Craig Richards has spent a lifetime capturing true beauty, and creating real connections through the lens of his camera. 

Richards, who is originally from Edmonton and has lived in Mill Bay for the past eight years, said he was always drawn to the camera as a way to use his unique voice to capture the beauty around us, and was just 17 when he picked up his first one.

"Photography is drawing with light, it's all about light," said Richards. 

While his parents tried to push him onto the path of what they considered a real job, Richards pursued photography, and in 1978 at the age of 23 he embarked on an adventure to South America for nine months to capture landscapes, which took a sudden shift to capturing portraits of people. When it comes to his photography Richards has always been one to see things in black and white.

"Everything we see and do is in colour so what I have been able to do in the landscapes is transform it into something a bit abstract because it's in black and white," said Richards. "By using filters I can take the blue sky and make it darker, or bring out the yellow that is in the mountains with different tonalities, I use colour filters to draw out, and subdue contrasts. To me, capturing portraits in black and white to me is real simple. Instead of being overwhelmed by colour, it draws you into the person's face, and eyes first — everything else becomes a part of who they are." 

By his mid-20s Richards had accepted an opportunity at Banff's Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies where he started as a photo tech, eventually working his way up to curator during the span of his 37 year career with them. 

"It was a win-win, because I had this job where I curated exhibitions of photographers from around the world, not to mention some of the finest in Canada which also afforded me the opportunity to do my own projects all over the world," said Richards. "By the mid-80s I realized I am not trying to show people where I've been with the camera, but how I feel."

Years after meeting his wife Linda while working on an Edmonton magazine together, Richards felt compelled to take a solo trip back to Guatemala, and admits that it was here that his love for portraits really blossomed. What initially was going to be a trip of capturing landscapes and volcanoes suddenly shifted to people as the opportunity to make real connections arose. He continued to travel back to Guatemala at least once a year for the next 17 years to capture photos of the people from different areas of the country.  

"I hope that when people see my work, they start looking at landscapes differently and really feeling it," said Richards. "I've had people view my exhibit on the Canadian Rockies, and then come up to me afterwards and say I have never seen the mountains like that, and that they can't wait to go out and see them with their own heart."

It was his work in Guatamala that piqued the interest of National Geographic, which offered him the opportunity to travel the globe and capture the portraits of 32 mountaineers in 2000, which became an exhibit in 60 countries across the world.

The original idea was a book with photo essays that revolved around adventure, where Richards would photograph some of the most famous mountain climbers such as Reinhold Messner and Sir Edmund Hilary, who was the first to scale Mount Everest. Having a different vision, Richards bought a backdrop and sent an email to all his subjects asking them to bring a personal item from their mountaineering world so that he could take it to another level. Halfway though the project, unsure how his idea would fly, he received a call from the publisher singing his praises that his portraits changed the entire concept of the book.

Richards flew to London, England to meet the biggest name in mountaineering industry — Sir Edmund Hillary who was number 32.

After waiting patiently but with excitement, Richards finally met the legend who he described as quite big, and dressed to the nines in a three piece suit. Richards began to show the famous mountain man the 31 portraits he had captured before him. Suddenly feeling sheepish, Sir Hilary was disappointed that he was not appropriately dressed, and had left all of his mountaineering items back in Nepal.

So, Sir Hilary went up to his room and returned wearing a fleece coat, and a thin walking stick that had his name etched into it. Richards wasted no time in sharing how impressed he was with all of the climber's humanitarian work in Nepal in the form of hospitals and schools. Unsure what Richards was going to do with what he had to work with, he had the famous climber sit at a nearby table, and the light supplied a reflection of his arms on the table that tied everything together.

"To me, this represented the full circle of giving back," said Richards. "After taking some photos, I then showed him a Polaroid I took, and asked him what he thought, and his eyes went right to the reflection of light, and asked me if I saw it too, and I said Ed, that is the full circle of what you have done, and getting a little emotional his response was — it's beautiful."

Richards was given many opportunities to travel the world including working on 15 projects for Museum Nazionale della Montagna in Turin, Italy. His favourite was being sent to north and south Bolivia for the challenge of photographing music.

