SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Dave Brosha has come a long way: the man who began snapping "amateurish" pictures with a two-megapixel "cheapie-cheap" camera recently opened his own studio and art gallery in the heart of downtown Yellowknife.

Professional Yellowknife photographer Dave Brosha - seen here on assignment in Lutsel K'e - has opened his own studio and art gallery on top of A Taste of Saigon on 50 Street. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

Brosha, a professional photographer who began his freelance photography business in 2004, held a grand opening at his new gallery, located on top of A Taste of Saigon on 50 Street, Friday night.

"It's not like I've always had this grand vision of having a downtown studio and gallery," said Brosha. "The catalyst was I've been working out of my house for the last five years. My photography equipment and gear was starting to overtake our house. It came to the point where it started in my little bedroom then I moved it to our master bedroom. It was going to be my living room, kitchen and everything else if I didn't find space."

When Brosha left his job with NorthwesTel last year to begin working full-time as a photographer, he decided to take the plunge and began looking for spaces. After several months of searching, he finally found what he was looking for on the top floor of 4913 50 Street – oddly, the same address as his home on 49A Street – but the space had to be completely renovated.

"It was kind of a run-down apartment. When I was talking to the realtor from Coldwell Banker, when I brought up that I would like to see that space, he kind of said, 'Uh, Dave, I don't think you'd like that space.' It just wasn't a very nice-looking space. But I thought the location was cool. It's downtown. It's next to Twist and Fuego. The street is newly renovated. I saw this old, grungy apartment but I also saw a vision."

"It took a lot of vision," echoed Brosha's wife, Erin. "We did a tour through and basically we just left and came home and put our thoughts together on what the potential was. When we got our ideas out there, it looked much better than the physical state it was actually in."

The carpet was torn out, the garbage taken out and a new hardwood floor put in, with Brosha's personal and professional photography – everything from newborn baby sessions to marketing campaign posters – displayed throughout the gallery in large prints.

"It was a great find. The location is prime, especially with other renovations that have been done to that street to make it more pedestrian-friendly," said Erin.

Now the Broshas can have their master bedroom back, too.

"That was our initial studio when he left his job at NorthwesTel," said Erin.

"We rearranged our own place. We took the smaller bedroom and he took over the master bedroom, which has its own washroom and is at the other end of the house, so clients could come in and out without being in our living space as much as possible.

"That's another huge bonus of the studio. When he comes home, he's home."

For Brosha, the gallery finally provided him the chance to display his work in a way he couldn't before.

"I've had my website for years. But I don't think a website every truly does a picture justice. You have to be able to see a picture big. There's little nuances in the photo that, when you're dealing with a computer screen, you just can't see," he said.

"I've always had some prints hanging in my home, but to open this gallery was a really liberating experience – to actually for once make all these big prints, get them (professionally) framed. It's brought my work to life in a way that I haven't seen before."

Judging from Brosha's recent rate of activity, the gallery couldn't come at a better time. Multiple hard drives – once stored inside his home – hold as many as 250,000 photos taken since 2004.

In his first year, Brosha took about 5,000 photos, he estimates.

In September of this year alone, he took between 10,000 and 15,000 shots.

"It's been a busy few months for sure," said Erin.

So busy, in fact, that Brosha is considering hiring someone to help run his studio, something he can't quite come to believe given his humble beginnings as a wayward photographer in Resolute Bay.

The Broshas moved there from Nova Scotia in 2002 when Erin accepted a job with the Resolute Bay Housing Association.

"All of a sudden this boy from Nova Scotia moves up there and I see tundra, I see polar bears, I see icebergs – all these crazy, beautiful, Arctic things. It was such a novelty that I wanted to show my family and friends back home this landscape. So I just started taking pictures with just a cheapie-cheap digital camera – a little two mega pixel camera," he said.

"I had a little bit of web design background so I created a little web site just basically to show my family my pictures. Because it was on the web and because it was a unique place, there was a lot of people searching for photos of the Arctic."

Some major publications came knocking, including Scientific American.

"They wanted one of my pictures to illustrate a two page spread. At that time I didn't know about quality, so I'm all excited. I send them the file."

But the picture was too small; blown up, it looked bad. "They're like, 'Yeah, no. Not going to happen.' But that got me really excited about photography. I was like, 'If magazines are at least requesting my photos, maybe there's something to them.'

"The next year, in 2003, one of the things I did was help out the guy who … provided logistics support for North Pole expeditions and a lot of them were launched out of Resolute Bay.

"So I was helping out on an expedition that was coming to town, and I didn't even know much about this stuff. But the expedition guy happened to be a guy named Pen Hadow. He's somewhat of a famous Brit. He was making an attempt to become the first person to go to the North Pole, unsupported by a supply drop, which he'd attempted several times before.

"This time, he actually made it. So it became this worldwide story. News media from all over the world were calling … He actually had a (National Geographic) photographer that had come up to do his shots, Martin Hartley. He knew I was really into just taking amateur photos. He went through a bunch of my stuff and he was brutally honest. He looked through and said, 'Dave, this is crap, this is crap, this is boring, but oh wow, these ones are really decent.' He encouraged me and said, 'You do have a photographer's eye. You just need to get yourself a better camera. You need to teach yourself.'

"I was able to spend four days on the ice with him. He let me use his fancy camera for part of the trip. A private tutorial. I was very fortunate, very lucky … He's still my biggest inspiration to this day. I learned a lot that week.

"I took his advice. I went and got myself a better camera. I really started practising. I kept a journal of the shots I took. 'What settings did I use?' I'd shoot a lot of slides.

"Eventually I moved to Yellowknife."

Despite being published in media outlets like CNN, Reader's Digest, Up Here, the CBC, the Vancouver Sun, Above & Beyond and CTV, Brosha remains modest.

"My photography's moving along," he says.

Working in Yellowknife, as opposed to a bigger city, ensures he receives a variety of assignments.

"If a photographer was in any other bigger city, they would pick a niche and totally specialize in that," said Brosha. "Yellowknife being Yellowknife, I've been fortunate enough where I get tons of different requests for every kind of photography imaginable. I'm almost a 50-50 split between personal and commercial.

"Some photographers wouldn't have it that way. They're like, 'I'm a commercial photographer. I want nothing to do with portraits, weddings.' You have personal photographers where the thought of shooting an event would drive them nuts. Me, I truly love photography. Whether I get approached by a commercial or personal client, it's a totally unique thing every time you do it. You have a different setting, different people. It's an incredibly interesting job, what I do."