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It isn't often that a job requires you to be a
first-class photographer, videographer, writer, mountaineer, and skier, but that is exactly what is
demanded of Pat and Baiba Morrow,
two of Canada's preeminent adventure
photojournalists. Pat's career
was launched into the public spotlight when he scaled Mount Everest in 1982. With that
success under his belt, he continued a global climbing spree that took him to the highest
peak on every continent. By 1986, he had reached the summit of Irian Jaya's Carstensz
Pyramid, thus completing the "grand slam of mountaineering," or the Seven
Summits, as it is now known.
Baiba's journalistic background developed even more
unconventionally. After university, she moved west from Montreal to work in a children's
hospital as an occupational therapist. There, in the Rockies, she met and married Pat and,
with no formal training in writing or photography, embraced the unpredictable lifestyle of
a freelance photojournalist.
Today the Morrows use their home in Canmore, on
the edge of Banff National Park, as a launch pad for their global jaunts. Whether
traveling to the smoking volcanoes of eastern Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, the arid
shores of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, or the Buddhist shrines of the Japan Alps, they are
struck by the indomitable spirit of indigenous people. "You meet nomads in Tibet
living at altitudes that are almost as high as Canada's highest mountain," says Pat.
"I marvel at the way the Tibetans have adapted to the most extreme environments with
a minimum of impact on the land."
The Morrows hope that their documentary work will
inspire others to expand their horizons. "You can step on a plane and be anywhere on
the planet within 48 hours," says Pat. "I like to tell people, 'It's a great
world we have out there - you really ought to go and see it for yourself'." Baiba is
quick to point out that enjoying the world's treasures also means protecting them.
"The people who go out and discover these precious places have a personal stake in
seeing that they remain that way. By experiencing a place, you become its guardian."
They also find a spiritual motivation in their
journeys. "We're always trying to get back to our roots, to a more basic lifestyle,
despite our sometimes hectic schedule," says Baiba. Pat adds, "To me the essence
of adventure is not to go in search of geographical discoveries so much as to go to places
where you inevitably discover new things about yourself."
The couple have been
contributing editors with Equinox - Canada's Magazine of Discovery - since its charter
issue in 1982. Between them, they have won eight national magazine photo awards. Pat was
the recipient of the 1990 Summit of Excellence at the Banff Festival of Mountain Films,
and the prestigious Order of Canada in 1988.
More recently, he has worked as the publicity stills
photographer for the Hollywood movies K2, and Seven Years in Tibet starring Brad Pitt (for
the climbing scenes). And for seven years, Pat and Baiba were partners in Adventure
Network International, to this day the only commercial expediter taking private
expeditions to the interior of Antarctica. Pat and Baiba Morrow have
worked in the dynamic field of adventure photography and film-making for the past 22
years. Their work has been adapted for motivational use by companies such as
Ad-Venture Sight & Sound, and One Step Beyond WorldWide, in addition to dozens of
magazine and book publishers, and television broadcasters.
They provide stock
photography, on-site stills, and video documentation, as well as shooting visual material
ahead of time for conference organizers. For further details on this outstanding
mountain meeting resource, please visit the Morrow Photography website at:
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