6 BC Instagrammers Share Their Fav's

By Kate MacLennan

Picture Perfect - Six BC-Based Instagrammers Share Their Favourite Haunts and Photo Stops

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. So it makes sense that Instagram, with its millions of worldwide users and heaven knows how many billion pictures, is speaking volumes about the people, places and things being shared on the social media platform. And when it comes to places, who better to capture a destination than the people who spend the most time in it? Six BC-based Instagrammers share their favourite must-see haunts, and the best shots to look for when you get there.

RYAN DICKIE @WINTERHAWK_IG

You’d be forgiven for looking at Ryan Dickie’s Instagram and thinking he’s already been everywhere in BC, but Dickie doesn’t feel like he’s even scratched the surface.

A new resident of BC’s capital city, he says, “There are a ton of provincial and regional parks in the Victoria area that I had no idea existed until I searched hashtags. One example is Gowlland Tod Provincial Park in Saanich, which produced my most-hyped photo. I saw a fellow Instagrammer post a few shots the day prior and I was like, ‘I gotta get there!’”

He has, however, seen his fair share of the province, and captured it on his Sony a7R mirrorless camera and a handful of lenses. “Everything compact for ease of mobility,” he says.

The breathtaking wildlife photography on his Instagram was his focus when he lived in Fort Nelson, in the far northeast corner of BC. That said, last year he expanded his view during a trip to northern Vancouver Island where hanging with big salmon, Orcas, a fin whale, humpback whales, then bears was all in a week’s work.

Back in Victoria, on southern Vancouver Island, he’s happily taken on more of what he calls “outdoor adventure style,” though he admits that the “heart of the Rockies” has been playing on his mind lately. “I would really like to make my way to the Mount Assiniboine area. The landscapes look so powerful!”

“It really has become a way of life for me — that drive to experience nature on a holistic level, living in the moment and being able to capture it to inspire others to do the same is what pushes me out there every day. Nature and outdoor photography is unscripted. What you see is what you get, and it’s up to you to capture it in a way that works for you.”

Then there’s his chocolate lab, Charlie, who doesn’t just make regular appearances on Dickie’s platform but plays the role of best supporting actor to BC’s grand lead. Charlie hiking in alpine meadows, Charlie on ocean beaches or beside calm lakes … “He’s just as much a part of the adventure as I am,” says Dickie.

VANESSA VALENTINE @V_VALENTINE_

“Nothing is quite as exciting as coming across an animal in the wild,” says Vanessa Valentine. “Many Canadians think I’m crazy to go out looking for bears, but I have fallen in love with them.”

Proof of her passion, the South African ex-pat’s Instagram account is peppered with pictures of black bears and grizzlies, as well as moose, porcupine, bighorn sheep and other famous Canadian fauna, all taken from a respectful distance using a 300mm lens. It’s also a library of lake images, each of them reflecting the unique, desert-meets-mountain landscape of BC’s Thompson Okanagan region, as well as Valentine’s fondness for her new home. “My favourite is the area around Kalamalka Lake, but I also enjoy other beautiful lakes in the area, such as Sugar and Mabel lakes. Honestly, everywhere you turn here you’ll find a lake,” she says.

Before moving to BC, Valentine and her husband spent three years travelling the world, and exploring is less a pastime than it is a calling for the couple.  “I wouldn’t call us well-planned explorers,” she admits. “For day trips we grab a map, pack a lunch and off we go. We drive down unmarked roads or routes that just look interesting. There’s so much diversity in BC that one doesn’t have to go too far to find another place of beauty to photograph.”

Her photography of the Okanagan’s secluded ranches, exquisite sunsets and wise-looking owls is a way to share her experiences with family and friends back home. Though the region’s bounty of vineyards and farm-fresh produce don’t make frequent appearances on her Instagram, Valentine admits they’re one more reason she loves it.

Usually, she pairs each picture with an inspiring quote — by everyone from Nietzsche and Paulo Coelho to Kurt Cobain and Dr. Seuss. Sharing knowledge and insights about BC with strangers over the social network is its greatest charm, she explains. “I’m currently making my way through a recommended list of waterfalls in the Okanagan area that was passed on to me by a fellow Instagrammer,” she says. “Every day through someone’s generosity of spirit I get to explore a slice of heaven that I’ve not yet been to.”