"I had this 23-year-old vision in my mind of what I encountered in Bolivia, and now I'm 60 years old and I'm different, and it's different," said Richards. "Beyond my work in Guatemala it became one of my most significant bodies of work."

Richards was based out of Canmore for 42 years, and from 1997 to 2017 he taught more than 700 high school students from Canmore, Banff, as well as the First Nation of Morley through a museum outreach program called Through the Lens. He still stays in touch with hundreds of them still to this day. Out of the hundreds one sticks out, a student named Leanne Baracetti who was labelled as a difficult student. He decided to make her the 11th participant one year, when he only normally chose 10.

It was a beautiful picture of her grandmother that stole the show, and the hearts of those who attended it. Richards also said he recently received a text from another former student who felt gratitude for noticing how beautiful the light hit his girlfriend while they sat in a Montreal cafe — the message to his former instructor simply read "thank you for showing me the light".

It was also during this time that he met Peter Poole, who owns the Juniper Hotel in Banff, which happens to be located on a sacred site where First Nation trading took place. Poole became well known for hosting an annual event called the 'Elder's Gathering' where Indigenous Elders from across the country would be invited.

In 2018, Poole made an offer to Richards that he couldn't refuse that allowed him to work with a myriad of First Nations, which all began with capturing five generations of the Eugene family who live in the Columbia Valley, Alberta, and B.C. This project has been five years in the making and will culminate in a book that will be produced and given to the Eugene family, as well as put into museums and archives across the country. 

The Eugene project, which will wrap in March 2025, was a precursor to his recent project 'All Our Relations: Portraits from The Elders Gatherings, which featured 36 portraits of Indigenous Elders from across Canada.

When Poole approached Richards to embark on an Elders Exhibit he decided to once again incorporate that personal touch, having his subjects bring something personal with them, while using his backdrop yet again in different locations such as the banks of Lac Ste. Anne, downtown Calgary and Edmonton, the Juniper Hotel, and on the land of Cowichan Tribes, to name a few. He's kept it consistent with that same black and white feel while rising to the challenge of creating a portrait that truly embodies each person. 

"In the making of a portrait, there is always a give-and-take between the photographer and the subject," said Richards. "The goal is to capture that elusive element that makes each person an individual. My greatest task was to capture the essence of these individuals, and to allow the walls we all put up to come down. I requested that each Elder bring something that embodied his or her experience. I felt that by incorporating a personal memento, something evocative could be captured through their connection with the item."

Richards connected with Chief Cindy Daniels of Cowichan Tribes who was honoured to be a part of the exhibit and provided him with the contacts for elders Albie Charlie and Doreen Peter. He then took the same approach with Cowichan Valley Métis Nation and was connected with elders Bruce Dumont and Rick Lewis who are all part of the display 'Indigenous Elders from the east to west coast'. It was during a night out with his wife on Sept. 21, that he was able to be a fly on the wall and see people take in his exhibit. 

"I was just watching people and they were so enthralled, not just with the photos but also with the bios," said Richards. "There was this one couple who literally read everything. I had the opportunity to speak with him before the show, and he said thank you, thank you so much for this work, it's really making me think about everything."

The Royal Canadian Geographic Society has expressed interest in permanently housing his Elder Exhibit in Ottawa, and touring it across the country — he has now taken 45 elder portraits to date. He has also been photographing sacred Indigenous sites throughout western Canada that he hopes to intermix into the future Ottawa exhibit, which he believes will give greater meaning to both the people, and the sites.

"I'm hoping people will acknowledge, and make a connection with all of the people in my portraits, and leave with a greater understanding of who they are, and how connected they all are, and hopefully we can all connect with that. I'm not trying to show people where I've been with my photography, I'm trying to show them what I feel about where I'm at.

"In many ways it's the same way in a portrait, because you have to connect with your subject, and they have to connect with you, they need to feel relaxed, and the walls need to come down. You need to be able to look into their heart, through your own heart, and your mind."

To see Richards body of work visit his site at