Serving the East Kootenays, I bring over 25 years of photography experience to my work. Having graduated from the Western Academy of Photography in 1996, I began my photography career working for local newspapers on Vancouver Island as a sports photographer and editor. Back in those days, digital photography was an abstract notion that was just starting to gain traction. I vividly remember one of my colleagues at the time, describing the first digital Nikon D1 camera with a whopping 2.7 megapixels. Today, medium format cameras have well over 100 megapixels and high-end mirrorless cameras are well into the 60 megapixel range. While digital has revolutionized the photography industry and brought innovations where creativity is only limited by what the person behind the lens can envision, there is still something I miss about working with film. In the film days, you had to be much more precise with composition and settings as you only a maximum of 36 exposures before you would run out of film and have to replace it. Not only was it pricey, it was also time consuming and could often mean the difference between getting the shot you wanted or missing it altogether. There was little to no computer post production so almost all your creative work was done in camera. If you were lucky enough to have access to a photo lab where you could process your own negatives, you could do things like dodging and burning to either lighten or darken areas of the photo, which is now routinely done on Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop in a matter of minutes.
I have always loved the Rockies. I grew up in Ontario and always dreamed about coming out west to live in the mountains. When I was fifteen years old, I thought my dream was about to be realized as we made the decision to move to British Columbia (BC). Driving through Banff National Park, I remember watching a couple of wolves sprint over the highway and disappear into the trees. I was in awe of the magnificence and beauty that surrounded me. As we continued our journey west, my excitement grew more intense. However, that excitement would soon give way to disappointment as our destination was Surrey, BC. While there is nothing wrong with Surrey itself, it was just not what I had envisioned when moving to BC. I thought I would be surrounded by mountains with abundant wildlife everywhere. Instead, I was in the middle of urban sprawl and the mountains I thought I would be living next to, were well off in the distance. While I grew to like Surrey and made lasting friendships, I still had this overwhelming desire to live in the mountains.
My journey has since taken me to Vancouver Island where I lived for many years and from there I moved to Prince George where I went to university to become a registered nurse. It was there that I met my wife and after raising our three children, we made the decision to move to the Kootenays in 2017.
I have always had a deep appreciation for nature and wildlife. Photography has become my medium for recording my time in nature. I have been somewhat obsessed with photography since I was very young and can remember attempting to use my Dad’s old camera with a cheap, mismatched aftermarket lens, to try and get some deer photos. Needless to say, it did not work but the seed had been planted. After becoming a registered nurse, photography was relegated to a secondary income, and perhaps more of a hobby, but the obsession remained.
Aside from selling prints to pay the bills, I would also like to share my photography knowledge and skills by offering educational workshops ranging from novice to more advanced and everything in between. Another important goal of mine is to raise awareness about the plight of our natural world and the wildlife living within it. Through weekly blogs, I will tackle the often polarizing issues surrounding nature and wildlife in BC and how to best protect it.. I hope you will become a regular visitor to my website. Thanks for checking it out!
Jeremy Leete: Writer & Photographer