The Best Photos You’ll Ever See of British Columbia

Tofino-bred photographer Jeremy Koreski set out to become a surf photographer, but his passion for nature has always brought him home to British Columbia. The untouched sections of forest, orca whales, salmon runs, and curling waves inspired his latest project, This is Nowhere, a collection of photographs in which Koreski reminds us that beauty exists in places we can’t easily see or access, and that it’s worth saving. Koreski has turned to Kickstarter for some help funding his book, which will be designed and printed in British Columbia. Here, Koreski shares a few of his all-time favorite images and a preview of the book.

Koreski: This image was about being in the right place at the right time. I was coming back into Tofino in a boat and stopped by a bald eagle's nest on a little islet in the harbor. I saw two crows dive-bombing this male eagle—they even hit him a few times. He got fed up, and started to fight back.

When almost 200 white-sided dolphins surrounded our boat near Tofino, I jumped in with my camera and spent the next 45 minutes laughing and photographing them as they swam around me within arm's reach. The more excited and active I got, the more they seemed to interact with me.

My friend Matahil Lawson grew up on a tiny island just west of Tofino. He and his family have always had a deep respect for the environment, and they're people I've always been inspired by. Here, Matahil is holding a urchin he collected on the Central Coast of B.C. You can eat their meat raw: it’s delicious.

I get asked about the location of this image all the time. This one spot, however, I’ll never give away.

As soon as my friend Blake Klopfenstein hooked this Chinook salmon, I started putting my wetsuit on and getting my camera housing ready. After he'd fought the fish for 15 minutes or so, I jumped in the water and was able to fire off a couple of frames as it swam by.

Somewhere around 75 percent of the old-growth forests on Vancouver Island have been cut down, including almost all of the most productive fir forest.

I'm always looking for new ways to photograph surfing, and lately that's meant hanging out of a helicopter looking straight down on the subject. This is Peter Devries bottom-turning on a wave near Tofino.

Pacific white-sided dolphins always seem to be having fun. This one was out in front of his pod, and he jumped over and over again while we headed south by boat through the Broughton Archipelago.

This a school of pink salmon getting ready to spawn in a river on the Central Coast of B.C. Looking straight down from 300 feet up is a pretty cool perspective.

It rarely snows in Tofino, but when it does it's usually thick and heavy. Here, my friend Raph Bruhwiler walks out to go surfing at one of our local beaches. Walking to the beach and shooting this day was much colder than actually being in the water, which stays at around 50 degrees even in the winter.