About Paul
I grew up on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada, where we were one of the few non-Inuit families living in a small Inuit settlement. The Inuit taught me to survive in the Arctic, read the weather, and, more than anything else, appreciate patience. As a kid without television, radio, and computer games, my friends and I would spend all of our waking hours in the hills watching wildlife, weather, and the light play shadow games across the landscape. At that young age, the seed to become a nature photographer was deeply planted.
In my fourth and final year of studying marine biology at the University of Victoria, I couldn't focus on preparing for my genetics final exam. Instead of studying, I had a revelation. I wrote feverishly on scrap paper, outlining a potential career as a nature photographer right down to the tiniest detail: species, locations, goals, dreams, travels... and the list goes on. As expected, I failed the exam miserably (thankfully, I passed the course). But, more importantly, I had a blueprint for a career filled with passion and hard work. It is eerie how much of what I wrote that night has come true.
After University, I worked in the Northwest Territories for four years as a wildlife biologist, studying numerous unique species such as lynx, grizzly bears, and polar bears. Over time, I became impatient with data collection. I remember one particular polar bear tagging expedition as being especially frustrating for me. We'd traveled more than 6,000 miles by snowmobile, witnessing polar bears catching seals and white wolves eating bearded seals, and all I had to show for it was a series of data points on sheets of paper. After that expedition, I resigned from the Department and embarked on a three-month solo journey into the Arctic with the bears, wolves, and open sky. I documented this journey with my camera, realizing on this trek that, rather than work as a biologist, I could better serve wildlife populations by becoming a nature photojournalist. My images could tell the stories of polar landscapes.
My goal is to bridge the gap between scientific research and the public by producing stories for magazines such as National Geographic.