For me, photography has always been about connection: to the landscape, to the community around me, and most importantly, to family.

I’m a photographer and aerial photographer based in Kitchener, Ontario, with a background in environmental technology. I’m also a proud father and a husband to a nurse educator working in kidney dialysis. Family keeps me grounded and has given even more meaning to the places, moments, and stories I choose to photograph.

My connection to the environment extends well beyond photography. I work for the City of Kitchener, and my background in environmental technology has shaped the way I see the natural world. It has taught me to notice the details within a landscape: changing light, weather, water, texture, seasons, and the relationships between them.

That perspective follows me whether I’m standing along a Muskoka shoreline with a camera or flying above the Canadian landscape with a drone.

Giving back is also important to me. Through my family’s connection to kidney care, I take part in fundraising in support of the Kidney Foundation, helping contribute to a cause that touches the lives of so many individuals and families.

Photography allows me to preserve places and moments as I experienced them. Traditional landscape photography lets me slow down and study a scene, while aerial photography reveals familiar places from perspectives we rarely get to see. In both, I’m searching for the same thing: light, atmosphere, composition, and a moment that feels worth holding onto.

My work doesn’t end when I press the shutter.

I personally print many of my fine art photographs, open edition prints, and smaller photographic works from my home studio, giving me control over how each image translates from screen to paper. I carefully prepare, inspect, and finish each print myself before it leaves my studio.

There is something meaningful about being involved in that final stage. The photograph that arrives in someone’s home isn’t simply an image I captured. It is something I photographed, edited, printed, inspected, signed, and prepared personally.

Muskoka holds a particularly special place in my photography. Its lakes, pines, rocky shorelines, misty mornings, changing seasons, and constantly shifting skies continue to pull me back. But my work reaches beyond Muskoka, documenting landscapes and communities throughout Ontario and across Canada.

Whether I’m photographing the Canadian Rockies, the Atlantic coast, a quiet Muskoka lake, wildlife in winter, or the landscape from hundreds of feet above, I’m always searching for photographs that carry a sense of place.

At the end of the day, my photography is an extension of the life behind it. I’m a husband, a father, a photographer, a city worker, and someone who cares deeply about the landscapes and communities around me.

From capturing the original photograph to creating the final fine art print in my own studio, there is a piece of my story behind every photograph I send out into the world.

David Vanclieaf, C.Tech