Braving the Cut Blocks

Braving the Cut Blocks is an ongoing documentary photography project that explores the lived experience of tree planting in western Canada. Created from inside the planting world, this work honours the people whose labour quietly shapes the future of our forests, while revealing the resilience, vulnerability, and transformation that emerge through a season of physical work in the wilderness.

Tree planting became more than a job — it became my greatest teacher. It taught me resilience, discipline, humility, and the value of shared hardship. It also made possible many of the dreams that followed, including a career in professional photography. Yet despite nearly two decades spent in the cut blocks, I realized I had only one photograph of myself actually planting. That realization became the foundation of this project.

Tree planting is often represented through numbers: millions of trees planted, hectares restored, contracts completed. What is rarely seen are the people behind those numbers — the early mornings, the aching bodies, the muddy boots, the quiet conversations, the laughter at the end of exhausting days, and the subtle personal transformations that occur when people commit themselves to demanding work in remote landscapes.

My photographs are not intended to romanticize hardship or create heroic portraits. Instead, they invite viewers into moments of honesty. Working from within the community allows me to photograph with trust, familiarity, and respect, revealing moments that would be difficult for an outsider to witness.

Tree planting has long served as a rite of passage for many Canadians — a place where students finance their education, adventurers fund their passions, newcomers build community, and countless people discover strengths they never knew they possessed.

With Braving the Cut Blocks, I hope to create a lasting visual record of this community while giving planters something many of us never had: photographs that reflect not only what we did, but who we became while doing it.