PHOTOGRAPHER · PHUKET, THAILAND

Kolin Friske

25 years photographing wild places.
Now filming the people working to protect them.

What I do.

I spend real time at places doing conservation and regenerative work properly, and come away with stills, film, and the founder's own account of how it actually functions. Not a brochure. The version a guest would recognise when they arrive.

Building Wild.

A documentary series about people trying to run hospitality without wrecking the thing that makes it worth visiting. Hotels, conservation projects, community organisations, guides.The idea is to go deeper than a place gets filmed normally. Not a day on site and a reel, but enough time to understand how something functions and what it costs to keep running, and the founder's own account of it, including the parts that went wrong. That's what I'm setting out to do. The first film is up on YouTube, shot in Costa Rica. Six more through 2026 and 2027, starting in southern Thailand.Alongside the films, conversations. People doing this work in places I can't get to, from guides to founders, recorded remotely and published as they happen. Over time, that becomes the more useful half: a running dialogue between people working on the same problem in different countries who mostly don't know about each other.New films and conversations on YouTube. Longer written pieces on Substack.

• Building Wild - YouTube

• Substack.

About.

I spent a year trying to build a small conservation property in Costa Rica. My partner and I walked eleven pieces of land, built the model, got to the point of making an offer, and stopped. The arithmetic didn't work. We'll go back to it, but not for another six or eight years.That year is the reason I do this now. I'd spent twenty-five years photographing wild places and assumed I understood what protecting them took. I didn't, or not the operating side of it. A year of quotes, surveys, and permits taught me what regenerative claims actually cost to keep. It also showed me that most places doing the work properly have a real story and nothing to tell it with.Based in Phuket.