Diversifying Into Underwater Photography

Various career choices and businesses, and many years later, that dream started to coalesce. I had just started out in underwater photography in 2012 and I was looking for unique shooting subjects and locations. This led me to go swimming in some local ponds and lake margins. It was during this time I took what would become my iconic photograph for many years and led me to being nicknamed “the tadpole guy”. This image ended up being published in the April 2013 edition of the National Geographic magazine. This started a long relationship with them.  Over the years that image, and some others, were used in various books and tours that Nat Geo initiated.

Venturing into Filming Pacific Salmon

Later I started getting involved in filming Pacific salmon in the watersheds around Campbell River where I was living. Campbell River is located on Vancouver Island, on British Columbia’s West Coast. It is famously known as the Salmon Capital of the World. (If you want to learn more about this check out my films- Heartbeat of the River trailer and Salmon Capital Campbell River)

​The Great Migrations Series: Tadpoles and Salmon

One day I got an email from a production company in Bristol, England, and they wanted me to be on the crew for an epic international natural history series being developed by National Geographic. The working title at the time was Great Migrations. Tadpoles and salmon were to be my subjects. I felt confident I could deliver, and we started a long process of figuring out how we were going to get the shots they wanted for the story.

The summer of 2021 rolled around, and we got started. First off, we spent a couple weeks filming tadpoles migrating and metamorphosing into little toadlets. This entire story didn’t end up making it into the episode unfortunately. It is a shame as we got some incredible behaviour sequences of masses of tiny toadlets exiting the lake and making their way up into the forest. Oh well, maybe it will feature in a future episode.

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Immediately after that we tackled salmon. As this series depicted big animal journeys the idea was to get underwater footage of salmon at sea before returning to the rivers. We did not know if anyone had done this successfully. The bubbles and movement of a scuba diver scares the salmon in the open water, and they would not come near. So that was not an option.

We hatched a plan to use both a ROV and a tow camera to see if we could make it happen. I bought a small ROV and fitted it out with a cargo bay and synced my cinema camera into it so we could film high quality footage without actually being in the water. We figured that between these two options we would get something.

​The Wind Was Blowing in Our Favor

The first five days we spent in the hold of the boat staring at a blank screen of blue green water. My eyes started deceiving me and I thought at times we were moving backwards. There were lots of laughs, chocolate cookies, and tedium, but no salmon.

Then our intrepid boat captain and guide Bryan got us in a great area and the fish started arriving down the coastline. We got varying degrees of footage in open water and then tried for some coastal look with kelp in the scene. I will never forget the excitement and tension when we scored the epic shot in perfect conditions. With Connor running the ROV, myself operating the camera, and Megan watching and saying hold-hold-hold, we nailed it.

In the end a bit of this sequence and one other were used in the final edit.

Salmon’s Journey Up the River: A Spectacle of Tenacity

A month later when the salmon were in the river system our new crew of six people proceeded to capture this new chapter.  Schools of salmon swimming up the river and through rapids and leaping up waterfalls became our focus. I was tasked primarily on the underwater action and another cinematographer was shooting above water with high-speed cameras to get the action of leaping up the waterfalls.

Being around these fish for days on end as they relentlessly battle the obstacles in their way is humbling. I have filmed salmon for years and I never get tired of observing their tenacity and will to survive. After a short life at sea and making their way up the river they were hatched in, the salmon are ready to spawn. They do this act one time and then die. The privilege of seeing this many times has changed me as a film maker.

Capturing the Final Act: Salmon Spawning

It took me a few years of photographing and observing the last days of the salmon to get the moment of spawn on camera the first time. It then took two more years to figure it out to where I could say I would likely be able to film it in a given time period.

We decided that ten days would be sufficient to get a few spawns on camera. To do this meant setting up the camera in the river at a spot where I felt a pair of salmon were going to spawn. It would sometimes take a few hours of observing their behavior to see where this might be. Even still, sometimes I would set up on a pair and watch them all day on my monitor, with no action. I mostly used a camera crane to position the camera in the water beside the redd (nest where they lay the eggs). This allowed me to film them with the least amount of disturbance, and it also meant I stayed dry, sitting on the bank of the river a few meters away.

In the end I was able to capture seven or eight egg releases from varying angles.

Wild Encounters and Challenges

Solo to Team Endeavours: Filming with Professionals

Photo supplied by Megan Hokin-Bennet

The Dream is Just Starting

This incredible journey, from childhood dreams to international productions, underscores the passion and dedication that drive my pursuit of capturing the remarkable stories of our planet’s wildlife.