As much as most of my work is solitary, the best part of a lot of my work over the past 2 years has been travelling and working with my brother, Jamie. 

You can follow him on instagram here

He has been my navigator, my photo assistant, my voice of reason and my support system when we were an hour outside Calgary 2 days behind schedule on our road trip across Canada with a flat tire, broken oil pan, and a deadline to meet only a few hours away (full story to come in a later post). He always knows what to say and when not to say anything at all. He knows when to remind me about our schedule and what shots we still need to get before the sun goes down. He started out as a travel companion, ended up becoming my assistant and somehow brought us closer together through all of this without either of us resenting each other. That in itself is a greater accomplishment than most people I know can claim to their name.

Photos of Jamie from our trip as well as a few shoots that he’s assisted me on

In the summer of 2015, my brother had graduated high school and was trying to find some direction in what he wanted to do with his life. We spent a weekend camping on the Niagara escarpment about 45 minutes from our hometown. After a day of hiking and making some pasta with our new camp stove, we started talking about the future and what he wanted to do after high school. One of the things he told me was that outside of a few family vacations we went on as kids, he had never really seen anywhere other than southern ontario and he really wished he could do some travelling before going off to college.

I had been in the process of planning a road trip across north america since I was about 16 and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally make it happen. We made a deal that he’d get a full time job to save up for the trip and we’d keep this a secret until closer to when we were leaving. We didn’t need to have anyone try to talk us out of it and we both agreed this was exactly what we wanted to do.

Photos from our trip from Toronto to Los Angeles

We originally planned for Jamie to travel with me all the way to Vancouver. His leg of the trip would be a month long and I would continue on for 2 months after doing the west coast and the southern United States. By the time we got to Yellowstone, we realized that if we kept going at the rate we were travelling, we were going to make it to Vancouver in 3 weeks instead of a month. To the logical person, that would mean going home early and saving some extra money but to us, it meant we could keep up this fast paced travel and he could see some of the west coast.

First we rescheduled so that he would fly home from Seattle, then it changed to Portland, then we finally decided he’d stay with me all the way to LA. By the end of the 6 weeks he was with me, we had crossed the continent and driven the entire west coast from Vancouver right down to Los Angeles, hitting all of the national parks along the way.

I learned a lot when I was travelling with my brother but I learned a lot more after he left. I learned that the greatest places you’ll see are only as good as the people you share them with. My favourite locations I visited in my trip were in Arizona, after Jamie had gone home. However, my favourite memories from my trip were the ones I made with my brother. We had learned how to live together in a Jeep on a tight budget and a shower or two a week. We were living the most simplified life we could possibly manage and we only ended up closer after all of it.

Photos from a few of the shoots that Jamie assisted me on

When I got back from the trip and started getting a lot more photo work, there was only one person I wanted to work with and only one person I trusted to help me stay on schedule and make sure the entire shot list was accounted for. To this day, he’s still my first pick for help any time we can manage it. We still make videos together in our free time and we’re planning more trips for the future.

So if I have any advice for someone who wants to start travelling more it would only be to find someone you can travel with. Someone you know well, someone you can trust, someone who knows when to help and when to let you figure things out for yourself.

Jamie and myself on peak 1 of the Stawamus Chief

As much as I loved seeing the sunset at the grand canyon, the memory was a fraction of what it could have been if I still had my brother with me. Trust me, being in the middle of nowhere (Montana) with a friend is better than being to the place of your dreams (Horseshoe Bend) by yourself. At the end of the day, you still have to go get dinner, find somewhere to sleep and figure out the route for the next day and those all get pretty boring when you’re taking them on alone.