Taylor Roades’s (@taylorroades) favourite mountain in Patagonia - Cerro Castillo (Castle Hill) - is where she met another traveller named Lulu. Her response to the climb was, “I feel a little coup de coeur,” a French saying that really only incorrectly translates to “crush” in English. Of course, in the English language you wouldn’t really say that you have a crush on a place. Maria, their Swiss friend, said it translates to “heart-knocking” in German, a description you wouldn’t hear all that often either. But as it happens, both translations seem to perfectly sum up how Taylor felt about this particular hill and Patagonia in general: a big heart-knocking crush.
Ultimately, it was this romance that Taylor tried, and succeeded to capture in her six week trip through the region. Spending 23 days camping in the backcountry, it was important for her to ensure the photographs were equally as wild, though the people she met and the small villages they stumbled upon really gave life to the trip and so too became an important element of the series.
Taylor Roades
© Taylor Roades
Patagonia is a well-photographed place but I didn’t want to share what everyone else was pointing their camera at. I wanted to photograph the feeling of sharp winds and pushing your exhausted legs up the final ascent.
Taylor Roades
© Taylor Roades
Hiking with very little signage for direction, a pack filled with not only camping essentials, (which included a combined spoon-fork-knife utensil) but also the varied camera gear necessary to document the adventure. Taylor’s experience was as raw as the nature and landscapes her pictures depict. Traversing volcanoes with strangers that very quickly became close friends, she immediately recognised the impact of being fully engaged and immersed with one’s surroundings, a relationship that is perhaps best-formed on a hike. The joy of discovering a stream for drinking water for the first time in 18 kilometres, walking alongside trees with lava-resistant bark that have been around since the age of dinosaurs, building wind shelters with packs in order to successfully heat water, and pitching tents in a volcano crater, there is no doubting how very unique an exploration of this part of the world is – one that certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted. Though persistently challenging, Taylor’s photographs make these mountainous conquests look incredibly enticing, even for those faint of heart. With new landscapes every few kilometres, they powerfully capture everything that makes this journey as rewarding and unforgettable as it is.
“This was the world before humans placed a hand on the landscape; untouched and rugged, we all knew it.
Taylor Roades
© Taylor Roades
Taylor is a travel and commercial photographer based between Victoria and Vancouver in British Columbia, who has ventured across Asia, South America, through the Canadian Rockies to the Scottish Highlands, the Sub Arctic and many places in between. Whilst travel is what kickstarted her career as a photographer, she remains motivated by telling stories of people, planet, adventure and culture, working on a variety of editorial, commercial and reportage assignments with organisations that share a vision for sustainability and an appreciation for story. For Taylor, photography is a personal protest against forgetting. It’s about revisiting a period of time, the monumental events and experiences that make us who we are.
Taylor Roades
© Taylor Roades