Capturing a passion for the Prairies
Photographer Mike Drew showcases landscapes, wildlife in 200-page book
Photographer Mike Drew figures he’s left more than two million kilometres in the dust in crafting a photo book three decades in the making.
Those countless back-road journeys across southern Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C. and Montana are distilled in the former Postmedia shooter’s On the Road with Mike Drew.
Its cover image of a Holstein cow standing amid the lazy current of southern Alberta’s Little Bow Riv- er epitomizes the photographer’s passion for the Prairies.
“I grew up on the prairie, in Crossfield, Gleichen, Milk River,” said Drew, who left the news business last winter but whose weekly photo column still appears in the Calgary Sun.
“If you get on the top of a hill, you can get a 360-degree view of the horizon and I find that absolutely fascinating.”
Images of Cypress Hills, Dinosaur Provincial Park, the Milk River prairies and the Dry Island Buffalo Jump are only a few of the locales that pass through the tome’s pages.
The book includes some mountain imagery, including that of Waterton and Kananaskis, but it’s the Prairies, which make up a much larger slice of Alberta, that get shortchanged, he adds.
The landscapes and wildlife showcased in the book’s 200 pages tell their own colourful tales, but Drew said the star of the hardcover is really the shaggy Ansey, his trusty canine companion of 16 years, who died in 1997.
“He was the catalyst, my adventures with him are what I started writing about,” he said.
For Drew, if there’s one prized photo that stands out, it’s one of Ansey, set against balsam wood blossoms in southwestern Alberta’s Porcupine Hills.
Along the way, the news shooter and wildlife photo ace, who says he’s “been on every back road from Red Deer to northern Mexico,” has developed an uncanny knack for spotting and photographing wildlife.
“Part of it is all the years I’ve been doing it, my eyes are my primary gateway to the world and I just pay attention to everything that might not belong,” said Drew.
The book, published by Rocky Mountain Books, will be officially launched Aug. 11 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Camera Store’s classroom, #210, 3060 9 St. S.E.