EMANUEL SMEDBØL @EMANUELSMEDBOL

From the first glance at Emanuel Smedbøl’s Instagram, it’s clear he’s an artist. To this point you’ll find a poetic image of a female figure reflected in a mountain puddle; a wood-paneled coffee house and two plump crullers on robin’s-egg blue plates; a dachshund posing on an expensive-looking armchair; and a fleet of 1960s-era Vancouver city buses in an abandoned town where nobody will ever board them again. In short, the entire platform is a map, directing you to many varied, beautiful things about BC.

“Growing up in the mountains and wilderness of BC’s West Kootenays was a very formative and lasting experience for me, but I was drawn to the coast, to the cities,” explains the freelance graphic designer. “I was always in awe of the buildings, the bridges, the lights, the people. It kind of seemed like a natural place to end up. But I do miss the Kootenays quite a bit. It is where I’m happiest.”

Smedbøl’s mix of urban and rural images, blended with stark landscapes and local culture, mirror BC’s unique balance of cosmopolitan cities and pristine wilderness. The province’s scope provides infinite opportunity for exploration and adventure, Smedbøl says, and Instagram is his tool for discovery. “It finds a very impassioned and receptive audience. People are eager to share the best that their region has to offer,” he says.

One of his favourite trips of 2014 was canoeing Slocan Lake in BC’s Valhalla Provincial Park for five days, which he documented on his Instagram. “I do it every year and it never gets old. We rent canoes from a guy in Slocan then set out, seeing barely anyone at all in some of the best wilderness I know. Canoeing is such a simple pleasure, with endless swims, brief thrilling storms and a comforting routine,” he explains. Then, a few images later, Smedbøl’s Instagram highlights spectacular First Nations art at Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology. Like BC itself, the diversity never stops.

As for getting the best shot? “Anywhere! Everywhere!” he says. Just get out of your car and into a café, onto the streets and lakes, into the mountains and you, too, will see.

JOSH MACKENZIE @TROUTHUSTLER

Josh Mackenzie was born and raised in the Cariboo, and once he even left the Cariboo for seven years, but the region called him back. “The lack of people and the availability of every type of terrain or biosphere that you can imagine is here, in the Cariboo Chilcotin,” he says. “In one day you can ski in the mountains, raft a river and bike dunes without seeing anyone but your own entourage.”

And so it’s there, in what could aptly be described as the middle of BC, where the province’s pioneering history is ubiquitous, that Mackenzie now happily passes his days. “I find it fascinating that you can be out hiking and stumble across remnants of old mining activity. There is a lot of history via the Gold Rush era. In 1865, Barkerville was the largest city north of San Francisco and west of Chicago,” he says.

Judging by the feedback on his Instagram account, however, Cariboo Mountains Provincial Park is one of the biggest draws of the region. It also happens to be one of Mackenzie’s favourite places to photograph. “It’s a remote section of our province largely unexplored by even the hungriest of adventurers. It’s not uncommon to do a first descent on a mountain peak with your splitboard, or to fish a lake or stream that has never had a line cast on it,” he confides. “It’s purely wild.”

The Cariboo is, admittedly, a low-key region, and Mackenzie also likes to pass the time cooking at home, making campfires and enjoying a pint from Barkerville Brewing Co. at The Occidental, Quesnel’s modest, premiere music venue. He’s a heavy-duty mechanic by day and a father 24/7 but he’s not, he stipulates, a professional photographer. “I don’t spend a lot of time planning a shoot or fussing with my camera. The terrain speaks for itself,” he says. Take the Bella Coola River, for example, where he fly-fished for coastal sea-run cutthroat trout last April. “The Chilcotin plateau was still coming out of one of the coldest, longest winters on record and it was already spring in the Bella Coola Valley,” he remembers. “It’s amazing going from solid winter on top of The Hill along Freedom Road near Heckman Pass, to spring at the bottom.”

His latest adventure? Mackenzie made his way to Isaac Lake, the largest in BC’s Bowron Lake Canoe Circuit, to try his hand at ice fishing “for monster lake trout and rainbow trout” and to splitboard some of the “enormous peaks that tower above this majestic lake.”

“As my experience grows, my adventures seem to be growing as well,” says Mackenzie. In a place like the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast, there’s no doubt.

