Portraits 25 Dec 2024 11:52 AM (10 months ago)

Recent environmental portraits for various publications and projects.

Bringing Photography Home 14 Jan 2023 2:27 PM (2 years ago)

Bringing Photography Home is an ongoing non-profit portrait project bringing studio portraits to a wide variety of marginalized groups. Using a community mobile photography studio, my goal is to bring the power of portraits to people who have lost everything. Hand making prints and giving them to the unhoused, or incarcerated, or ill, the studio helps with self worth and well being. Many of the subjects have lost touch with family and friends - sending a print helps with reconnecting. As part of this project, I reconnected with my father who was estranged from his family and friends for many years living rough in isolation. Many of the subjects in these portraits have died, and these photographs are a living memory.

Get A Head 12 Oct 2022 2:03 PM (3 years ago)

Wildfire Firefighters 3 Aug 2022 8:55 AM (3 years ago)

To the casual observer, the Vernon Wildfire Camp might look more like a kids’ summer camp than a place for firefighters to rest between shifts. Hundreds of colourful tents are spread across what’s normally used as a sports field, like a giant patchwork game of hopscotch. They take up every open slope and swale, as power generators whine, keeping the lights on and the coffee cream cold. This BC Wildfire Service camp is housing more than 500 firefighters and support staff who, on a day in late August, are responding to the White Rock Lake wildfire in the Okanagan region of British Columbia. Crews have been here since mid-July, and everyone works 12-hour shifts each day, as they have for many weeks. Breakfast ends at 7 a.m. and most are deep into sleep just after 9 p.m. By early September, the wildfire was being contained. It has been one of the most intense and destructive wildfire seasons in B.C.’s history, with a thick haze covering popular tourism destinations including Vernon, Kelowna, Peachland and Penticton for most of the summer. The Vernon camp was one of several set up in strategic emergency zones, providing space for firefighters’ tents, trucks, kitchen and bathroom facilities, warehouses and incident management offices.
These portraits were taken just as the firefighters returned from work and were heading to dinner – tired, hungry and wearing the day’s work in their eyes and on their faces. This impromptu portrait session prompted encouraging hoots and laughter among the normally serious crews, here from as far away as Australia. Then, once the photos were taken, they stepped away from the lights and back to their teams, where dinner conversation drifted back to the task at hand.