. Packer was born in England and moved to Canada in 2004, the same year where he started working in Collingwood. He is married and has three children and one grandson. Mr. Packer’s grandfather was also an artist and his oil paintings had always fascinated Mr. Packer when he was young.
Mr. Jim Packer is best known as Collingwood’s intrepid Head of Transportation, but he is also a great photographer. During this interview, Mr. Packer was happy to share his artistic side: “Art is for everybody, art is to be appreciated rather than used, art is what bring pleasures to me. Do what moves you.” Mr. Packer was born in England and moved to Canada in 2004, the same year where he started working in Collingwood. He is married and has three children and one grandson. Mr. Packer’s grandfather was also an artist and his oil paintings had always fascinated Mr. Packer when he was young.
Mr. Packer does micro photography and from his view, micro photography is very amazing because there are things around us all the time which we cannot see with our eyes. If we put these minute things under lenses, there is a lot of amazing data to be discovered. According to Mr. Packer, “this is what bring pleasures to [me] and ‘they’ take photos for [me].”
As a person raised and educated in England, Mr. Packer took an apprenticeship program, which included vehicle design, arrangement and management, in his university years. His hobbies and interests other than photography are watching soccer, cycling, skiing, and staying with his family. Mr. Packer also does a lot of old photo restoration of 1920s family photos. He spends time using Photoshop to resuscitate them. He said it is a very fascinating endeavor.
Mr. Packer has an upcoming project for different mushrooms and toadstools in the forest. He wishes that in the future, he can have more time to capture the beauty and wonders of micro photography.