The Rub’ al-Khali, or “Empty Quarter,” is Arabia’s most unforgiving and desolate desert. While it stretches thousands of kilometres across four countries, few people live here. For those who do, life has changed little over the last several hundred years. Camels, fire, family, goats, tribal traditions and Islam dominate life for the ethnic Mehri Bedouin of Yemen’s Empty Quarter.

Afghanistan and tourism are not exactly synonymous, at least not since the hippy trail days of the 1960s. The country has been in a near-constant state of war and upheaval since the Soviet invasion. This is nothing new to Afghanistan, in fact, it was the calm years of the mid-1950s that were, in fact, unusual. However, as stability has come in fragile waves to parts of the country, the idea of tourism is being revisited.

A bird’s eye view of central Yemen shows vast, barren plateaus of sandstone. However, upon closer inspection, you will find deep canyons lined with small mudbrick villages. Along the bottom, abaya-clad women with pointy straw hats graze goats along ancient riverbeds. But bucolic life in these valleys is not as simple as it may appear; Al Qaeda continues to have an ebbing and flowing influence over these socially conservative valleys.

Tucked away in a calm bay in Mexico's Sea of Cortez, large numbers of juvenile whale sharks spend their growing years here feeding before re-entering the open ocean as sexually mature adults. The reason they stick around this area for so long is the abundence of plankton, their primary fod source.

Between the northern half of Vancouver Island and the British Columbian mainland lies the world's second highest concentration of grizzley bears. This now proitected region forms the southern end of the Great Bear Rainforest, an ecological treasure trove both above and below the sea.

Every year thousands of humpback whales make the journey from their feeding grounds in Antarctica to the warm whallows of the South Pacific in order to give birth, mate and raise their calves. I have been documenting this annual calving season for the past four years.

Every fall, from November until the beginning of March, millions of monarch butterflies migrate over 5,000 kilometres for survival, travelling from northeastern Canada and the U.S. and descending upon the high altitude fir tree forests of Michoacán and Estado de México.