Light Hikes is my personal philosophy and practice of respectfully appreciating wild places; combining disciplines like hiking, bushcraft, leave no trace, camping and landscape photography.
Does spending time alone with nature feel like coming home for you?
Do you have a deep desire to hike under the shadows of mountains?
Or camp under a billion burning suns?
That’s how I feel.
I’m Jeremy Billett, an adventure and landscape photographer based in Northern NSW, Australia.
And maybe like me you also wish to capture these profound experiences with nature to fuel your dreams and desires for years to come.
Unlike many hikers and campers I came into this world of nature not through family, a life changing experience, or secret birth right. I found my love of nature through my first passion of photography.
I moved during my final year of school from the concrete walls of urban life to a small, rural, riverside town.
Everything was new. New classes. New friends. New environment. New feelings. Eventually love. But out of chance also a new hobby – photography.
While my new friends yearned for parties, city escapes and the distractions of boredom I would spend hours and nights wandering National Parks, empty beaches, lonely rivers and country roads with my first camera experimenting with abstract landscapes, long exposures and self portraits.
It was from these solo night photography trips that I started to find more remote, unknown and wilder places to photograph.
But I hit a limit.
I couldn’t reach or explore these places. I had too much photography gear so it was almost impossible get to these places and stay overnight.
I started looking for ways to camp out over multiple days with as close to zero equipment as possible and I came upon the world of bushcraft, wild camping and ultralight hiking.
This changed everything for me.
I could spend days at a time alone in the bush. I could explore offtrack and wilderness areas I’d previously never been. And I could bring my camera with me to capture these experiences.
Over time I learned to better understand, appreciate and respect these places too. I could see the damage we cause to our natural environment; the dangers of inexperience; and even more the importance of maintaining and protecting these assets for future generations.
I want to share with you the values, lessons and skills I’ve picked up along the way so you too can enjoy hiking, camping, photography and the great outdoors without the struggles, painful lessons and years of trail and error that I’ve worked through.
Let me help you skip ahead and off the track so you can appreciate, experience and awaken to true nature and keep those memories with you for years to come.
Thank you!
