Lee Milliken in the Times Colonist

Author of the article: Michael John Lo
Publishing date: Jan 05, 2025
Photo by: Darren Stone

It’s never too late to pursue your dreams, says a Victoria photographer representing Canada in an international competition dubbed the “Olympics” of photography. Lee Milliken became a professional photographer at 32. Now 44, he is part of this year’s Team Canada entry into the World Photographic Cup.

Milliken said he never thought that he would compete against some of his photography heroes. “Some of the people I’m up against are photographers that I looked up to for years, when I first started photography,” he said. “I’m going up against some of the best in the world.”

The Victoria native discovered his knack for photography in 2011 while hanging around the ring at now-defunct Olson’s boxing gym in Colwood, taking photos of his former sparring mates. He decided to quit his “cushy” health-care job at Broadmead Village and enrol at Camosun College to study photography, he said. He was planning on studying at the Western Academy of Photography before it closed abruptly in 2014. The former Victoria-based institution was known as one of the best photography schools in the world, he said.

Jesse Hlady, one of his former instructors at Camosun, then offered Milliken a job at his photo studio, Milliken said. “I was just lucky and fortunate to basically meet the right people at the right time,” he said. “I got basically trained in every aspect of photography [there].” Milliken stayed with Hlady’s studio for several years before he and his wife started their own studio, Spartan Media, in 2018.

Milliken said he decided recently to start competing again after taking a seven-year break from applying for competitions. For the 2025 World Photographic Cup, Milliken submitted a photo a little different from his usual commercial work of real estate and yacht photography. He and his wife were in Paris visiting the Louvre, which houses the Mona Lisa, the 16th-century portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci. “If you’ve ever been to the Mona Lisa, the chaos that surrounds that image is just crazy,” he said. “Everybody’s there to see that painting.”

Milliken, who usually goes everywhere with at least two cameras, only had a small point-and-shoot with him. Standing near the back of the room, he stood on his tiptoes and took several shots from as high as he could. “I held my breath and became a human tripod,” he said.

The resulting composite photo — hand-stitched in the editing room by brushing and blending several shots to recreate a sense of movement — was submitted in the World Photographic Cup’s commercial category. The winners will be announced in Quito, Ecuador, in March. While Milliken isn’t in the top 10 — Canada’s commercial category entry ended up going to Quebec photographer Philippe Provost for a photo of New York City shrouded in fog — he’s planning to go to Ecuador anyway. “It’ll be cool to meet everyone in person,” he said.

Milliken, vice-chair of the Island chapter of the Professional Photographers of Canada, said he has met a lot of Vancouver Island photographers who are starting out in their 60s and showing real promise. “It’s never too late,” he said. “We have a lot of really talented photographers on Vancouver Island.”