Here is an easy to grab a hold of philosophy: if people can change an environment through their own choices and decisions, then should people not also be influenced by their environment?

Let’s face it, hot environments mean a certain type of clothing, but also how a person interacts with that heat on a personal level. Same with a very cold environment right? Those extremes leave easily recognizable examples of how people must alter their own behaviour, transportation, what they eat and where they sleep. It molds who they become.

Political and cultural extremes can also alter how a person engages with their surroundings as well. Look no further than the countries of Asia and the tumultuous history and degradation individual generations have endured? The great wealth of kingdoms of the past. Poverty and income inequality have hardened people, but have also brought with it a happiness in more simple things perhaps? An enviable outlook to life’s past, present and future by that of a Western mind maybe? Probably something to learn for Earth’s wealthy minority?

It is an environment that surrounds people which molds them into beings that endure and seek riches beyond gold and gems: family, tradition, a sense of purpose and creativity. It brings with it vibrant, lurid colours. It finds spicy and eclectic flavours in food and drink. Smells are both inspiring and repugnant. Music and the arts make up a cultural mosaic that tells of history and place.

Ancient cultures find their way to the present in much of these places. Myriad of folklore and customs meld and overlap with one another to form a blanket of humanity and commonality. Yet the difference found by travel, however minor, are blatant to the discerning and sensitive voyager.

Lastly, let’s not forget that by actually being there, visiting those locations, we are now indelibly and irreversibly linked to that environment and therefore to the people there. Like the Butterfly Effect, we cause ripples in the pond, altering the fabric of those people, just as we are altered by them. Making the most of this exchange appears to be the only way to reconcile?

My photography work has existed for me as a way to find and make that connection a more visceral one. This collection is meant to do exactly that. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have in being lucky enough to be there to capture and feel these moments?

Seeing the world is a privilege that is part luck and part effort. Of course you can see and even photograph people just right outside your door. You can take them for a coffee and ask ridiculous questions that uncover their psychology and history. You can get bold and ask to meet the rest of their family. You can ask total strangers all around you to help you out or show you something. Doing this all around the world is great fun, but at some point your journey becomes your destination, You need a place to go so you can meet all of those people right?

The other part of this is that sites mean something. They connect people to their past and future. These places elicit the kind of pride that makes each one of us belong and have purpose in the countries and locations we connect ourselves to. These sites often have a way of changing citizens that choose to represent themselves with it.

Those same places can sometimes have a magic to them that changes you as an observer. I remember the first time I went through the gates of the Taj Mahal, or ballooned over the ancient city of Bagan. These locations took my breath away. I was stunned! I was smitten and in love: chest tight and hair on my arms rising in pleasure. I had to sit down and just look. Seeing the city of Angkor in Cambodia was another moment where I knew that at 5am when none of the tour buses were around and all you could hear were birds…that all of a sudden I was the explorer seeing it for the first time. The trip to Angkor was immediately extended from 3 days to 10.

Everyone loves a good road trip. Mine was across the White Sand Desert of Egypt in a 4x4 listening to a heat warped cassette of Billy Ocean’s 1984 album Suddenly - Kaled’s only tape. Sleeping out on the sand or in deserted and dusty 1930 hotels was an experience worth the pain of getting there.

Balancing on the lip of a staircase of rice paddies while smelling the smoke of fires clearing debris was a memory I kept coming back for time and again. Putting my hands on the towering 326 foot, 2500 year old Schwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar encrusted with its 4531 diamonds (biggest is 72 carats), 2317 rubies and entirely covered in solid gold plates was a life highlight everyone needs to do.

One thing I am not a proponent of, however, is bucket lists. Everyone should think about going to see something and having a goal, but too many times I see travellers hitting 3 or 5 sites a day on a tour designed to tick a box. It’s great that people see these places, it’s certainly worth doing that. To feel what those places have to offer you as a person, you have to be open to that message and in my experience, that doesn’t come inside of an hour. You also can’t take a piece of that experience away in the form of a T-shirt or a trinket - my opinion.

