Our Story

We are Kahli and Leo and have taken quite a journey together to be where we are now.

We want to take the time to tell you a little bit more about ourselves, the ingredients that make up Wild Alpine Image Co. and what sets us apart from the rest.

Our story starts in late November 2009. We were both following our own paths, getting ready for a winter season in Canada, where we met at our seasonal roles at a small ski resort, local to Kananaskis Country. We fell for each other and quickly became inseparable, not just from each other but from the great outdoors that we love.

Passionate about spending time in the mountains, snowboarding and travelling, we continued our winter season by swapping hemispheres and spending time in New Zealand. Despite the ongoing challenges of work visas and up-rooting our lives every 6 months to move on to the next winter, we continued to work and travel in arguably the most picturesque mountain towns around.

For Leo, work was on-snow, teaching people to ski and snowboard. In his Southern Hemisphere winter, he chased his dream and gained the qualifications to train and certify new instructors, eventually representing New Zealand at the forefront for the education of snowsports. In his Northern Hemisphere winter, he gained more experience and insight off-snow becoming the Director of a local Winter Sports School.

For Kahli, work was a different pathway. Her interest from her schooling years in graphic design and film photography kept resurfacing in unexpected ways. It wasn’t long before she was balancing multiple roles as a self-employed photographer, with various clients including Parks Canada, Travel Alberta and Nat Geo Travel. Over time she developed a passion for sharing her experience and knowledge through photography tuition and workshops all over the world, from Canada to New Zealand, Iceland to Scotland and her personal favourite location, Antarctica.

After 7 years on our journey together, we got engaged and as is typical with other things in our lives, we tried to bring as many elements of things we love together to mark the occasion. A good example being Kahli’s ring, for which the story started a couple of years prior.

One of Kahli’s favourite stones is opal. Having asked around about opal’s suitability for a ring that would stand up to a beating outdoors, it really wasn’t recommended. Leo weighed up the options and in spite of lots of advice against it, opal was the way we wanted to go.

The beauty of opals is that every stone is unique. Essentially formed from water running through the earth, picking up silica from sandstone, before the water evaporates leaving a silica deposit behind. Over time this process repeats and what’s created is a beautiful, unique stone. To Leo, this is Kahli personified in a stone. Leo spent quite a while hunting for the perfect stone in Australia. Finally, with “The Opal” found, it came with us, without her knowing (this was a tricky thing to keep a secret) around the world for another year or so before finding a ring builder in Canada that was prepared to work with opal to set the stone in a ring. It was such a fun way to bring our engagement ring to life with a stone from Australia, built in Canada before a discrete proposal in New Zealand. 

To reflect this process of combining parts of lives from around the world, you’ll find our most customizable photography package available is known as “The Opal Package” - with a creative mind you can bring a variety of things together to create something special.

With our lifestyle and experiences placed first, we obviously made sacrifices along the way with many missed occasions in our home countries (Australia and England). As our relationship took to greater heights, a looming decision facing us was what on earth we would do about our wedding. More specifically, where on earth would we choose? With families on opposite sides of the planet, literally, and friends scattered everywhere in between, we were facing the harsh reality that not everyone would be able to attend without us first winning the lottery.

It was in the New Zealand winter of 2017 that we were really starting to discuss how our wedding could look. The logistics of things were just not coming together easily. So, we took a step back and instead played the scenario of how things would look if we just simplified the entire thing. Just the two of us. Once we’d put this on the table, the creativity took off with where, when and how. And so we really leant on our local knowledge of the area, the services available and what gave us a buzz of excitement for the day. We quickly brought together a rough outline of a helicopter accessed ceremony, a short tour in the heli with photos, a local officiant and some post ceremony snowboarding at our resort afterwards. Things were starting to look appealing, meaningful to us and a whole lot simpler. This way we would later ensure a separate, intimate way to celebrate with our families and friends as we took our regular commute around the world to our next winter.

After some calls with our families and chit-chat around the idea we all agreed that this was going to be our perfect way to get married. For anyone out there wondering, yes, even the Mums got onboard (albeit hesitant at first) haha.

This started a quick cascade of events for us and without exaggeration, we were married within 3 weeks. We sourced all the info we needed, applied for and processed our marriage license, chose our officiant, wrote our own vows, bought rings, a dress, a suit, booked a heli, arranged a bouquet, corsage and a cake. We even had our officiant bring a friend along as a witness and connected with a local photographer in town. Given that we were both working full time throughout this whole process, we got organized and simply got it done.

Along came our special day. Up at 5am, Kahli doing her own make-up and hair, Leo doing...well, to be honest not much aside from suiting up and catching some breakfast. Off to the heli hanger, ready to fly, weather rolls in and it’s quickly a no-fly day. Yup, ok, that’s the trusty Southern Alps weather in NZ for you. Back home, “un-wedding” ourselves, liaise with the heli crew, look at tomorrow’s weather patterns, identify a possible fly window and move on with making the most of a day off work. The next day, round 2. The possible fly window is mid afternoon. Leo is on the mountain at work, Kahli’s wrapping things up to start hair and make-up again. Finish work, in the car, down the mountain road to town, in the house, shower, suit, in the car again to the heli hanger only for the weather to swallow up the Southern Alps and it’s a no-fly again. Another weather watch, identify a fly window on the Saturday morning, a couple of days away. By nature we are both at ease with things outside our control and able to adapt on the fly so the circumstances so far and bumping our wedding day twice didn’t phase us.

Saturday morning rolls around, 5am, Kahli’s into hair and make-up again, weather’s looking pretty predictable right now, this could be the day. Out to the heli-hanger and 3rd time’s a charm. 

Wait, forgot the bouquet...never mind, heli hanger crew produce a rustic, perfect-colour-match-bouquet-ish arrangement from their office display vase...talk about meant to be! Final flight checks, in the heli, take off and the rest was pure magic. If you’re interested to know why we think winter is a great season to elope, read more here.

Everytime we share our story we can’t help but smile and feel a heightened sense of appreciation for the way we designed our day. Whilst a more traditional celebration would have undoubtedly been great, this was much more aligned with who we are as a couple. We enjoyed mountain views, snow capped ranges, deep blue lakes, ridge walks and a personalised ceremony ending just before some low cloud swallowed us up on it’s rise out of the valley. The day was the best version of what it could have been and the memories will never fade. We’ve included some of our favourite pics from the day on this blog post.

This is a snapshot into who we are and the way we choose to live our lives together. 3 years after we eloped, we’ve naturally moved to a place where we’ve made the decision to move into each other's professional lives too. We’re very familiar with working together over the years but this is something that we have created, something that is ours and something we’re proud to share to be able to help other couples elope too. 

So why choose us? What sets us apart from other photog teams out there is that we’ve eloped ourselves. We know what you’re going through, the potential sacrifices you’ve made and how it feels to elope. We can discuss with you your plans on a different level, based on experience not hearsay, not only as photographers, but as a bride and groom. 

If you’re keen to connect further and think we’ll be a good fit for your celebration then shoot us a message and we’ll be happy to help where we can.

Leo & Kahli

Wild Alpine Image Co.