Throughout my entire life, I have had an admiration for our environment and the wildlife that share this heritage with us. Over the years, I have been fortunate to spend time in the field observing wildlife in their natural habitat. These experiences have often been quite exhilarating and have been extremely challenging to capture on film. It is absolutely essential that you establish a trust with your wildlife subjects if you want to get close enough to ‘freeze frame’ those once in a lifetime action shots. I find it particularly satisfying to share my adventures with others through my wildlife photography and watercolors.
My intimacy with nature started in early childhood. My father owned an evergreen nursery and managed wildlife sanctuary in the small community of Tecumseh, Ontario. I spent many hours helping him with the care and feeding of the migratory birds. My father taught me to respect wildlife and our natural environment. These were important lessons that later in life enabled me coexist with wildlife in the wild without invasive of their territory.
This sense of bonding is particularly visible in my photographs of eagles that I photographed in Seymour Narrows and Surge Narrows just out of Campbell River, British Columbia. These stretches of water are world renown for the ships that have perished in the extreme tidal currents and whirlpools that flow through the channel. These waters team with wild pacific salmon during the summer and make an ideal hunting ground for the bald eagle and other seabirds. Over my lifetime, I have expended thousand of rolls of film filming local eagles from my open boat in these waters.
I believe that the eagle is the master of the sky. The images I have seen through the lens of my camera are the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever seen. It’s magical to film this enormous bird of prey on the hunt or just soaring overhead with its huge six foot wing span. The size of fish that they will sink their talons into is often beyond belief.