At times, it is advisable to risk not seeing something thoroughly by not taking a guide. Just go and take your childish curiosity with you. Let your guard down and let the place take you were it wants you to go. Unleash inhibitions and open your senses up. Only then should you take your camera out and try to capture not only what you see, but the love that you are feeling at that moment.

To me, there is a fine line for what constitutes a portrait or not. In my case, it spurs from a feeling and a memory. At once it is the contractual feeling that you have entered into: a pact or a promise.

In asking people for a photo and them posing themselves the way they want to be seen, there is an engagement that follows. This doesn’t happen through a long lens that looks to steal a candid moment. Journalists the world over know that you must first know the story and for that you need to be intimate with the subject and hear them. Once that elusive feeling of warmth and understanding, without judgement ,happens then simply take two steps back and take the picture. When you feel that same intimacy come through the lens and you feel it fill your chest, you are at your destination.

Judgement is the barrier that keeps even true explorers from finding why they are in that place. It is not the discovery, but your own emotional growth - a connection that must be felt rather than seen. Places are not a simple destinations. The place can only be felt through the people that you touch and spend valued time with.

Staying in the moment may be one of the most difficult things that we do as humans. Many of us know only too well of the feeling of need: the drive towards success, the amassing of proof of life and the desire for adventure after adventure. It takes everything you have to be in the moment and to see inside people and hear what they are telling you. Each and every person has something to teach.

I seem to instantly love and cherish those that are willingly submit to this brief connection. These portraits make me feel vulnerable beyond comfort. They are a lifeline to a poor memory.

It seems to me that animals of all kinds have interactions with people. Not every animal, just those that cross our paths as humans. Some we commandeer for ourselves and they become workers, or food, or a companion. In a way, they become reliant on us or we of them on occasion.

Humans build, grow or raise animals and we do this in the image we choose many times. But that is a little cynical maybe? Try this on then….and this time let’s maybe be more charitable….we share this Earth with them.

Either way you look at animals, we may just need the ones around us as much as we need them. In many cases, they are our friends. Like humans, they take on traits of their own: personalities, humour, frustration, sadness, comforting, mothering, quieting. If treated with respect, they grow in confidence. If treated with love, trusting.

When they are gone from our lives we cease to be as complete as we once were. When we are surrounded by them, our spirits are lifted and we become better for it.

It really is hard to quantify how deeply animals impact us, or how we impact them, but we can’t live without each other. Animals provide and we take. We need and animals provide: sustenance, worker, companion.

It is important to try and document this interaction. Not in as much as it shows the majesty or either animal or human, but what that interaction means and hopefully how it feels. I hope to elicit emotions, sometimes good and other times not. But in the end there is a story there worth telling.

For those that know me, the arts of cultures around the world are a deep passion of mine. My collection of various art forms and ethnographic pieces crowds my walls. The faded, muted colours of puppets, earth-toned tribal masks, paintings and etchings and sketches stuff wall space and cardboard tubes in storage. Some people buy souvenirs, this is what I use to remember.

To say that the arts were important is an understatement, however despite that, much of these artists are getting old and not able to find replacement artists to follow or learn. Sometimes it is because something else comes along of easier entertainment, like movies. Other times people won’t pay for the months or years it takes to make these things from hand. Plastic manufacturing has replicated these things, or machine looms, or synthetic man-made cloth is fast and cheap. Children, even in far flung destinations want more. They see a bigger world that calls to them with adventure on its breath. “There is no money in it” and “that is what my father or mother does…I have other things” is what you commonly hear.

Generations that did see that these items could be sold to passersby set about finding ways to make them quicker, at times in factories and occasionally out of untreated wood of coloured dyes that bleed.

Rare indeed to find a true to themselves artists and to see them you must search through more and more from those that will never be that. You must be patient and assess, learn and keep going so that you can know what gold looks like when you find it. Experience, your eyes and your fingers will tell you if you are seeing something beyond monetary value.

