A PERSONAL NOTE FROM COLIN 

My photographic career is owed to the people, the landscapes and the animals that I have knelt before. I am witness, I am empathy and I am compassion. I honor all of those with whom I have shared time with in this beautiful world. I am who and what I am because of you. One word exemplifies each and every breath that I take on this earth, and that word is gratitude. I have been blessed with many awards and accolades, Tiffany Crystal Eagles, Emmy nods and a Knighthood. At the heart of my journey is the evolution of soul, transcendence. I'm simply in pursuit of living an authentic life. One filled with the joy of love, music, photographs and the written word. The effortless search for the divine in all that we do.

As witness, my belief is that I represent, as an emissary of sorts, the emotional energy that I have created with my photographs. The give back, the fulfillment of the infinite loop is to share how you can become involved. How you can take action. How you can make a difference. Explore, donate your time, your energy, and be a part of a growing movement where we all play a part. Your voice is needed...

 

 

BAHAMAS + GREEN VALLEY 

At low tide peak during full moon, my aerials from the reefs of the Bahamas turned the visage below into a desert landscape, almost glacial in its form. Liquid, moving, similar in color and form to the copper mine in Green Valley. The extraction process, the tailing ponds created, the environment in slow death, the coral in its slow death, engulfed by the fine silt traveling across the Atlantic settling onto and eventually killing the reef. As the desert of Sahara expands, so too does Green Valley. Our Environment, Our World, caught in an external world of expansion and contraction.

ARCTIC CIRCLE POLAR BEARS + ALBERTA TAR SANDS

The Polar Bears have crossed the threshold, and they are now on the endangered species list. On an even deeper level, the scientists that I spoke with shared that half the bears in my photographs would be gone by 2020. They know this because the female Polar Bear will not reproduce if her own life is in peril. Their further predictions are that the entire Hudson Bay Polar Bear population will be extinct by 2040 and that by 2060 the Arctic Ocean will have no ice left. In Alberta, two Province’s west, the feast of oil is in full bloom, on a scale so massive it's near impossible to fathom. Billion gallon tailing ponds dot the vast horizon. I see the Polar Bears being swallowed by our climate and the newfound oil of the tundra that lies beneath their paws. It seems everything sacred is for sale, and the earth, the forest and the tundra bears are simple resources to be consumed and regurgitated, and the end result is oil.  

LAKE MAGADI + SALTON SEA

Lakes and seas once teaming, now sleep dormant of life. Gone are the days of embracing the great migrations. Poisoned water now pervades, as algae strips the oxygen from the water. These two bodies of water used to be great desert sanctuaries, now they exist in symbiotic harmony as the new toxic oasis. The five hundred thousand flamingoes that used to winter here at Lake Magadi, have now been replaced by soda ash manufacturing. The once vibrant Salton Sea, is now a repository, a catch basin for a plethora of farm fertilizer run off and an ill-placed abattoir in Mexico. I comb through the air and I sift through the sand looking for my images. Abandoned to the solitude, as man once again triumphs over our ecosystem. Redemption, may I not find these visuals... May I be unemployed by the environment.