Mountains and Rivers Media
Rewilding the Human Imagination®

About Mountains and Rivers Media

Photo of John Canan on camera giving an interview along the Potomac River

Hi. I’m John Canan, Founder and Owner. I started Mountains and Rivers Media in 2015 to connect conservation and place-based organizations with photography and video solutions that are thoughtful, profound, immersive, and responsible. Rewilding the Human Imagination® is the mission and mantra for my boutique media arts business, based out of Brunswick, Maryland. 

Photograph of a photographer making a photograph of a sunrise from a rock outcropping

We believe in the power of media to 

move hearts, change minds, and inspire action.

Mountains and Rivers Media provides media services, consulting, and mentoring/coaching to mission-driven, conservation, place-making, and grant-making organizations, agencies, municipalities, and partnerships. We tailor each and every project to exactly what you want to achieve. It’s your story. We want to help you tell it even better than have before. 

As you’ll quickly notice from the photos and videos on this site (as well as from our name), nature is an extremely important part of almost everything we do. Mountains and Rivers Media uses the presence of nature to foster a sense of awe for the remaining wild places in the eastern United States. We excite, invigorate, connect with, and reinforce the human imagination through impactful visual storytelling inspired by the vision and goals of our clients. 

We achieve this through creating work that focuses on healthy and sustainable life supporting environmental stewardship, a culture of deep nature connection, and increasing vitality and quality of life for humans and our shared planet

Photography and Video with Intentional Community Impact

Our work creates community impact and reciprocal benefits using a consistently applied multi-layered approach, including: 
  • Creating jobs to assist, enhance, and scale our services. 
  • Building the capacity of small agencies and not-for-profit organizations. 
  • Advocating for projects that strategically benefit the missions of our clients.
  • Choosing projects and partners that engage in restoration, protection, education, and advocacy for the natural world. 
  • Highlighting, showcasing, and promoting values that are both important and necessary for a sustainable and inclusive future for all beings. Things such as stewardship, gratitude, compassion, inclusion, fair trade, and transparency.

Training, Consulting, and Technical Support

Many of my clients have 1-10 employees and where each employee is managing roles at once. I help make their organizations more efficient and creative by providing: 
  • Insights, education, and skills-building programs for staff or stakeholders who are doing photography for the organization/project. 
  • Training and support in managing current and future digital assets, saving the organization time and money and reducing risk.

Agile and Scalable 

We work with a network of media specialists and subject matter experts around the aspects “places of concern” regarding human and nature interactions in North America. Accessing this network of contractors and consultants enables rapid engagement and support for your developing or ongoing projects. It expands our capacity and reach while also lowering the cost of doing business as it relates to multi-site and mission critical projects.

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