When you find a wood carving or a carpet that touches you back, A thing that took months or years to make, and you have the means, grab it! If you can’t, then soak it up. Take a seat and watch and appreciate. Chances are you will never see this skill again and when you go back there years later you realize, like cultural details themselves, it has disappeared and a trip to a dusty book in your local library may be the only way to understand the immense beauty and contribution artists have made.

I myself have no religion. I somehow never was around it that much and never grew up to understand the need. It is elusive either consciously or unconsciously? There, I guess it’s out there now….can’t take it back. Yet I feel no shame for it either? I don’t feel less full or less empty.

Now that I have that out there, let me please inform you that I am obsessed with religion. I am utterly fascinated by how it informs, leads, directs and comforts those that find themselves through it. Those that go headlong into it with seemingly no consideration for much else at that moment. Those fortunate people have a depth to them that looks superhuman - a super hero - with powers and all. There seems to be a peace that comes from that dedication. There is more achieved within themselves.

I am not saying religion makes a person better or even makes them a better human necessarily, but their power inside them, for the truly dedicated, can be an awesome thing to feel.

The rituals, holidays, festivals and daily routines are nothing short of fantastical. They are romantic, loud, sometimes terrifying, colourful, crowded and warm. Often these events are littered with complicated and unimaginable stories. Stories of war, deep love, symbolism and a cornucopia of food and drink.

It is virtually impossible to pick my favourite pictures around this topic. I have many over 20 years of seeking this out in order that I might capture this “thing”. I am certain now that the photo must first be felt however. I am only following that feeling as it leads me to perfect light somehow? If these pictures have a modicum of the connection I received in them for you the viewer, then I love that we were able to get to know each other here.

Music has defined moments in my life. My first real record album purchased with my own paper route money was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. I still remember the hard cardboard wrapped in clear cellophane and what Apple would later call the “out-of-the-box” feeling of opening it up to play. I ran to my portable mono record player and slammed the jet black disc onto the platter. It’s music was so different from the child-like disco I had been grooving on. The sound brought my father into the room and we listen together….music that finally spoke to the both of us.

Those that play music are not usually rich or famous. They never get to stand with Stevie Nicks and play along to the world’s defining moments. They play instead for the love of it - for pure joy. Who can blame them for trying to earn a living from this, but that is not the cure to their illness?

Everyone wants to make their fortune doing what they love. For the very talented and fortuitous, this luck comes their way. The rest must find it in themselves to progress and find ways to connect with others through notes, verse and rhythm.

I find photographing those musicians that live and work closely to their heart rather than their brain, to be most fascinating. They inspire. I love to support them in time, and on occasion with money. I am still unsure on which they value the most. I believe them to be the ultimate rebels - breaking silence, spanning colour and noise, forming words with no voice.

What else feels better than gettin’ your groove on? Nothin’ that’s what!

This might be the most difficult thing to photograph because it doesn’t always capture fun, or motion, rhythm and passion release. Yet it is all of these things and more to let your body behave like maybe your mind doesn’t care anymore what everyone thinks.

This crazy body motion takes courage to get going, but once you realize you are started already, it just gets a hold of you. In a weird twist of fate, the more you let go and just don’t give a shit anymore….you are having more fun that you maybe deserve.

It also takes practise to not look like your father just took over your body. Getting your hands in the air seems to be the first step to getting rid of the strange shuffling that looks like you could be hanging from the end of a rope by your hair. The next is getting those shoes further apart before attempting the most dangerous of steps which it to move those shoes around. Et Viola, you got it going’ on!

I forgot to mention that you should start the music first. Try something with an African beat then maybe add a little hip hop muscle, maybe a brass section - there you go….you got it now!

More dance styles than languages in the world. Don’t you think your brain deserves a break. Get out there and shake it.

Factories around the world are something I struggle with. At what point does a passion for creating or inventing become something larger than that single idea? When a craft becomes industry is it still a craft? When a food is made by machine rather than by hand, can it still be a work of love? Factories find the very old, but mainly you see the young and strong - the most resilient of our species.

