Member since May 18, 2025
From:Markham, CA
28, naturalist, birder, aspiring wildlife photographer. Forever passionate about protecting and preserving our planet and all the amazing species that call it home. 🌎🌿 From the time I was small I’ve always loved all things to do with wildlife and nature. I grew up getting outside as much as possible and pointing and inquiring about every species I could see on my childhood adventures. When I was in “playball”, which was basically soccer but for toddlers, instead of playing the game I was busy looking at flowers and bugs. I devoured field guides for fun and was an avid watcher of the Nature of Things, Planet Earth, or any wildlife documentary I could find (all of which is still very true to this day). However, it wasn’t until the end of 2022 when a good friend of mine was kind enough to gift me his old bridge camera, a Canon PowerShot SX540 HS that I got into wildlife photography. I am forever grateful for that gift, because getting into wildlife photography has truly changed my life and is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. Not only has starting to do wildlife photography helped me discover a new passion, deepened my love and appreciation for wildlife and the planet we all call home even more and given me another medium with which to try and help advocate for their protection and preservation through. But, wildlife photography has also helped me through some trying trying times in life, including a relapse of my Grave’s Disease (hyperthyroidism) at the start of 2023 and to cope with my C-PTSD (which I developed following months of emotional abuse and gaslighting, as well as a physical assault at the hands of someone while I was away at university from 2018-2019). Nature and being in nature are truly the best medicine, or at least they have been for me-and I used that very camera my friend gifted me for hours and hours on end, until it sadly stopped working while I was photographing a viceroy butterfly last May. Then I got somewhat of an upgrade to my current camera, a Nikon P950, which everything you see on here now was taken on. Although it’s still just a bridge camera, as that’s what I can afford for now, it’s pretty incredible and works amazingly as long as the lighting is good. For those of you who don’t know it boasts an 83x zoom (which is approximately a 2000mm equivalent lens) and has the capability to shoot RAW files as well as JPEG. Interestingly, wildlife photography has also reinvigorated my passion in writing, especially with crafting the captions I type up to go along with my photos. But also in my poetry as being out in nature more with it has been a great inspiration for that too. As well, it’s also intensified my love for etymology. I have a background in Classics and within that etymology was sort of my specialty (I was also just the kind of kid that grew up reading the dictionary for fun though so I learned a lot through that too). This definitely comes in clutch in terms of understanding the meanings and history behind species scientific names, as most of them are of Ancient Greek or Latin origin-and I feel like getting into wildlife photography has brought a whole new level of excitement for me around this as it’s knowledge I can apply to it as well! I’m a member of Friends of Swan Lake Park (FOSLP), which is a local volunteer organization for Swan Lake Park (which if you’re into birding and especially if you live in the GTA you’ve probably heard of). Since joining their ranks a couple months ago, I have assisted them with assembling and editing a biodiversity report which went before the Markham City Council’s Subcommittee in June 2025 to try and obtain Natural Heritage status to get more environmental protections for the park and the plethora of birds and wildlife species (many of which are species at risk) that call it home. I also recently helped FOSLP to develop a brochure about the birds and wildlife at Swan Lake Park and helped organize and lead several birding tours for an event we hosted celebrating the park’s biodiversity. Additionally, I was recently hired by Earth Day Canada to run a BioBlitz at another local park near me, and am currently a volunteer with the Bird Emergency Atlas Survey Team (BEAST) for the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas Project, as well as with the Swan Lake Citizen Science Lab Project (SLCS Lab). The SLCS Lab is a joint initiative between, York University’s CIFAL York, the One Water Institute, ADERSIM, and Friends of Swan Lake Park and is aimed at ameliorating the environmental challenges which Swan Lake Park has been facing. Although I may not have the fanciest or most expensive equipment nor have had the opportunity to travel unlike a lot of other wildlife photographers here do and have, since cost has been a barrier for me in terms of this. I do, however, have grit, determination and drive and a passion for preserving our planet as well as a love for the art-form of wildlife photography (as my work on here hopefully shows) and I’m willing to do all it takes to achieve my goal of becoming a professional wildlife photographer as part of my career path. You can find me along with more of my work on my Instagram, @wildlifebykathleenelizabeth 🌿🌎
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