Preserved Light Photography

I knew from an early age that I would one day live off grid. When I was at university, I chose to skip my final exams, opting instead to visit a friend who was studying permaculture at a sustainable farm on BC's west coast. Living in harmony with the natural systems that we rely on for every aspect of our lives was the only way that made sense to me. What was the point of accepting a sports scholarship to go to a university that I didn’t want to be at so I could maybe get a decent job to pay for things that are polluting the planet but will impress people who are also secretly just as unfulfilled. It was clear a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle in the mountains was my personal path to freedom. I am so grateful that we were able to make this vision a reality when we bought our first home here in BC's southern interior. Relying on ourselves to generate our own electricity, pump our own water, and heat our home with wood from this land is incredibly empowering. Stepping back from modern society and living a simpler life on our own terms has benefited our mental well-being, deepening our reverence for what is truly important - connection to ourselves, one another and to nature. • • #offgrid #solaroffgrid #offgridliving #offgridhomestead #okanagan #explorebc #similkameen #ecoliving #explorecanada

Flying over the Naramata Bench and Okanagan Lake. You can find this photo on the cover of the new Naramata tourist map guide.⠀ #NaramataLove #Okanagan #ExploreBC

Having documented many wildfires with a camera over the years, this one was certainly the most visceral. We watched from our roof as 200+ foot flames circled us around the valley. At around 3:00am our neighbour’s home, just a few hundred meters away, was set ablaze as a lone ember sailed nearly a kilometre away from the fire front, landing in the grass below his house before igniting the wooden structure. When Alison and I saw his house burning from our backyard with no firefighters yet in sight, we decided to leave with our important documents and the dogs, accepting that everything else could be replaced. We were sure we would return to a pile of ash in the morning. At 8:00am we were temporarily allowed through a roadblock to check on the property, and when we saw that our house was miraculously still standing, we quickly mobilized to reduce the fuel around the property and braced ourselves for the fight we knew was coming. Fortunately for us, BC Wildfire Service, Keremeos & District Volunteer Fire Dept and countless other departments from across the province had arrived by the time the fire was licking at our doorstep. We also had good ol’ Clay (dad) to the rescue; bringing his 20 years of firefighting knowledge, a 1000 litre water tank, hoses and a pump to help with the fight. This dude is a beast! He had just finished a 12 hour shift at the mine and had another shift the next morning. Thank you Dad! When the fire came roaring down the hill, the three of us dug a fire guard but the flames were too intense and the candling trees made our guard obsolete. We retreated inside the fence line and fought alongside the BC Wildfire Service and the Keremeos & District Volunteer Fire Dept, doing our best to keep the fire on the ground and off the trees near the house. It was a long night battling the blaze with shovels, hoses, and buckets to push it back to the cliffs. Most of the fuel around our property is now burnt and it looks as if the worst is behind us. There are still some smouldering trees which are raining embers whenever the wind picks up but nothing we can’t handle by remaining calm, observant, and sacrificing a little more sleep if necessary...continued👇

Sunset over a frozen Yellow Lake. ☀️🌲

Wild ice skating at the local pond with @chadbrownlee 🏔️❄️

Views from the homestead.🌲🏔️

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are not mere spectacle, they are a quiet revelation of the universe’s hidden machinery. High above our atmosphere, charged particles from the Sun stream toward Earth at hundreds of kilometers per second. Most are deflected by our planet’s magnetic field, that invisible shield born from the molten iron churning in Earth’s core. But at the poles, field lines funnel these particles downward into the upper atmosphere. There, they collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms, exciting them. When those atoms return to their rest state, they release energy as light: green and red from oxygen, purple and blue from nitrogen. What we perceive as dancing curtains is physics made visible; electromagnetic fury translated into ethereal glow. In our age of constant notification and clamor, the northern lights remind us of an older truth: the most powerful realities often arrive wordlessly. The cosmos performs its greatest symphonies in perfect quiet, inviting us not to speak, but to listen. Stand beneath them long enough, and the boundary between observer and observed begins to soften. You are not separate from this display; the same stellar plasma that ignites the sky flows in your blood as iron and your breath as oxygen. The lights are not “out there”, they are a mirror of the same cosmic story we all share. Look up. Be still. The universe is already speaking. #northernlights #auroraborealis #okanagan #similkameen

Always enjoy seeing these Rocky Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) on the near-vertical cliffs near my property. The extraordinary climbing ability of these animals stems from their specialized hooves: • Cloven structure with toes that spread widely for enhanced balance on irregular surfaces. • Hard, sharp keratin rims that function as natural crampons, gripping microscopic cracks in rock. • Concave, rubbery pads beneath each toe providing suction-like traction on smooth or icy substrates. • Functional dewclaws that deploy for additional stability on slick terrain. These adaptations enable them to maintain secure footing on ledges as narrow as 5–8 cm (2–3 inches), even at high elevations. A remarkable example of evolutionary engineering in ungulate locomotion. 🏔️🐐

A beautiful morning for some environmental field work with @valleyhelicopters in the mountains above Hope, BC. 🚁🏔️

While watching a female black bear feeding in a meadow ~30 yards away, I turned around to find this young male watching me from ~15 yards. I gently shooed him away but because we both were downwind, he seemed very interested in why I smelled like a hot young female bear.

A perk of having a drone when you live out in the country is it comes in handy when looking for your dogs. Filmed some of the first snowfall scenery while I was up there. Now where’s that dang husky? 🐕🌲

Witnessed a rare moment while wandering through the woods: a Great Grey Owl (Strix nebulosa) shaking water from its wings after bathing in a shallow puddle. These majestic raptors, with their cryptic plumage and silent flight, maintain feather integrity through preening and occasional water immersion to remove dust and parasites. Nature’s quiet rituals never cease to amaze.🦉💧 #GreatGreyOwl #WildlifeBiology *This is a still image brought to life using Grok Imagine.