My love of the outdoors might have begun when I was 7 living in the boreal forest of Churchill Falls Labrador in 1970. It was only for a little over a year, but my memories are indelible and almost exclusively of the outdoors. Through four Canadian seasons, I played in the forest and muskeg just across the gravel road in front of our company town trailer – adventure that fueled my imagination.

I spent the rest of my school life in Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta, with minimal access to wild places. Toward the end of university I was able to start exploring our majestic Canadian Rockies – hiking, climbing, mountain biking and skiing – and I slowly developed a deep appreciation for the stunning beauty and size of our Western Canadian wilderness. In addition to exploring locally I began to travel to other parts of the world and developed a taste for self-guided travel. In addition to ongoing regional explorations I undertake journeys to other parts of the world which have become quite extensive over 10 years covering hundreds of thousands of kilometers. I’ve encountered enormously diverse cultures and environments in South America, Central America, Western Europe, Turkey, India and closer to home through much of western Canada (including the Arctic) and the United States. There are so many magnificent and interesting places to explore in the world and figuring out how to get around in foreign lands can be as exasperating as it is exhilarating. (I once did charades with a Czech woman pushing a baby carriage; I was trying to ask where we were on a map I showed her.) However, the more I explore the more I am reminded of how lucky I am to live in Calgary and that nothing in the world feels more beautiful than what is an hour’s drive west of my home.

My career as a software developer and later as a development manager has been a fortunate one. In 1990 I had the opportunity to become one of three founders of a little company in Calgary to build an oil & gas exploration software package called AccuMap. The success of that product took off in 1993 and the product is still being used by many professionals today in the Calgary oil patch. In 2006 that journey came to an end and a new one began to unfold. Since then I’ve had more good fortune to exclusively pursue my love of travel and photography.

Like many, my photography interest started with point and shoot film camera then progressed to SLRs (Nikon and Pentax K1000) using slide film. The cumbersome nature of film and organizing all those slides kept my photography fairly minimal until I was “exposed” to digital on a trip through Europe with my friend Grant in 2000. He had a 2 megapixel Olympus point and shoot and it showed me the early possibilities of digital. I got a Canon G2 in 2002 and the photography bug started to take hold. Since 2004 I’ve been using various Nikon digital SLRs. Processing my photographs in the “digital darkroom” is always evolving and improving. I’ve gone from shooting jpegs with minimal edits to now exclusively shooting raw. I primarily use Adobe Lightroom for most of my organization and image processing needs, but I’ve also used and experimented with other software packages and techniques.

Photography is an endlessly engaging and enriching endeavor. There is a lot to learn and so many accomplished people in this field to learn from. I enjoy the process of self-discovery and from the beginning of this pursuit, and I’ve reminded myself to lean toward my heart and instinct as part of the learning process. My primary objective in all of this is to find places that fill me with wonder. It doesn’t matter if they are easy or hard to get to, popular or not, the important part is to open my senses to the moment. Sometimes it requires hiking an hour or two before dawn to see the sun rise in a magical spot. Getting the photograph is important too, but somewhat secondary to just enjoying where I am. My thinking is that if I focus too much on “getting the shot”, I miss the experience – it’s a delicate balance.

I have recently entered some photography contests and was fortunate to receive an honorable mention in the Canadian Geographic 2007 Photo Contest for my “North Klondike Valley” photograph of the Yukon. I also received an honorable mention in the CBC Nature of Things – Nature in Focus Environmental Photography Competition for my photograph titled “Contemplating the Wave”.

I want my portfolio to reveal the many faces of the wilderness. I’d also like my photographs to trigger some positive feeling by conveying enduring and sometimes fleeting beauty, wonder and magic in the world. When you look at one of my photographs, I hope to convey a sense of appreciation that these places exist and are worth honoring.

- Marc