TAYLOR LOREN & ELAINE RYSTEAD @LOCALWANDERER

The Vancouver, Coast & Mountains region of BC is quite literally Taylor Loren and Elaine Rystead’s playground. The pair, who live across the hall from one another in Vancouver’s heritage-chic Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, spend their days roaming around the region like it’s a larger-than-life jungle gym — one that is stunningly beautiful with killer coffee shops and microbreweries.

“We’re always meeting new friends and running into people, whether it’s at Dude Chilling Park [editor’s note: a real place!], coffee shops or the breweries just down the road,” the pair says, adding that for light and décor, you can’t get a better Instagram shot than “the white walls and succulents at 33 Acres, our local craft brewery.”

The duo shoot it all for Instagram on their iPhone 5s, whether that means dangling their legs off the launch pad of Whistler’s bungee bridge or downing currywurst at Bestie, in Vancouver’s Chinatown, to get the shot. “Everywhere you go in Vancouver is so beautiful. It has taught us how to shoot a variety of settings because it’s so plentiful in its beauty. Any overcast or rainy days are actually awesome for us because it’s the best light.”

While their favourite provincial travel experience last year was a trip to Canada’s surf capital Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island (“an amazing food scene and unreal beaches”), this year they have their sights set on the remote archipelago of Haida Gwaii, separated from BC’s most northern coastline by the Hecate Strait.

On weekends, it’s all about hitting the Sea-to-Sky Highway, “even if it’s just to take a drive up and spend a day roaming around Whistler Village or hanging out at Lost Lake or climbing the Stawamus Chief in Squamish.”

The pair, who are often travelling, say their Instagram community translates into a physical social network wherever they go, and that simply by reaching out to other Instagrammers they find people to hang and adventure with in places they’ve never been before.

Both women grew up in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland area, and, at the end of the day, it will always be home, sweet home. Here, nothing can trump finishing up a day’s work on their blog more than taking advantage of BC’s newly sanctioned Happy Hours at one of Vancouver’s many hip-and-happening craft breweries. “It’s an awesome community here.”

CHRIS GALE @WILDNORTHPHOTOS

If you’re a moose who’s fallen through ice into a frigid lake, Chris Gale is a good guy to have around. When the Northern BC-based photographer and a couple of friends happened to drive by a moose in just this predicament, they recruited the help of truck drivers and other motorists, lassoed the animal, and pulled it up a makeshift ramp to safety. Naturally.

But then, for Gale it’s really all about the animals. “I love looking into the eyes of a grizzly bear — through the lens — and capturing the expression on his face with just one click,” he says, acknowledging that photographing the northern lights in Northern BC’s Fort Nelson runs a close second place. “Watching the auroras dance in the sky, there’s no other feeling like it.”

So yes, Gale spends many days with the magnificent creatures of BC, regardless if they walk or fly about the province. He also has randomly uncovered archeological finds (a chert — or hard rock — micro blade), basked languidly in the Liard River Hot Springs on BC’s Alaska Highway and helped to make primitive fishing tackle on the Klua Lakes in northeast BC in the dead of winter. All of it is documented on his Instagram.

“When I’m going shooting I always bring my 200-400 telephoto lens. For landscapes I use my 24-70 wide-angle, awesome lens. The cameras I use for photography are Nikon. I own the D810, D7000, D7100 and I’ve usually got one of these with me at all times,” he says, laughing. Lest he be caught without one when he finally comes across a Spirit bear, BC’s famous and elusive Kermode bear, a subspecies of North American black bear with an all-white or cream-coloured coat.

A trip to the Northern Rocky Mountains Provincial Park with Muskwa-Kechika Adventures in 2013 stands out as one of “the most scenic and rugged trips I’ve ever been on.” Now, Northern BC’s culture-rich Haida Gwaii, a chain of islands off the province’s northern mainland, is on top of his bucket list.

Gale, who grew up fishing and camping along the historic Alaska Highway in the region, is also a songwriter, a competent equestrian and a family man who loves to take his three Labrador retrievers for runs by the river near his house. So no, he has no plans to leave his idyllic life in Northern BC — especially not now that Instagram can bring other worlds to him, right where he’s happiest.

Escape into BC’s mountains, to the coast and explore its vibrant cities before you even arrive by following @HelloBC on Instagram. When you visit, tag your photos #exploreBC. (We share our favourites!)