The Migration

This series is particularly close to my heart.

Back in 2016, I was travelling, taking some time off my then job in the music industry. I went to visit my friend Amy in Yellowknife, Canada, and was mainly photographing the northern lights (amazing place for that). But we'd heard about this 3000+ strong reindeer herd in Inuvik and the fact that for the last 80+ years, there had been a crossing happening every year that local communities, as well as Canadian TV, would religiously attend. So off we go to Inuvik, hoping to meet the herd, and surely enough fate helped, as Lloyd, the herd owner, happened to be our host's neighbour.

He very nicely agreed for us to go and sleep in one of his cabins with the herders so we could spend some time with the reindeer, unfortunately a couple of blizzards forbade us from doing so. But on the day of the actual migration, Lloyd gave us a life to the herders, who took us at the back of their skidoos and moved the herd along. An experience I will never forget, and although they are not 100% wild, that experience definitely put the wildlife photography bug in my body, and for that I will never thank Lloyd enough.

What is the migration? The herd was left to roam the tundra around the frozen Mackenzie river in the winter, and when time came, before the river turned back to water, and as part of the yearly Inuvik spring jamboree, the herders would bring the reindeer to Richards Island, where the females would be safer for giving birth and where the herd would spend the summer.