For many nature photographers, a love of nature comes first and the camera second; my story is slightly different. Growing up, my parents fostered a love of the outdoors in my siblings and me. We spent time outdoors camping, exploring, working, fishing, and hunting. While I did enjoy certain parts of the outdoor experience, I never developed a relationship with the land. So, inevitably, when I left home, university and, later, full-time employment and family life in the city were my primary lived experience. 

Thinking back, I can see snippets of enjoyment in the created world throughout all those times. Enjoyment in the backyard garden, the thrill of chasing after powerful thunderstorms, ski trips to the mountains, biking to and from school each day, watching the sunset from the deck, and walking the family dog in the nearby park. Above all else, I believed, and still do, that nature points to something larger than myself, namely, Jesus Christ. While nature did not play a dominant role in the majority of my life, I have always admired its complexity and grandeur. 

Fast forward to nearly five years ago. Our young family took a trip to the United Kingdom; as we explored, I was struck by the vivid beauty of the countryside. I had just started an Instagram account and posted a few quick phone snaps of the landscape to my account. I even included a couple of cute hashtags.

The thrill of immediate feedback on my imagery in the form of likes affected me. To my chagrin, I spent the rest of the trip and subsequent several months of my life attempting to create photographs that would lead to more social media engagement. There’s a funny thing about likes, there is never enough. Eventually, the cell phone captures and quick iPhone edits weren’t raising my social media stature; I invested in a new DSLR that promised to take my photos to the next level.

In my vain pursuit of recognition, I began to submit photos to a thread on Reddit. The caveat: no posts that included man-made elements. Until then my portfolio consisted of whatever old building, vehicle, or fence post I could find at sunset or happened to line up with the milky way. There were many reasons for this, ease of access and laziness probably chief among them.

Almost immediately after I decided to abandon the abandoned buildings to pursue untouched nature I encountered a problem: a lack of public wild spaces near Regina, Saskatchewan. Much of the surrounding landscape has been stripped for agriculture and what pockets of wild nature still existed were only tiny swaths of woodland. My research led me to locate the best of the hiking networks around Saskatchewan and I began to trade my heated car seats for hiking boots.  I spent time in Saskatchewan’s southwest, hiking networks around Regina, and exploring locations in the nearby Canadian Rockies. 

What began as a selfish pursuit for acceptance and recognition started to change course. I don’t recall a specific moment of making a mental switch but slowly, over time, the quiet moments in nature began to shape me. Nature photography stopped being a pursuit of self and became a way for me to connect with the land, emotionally and spiritually; to creatively express myself, and to share the experience with others.

I began to once again realize that nature in its wild, untouched state points to something greater than myself. It is this motivation that now drives me to wonder, explore, and photograph. Purpose beyond a superficial, self-centered pursuit of recognition began to shape my work. I started to grasp my why for each photograph: a simple celebration of the beauty of the created world, an abstract representation of what it means to be human. In each case I’m motivated by something greater than myself which drives the distinct emotional response of wonder and awe, leading to a richer experience of the natural world and shaping my art.

You may or may not agree with my primary motivation; I am not here to influence you that my driver is the right one. Art is chiefly concerned with the question of meaning: the meaning of existence generally or the meaning of one’s individual life, how a person interacts with the world around them.

The artist that is engaged in creative work is continually raising the question, “What really matters?” Nature has helped to shape me in a way that only it can; by bringing back truth in my life that had lain dormant for years; by pointing to something bigger than ourselves; by being worth quietly experiencing and preserving. Nature really matters. 

I hope my work can inspire even one person to get out and experience nature in its untouched state. That they too can find enjoyment in the offerings of the natural world and that they may advocate, in their way, what nature means to them.  

Scott Aspinall is a Saskatchewan landscape photographer and winner of “My Mom’s Favourite Photographer” three decades running. You can find more of his work on his Website, and Instagram.