What are the pressures that find this person working in such an environment? Do they resent their work or do they find a comfort in predictability and maybe a different kind of passion for doing something well? Does their mind wander to the future the same way it does for the rest of us? Maybe its that very future that keeps them coming back for more?

One thing is for sure….they are often better people for it. People to admire. People with pride for the existence they have created for themselves. I have met children working in these difficult situations that are proud that their dollar or two a day job is 5 or 10 times what their father makes farming. Often you hear workers talking about being part of a larger family. They are not here alone, but share air with people they trust and can grow with. Enviable words that come from the heart. There exists a type of happiness that is difficult to reconcile for a Western mind. These are difficult working conditions, often in squalor or disarray. Thankless work for little money as it appears to our own fortunate sensibilities. Outsiders want to come to the rescue for the sake of fairness and support. Those ideals and values when placed beside these people and their work are often incongruent with the reality of the situation.

I have found in my travels and interest in meeting these people, that they regularly have more to celebrate than many of the rest of us and rejoice in what they have every day. Their fulfillment in life can be beyond that of the less common man. Casting away judgements, as needs to be the case for all successful storytellers, continues to be a challenge worth pursuing.

This all started with a friend, Tom, insisting that I go to a Pow Wow and Rodeo at the local Tsuut’ina Reservation. I went 5 hours before the event hoping to meet some of the participants and document their stories. Not usually finding inspiration to free my camera from its bag with the city I live in, I decided to take a chance. Now I am hooked and try to make any Pow Wows that are close enough to drive to. Over time, I begin to meet these competitors and cultural ambassadors and some have come to recognize me as well.

Who would have guessed that this would be so inspiring to me and my camera? I always thought that finding people of this kind of character, depth of pride and connection to their own history was something you had to travel far to see. I was wrong in the most spectacular way.

Not in any of my travels have a met a more giving culture as is North America’s “originals”. You can feel the fight in each of them to maintain a culture that is not protected by law or maybe not even encouraged by the greater population. They are giving of their information and trusting to a fault. They enjoy the exchanges in sharing their religion and memories. Philosophy comes naturally and intellectual thought comes with a healthy side of respect.

The Pow Wow is a gathering in as much as it brings people throughout North America to compete in dancing, regalia (costume) and music. You can try authentic Native American foods and listen to their drumming and singing. The colours are jarring and lurid. The drum beats paint a pastiche of the past that flashes through the mind. An easier time with a symbiotic relationship with nature and a person’s own being.

My own idea of what it is to be Canadian has changed irreversibly. These events bring me to an understanding of what it is to belong to a place, a nationality. It presents me with a story that is all our own as Canadians and not a replication of our Southern neighbour. It makes me want to discover my own differences from the world.

Lastly, I think of ways in which this culture doesn’t need to be assimilated in any way. It should be able to survive, but may need help in doing so. Every North American must be proud of this culture and encourage its growth and prosperity. Equally, the indigenous populations need to establish their place and find ways to show their own pride, not just to other indigenous persons, but to their brothers up and down the continent and those in the rest of the world. There is so much more that you can teach us!

Sometimes colour doesn’t work in a picture. Not every time is this explainable. Mostly it is the photograph that tells you if this is what it wants? Is that possible or do I sound crazy there?

Sometimes it is this older, vintage nature of the capture. Sometimes it is the absolute charcoal blackness of the shadows and the depth that it brings; other times it brings a sheer and visceral documentary feeling to the image. It makes an image more serious or at least to some viewers, it makes it worth staring at and considering more? They search for deeper meaning in its monotone.

As I have found recently, however, some blacks are not always black and whites not white. Sepia sometimes can be overdone and used heavy handedly…so a picture looks like it is from the old west or from the very first time a camera made it into tribal locations. In playing with tones, it isn’t really my intention to do any of this. If that is what it brings you and it works, then I am happy. Still I find there is a “rustiness” or a “hay” quality that adds to the texture of a photo.

I alter days where I think in black and white and this sometimes helps me frame a shot. Yet my aim here is to capture not just the picture but the smells, sounds and touch of the place - like putting it in your pocket and taking it home.