Interview with Bruce Kirkby

Despite having travelled to more than 80 photogenic countries, Bruce Kirkby says he was blown away by the beauty of the valleys and creeks of the remote Darkwoods property near his home in Kimberley, B.C. The 55,000-hectare wilderness is the largest private conservation land purchase in Canadian history and Kirkby visited the woods 10 times to capture their splendour. His work has appeared in Maclean's, Outside and National Geographic, which called one of his shots a "Top Adventure Photograph of the Decade."

		PHOTOGRAPHER Bruce Kirkby A completely self-taught photographer and writer, Bruce Kirkby has published two books about his world travels. And rest assured, when he isn't traveling, he's having some kind of outdoor adventure. To see more photos from Kirkby's shoot in Darkwoods, check out the January/February 2011 issue of Canadian Geographic or visit his website to see more work.
View photo gallery Tips from photographer Leave a comment

Q The Darkwoods are so remote, what was it like to photograph there?

AThe bull trout in some of my shots were pretty spooky. If I moved they'd disappear quickly. One female had a thing for my underwater dome port. She kept rubbing against it and her big, male partner would torpedo out at me from under this little waterfall with his mouth gaping open.

The big challenge on this shoot was the split shot that I took underwater. I needed to buy a dome port which requires me to use a small aperture when shooting, making it easy to blur the shot. And add to that the fact that I had to deal with low light too.

Q Did you have any trouble travelling through the Darkwoods?

AThere was one trip that was just a horror show. My wife was eight months pregnant; my son was three. We got a flat on the way in and it was a son of a gun to change. It was a fully loaded pickup on a road that had these big rock quarry trucks booming by. There are 40 cabins within the Darkwoods property that are on year-to-year leases at a place called Tye. The Nature Conservancy of Canada, which owns the land, has one of those cabins.

When we got there the door had been pushed open and a skunk had sprayed inside. It was pretty filthy. The beds just smelled like they'd been slept in for about 30 years. When I got up the next morning, I took my son to the beach and there were 5,000 mosquitoes. It was dirty and stinky, and we couldn't get the stove or the lights to work.

QWhat are your favourite places to shoot?

AI have three favourites. The first is Canada's North. We have a real gem here in Canada. This soulful, beautiful wilderness just begs to be photographed. But I also have an affinity for Burma and Bhutan. Both places are exceptionally photogenic.

QWith all its political troubles, what was it like shooting in Burma?

A I was in an area called the Mergui Archipelago, which is on the southern coast. It's off limits; much of Burma is off limits. But they allowed a European sea kayak company to operate on two of the islands. I went in to do an article about that company and part of my deal was that after a week-long trip at their base camp that I would be able to take off and poke around.

When I arrived, the army said "you can't do this, there's no permission." So I had a talk with the head guy named Cedric who, luckily, was also a complete rule breaker. I remember him saying, "Well, if he has the food, and if he has the vodka, I'm not sure they said not to go specifically, so if we go right now then we don't know any better."

I took off and within an hour the authorities were looking for me. I was able to evade them for about seven days. But they finally found, incarcerated, berated and kicked me out of the country. I was never scared for my personal safety, but I witnessed the heavy-handed oppression of a military regime. At times I felt like I was in a Rambo movie. The people there really deserve a more open, gentler government.

QHow do you put so much colour into your work?

AColour is one of the things that interest me the most. I've always felt slightly simplistic for that because you can find a lot of more nuanced shots. I scanned a lot of my favourite shots from before I went digital and they're just like looking in a crayon box bursting with colours. I would say it has to do with light and subject and nothing to do with the lens.

QWhat do you look for in a good photograph?

ASubjects and perspectives that I haven't seen before, which is getting rarer because we all have access to Google Images and can see hundreds, if not thousands, of photos every single day. Yet, amazingly enough, I still see images out there every couple days that I look at and think, "Wow! Why didn't I think of that?" When you first start shooting you're into taking pretty photographs. But with time I've become most interested in gritty, real moments. The humanity of the moment: someone grimacing when they're eating sour sardines, putting on a wet boot in the morning or picking at a blister.

Interview by Mandy Savoie