Ian Coristine has been active in aerial photography for 25 years. He has written extensively for U.S. and Canadian aviation publications and his air-to-air photography has graced numerous magazine covers and stories, while also serving his former career in aircraft distribution.
In 1992, a flight in his Challenger float plane led to his chance discovery of the 1000 Islands. Three years later he became an island owner and has spent summers here ever since. Living on an island in the middle of "the assignment" with a plane, boat and camera at hand and the time and experience to use them effectively, he realized he had an opportunity, an obligation even, to photograph the 1000 Islands from a perspective few people ever see.
His Thousand Islands photographs have been featured internationally, in many publications including Country Discoveries, Canadian Geographic, Lakeland Boating, Cottage Life, Central New York Magazine, Volvo's LIV Magazine, Kingston Life Magazine, Gourmet, Volvo Car España and France’s Le Figaro as well as in a number of books by other authors about the region.
Coristine's first book of photography, "The 1000 Islands", was an astonishing success, selling out three editions and becoming by far the most successful book about the place ever to appear. "Water, Wind and Sky" was released in 2005 and his third book, "The Thousand Islands", completed a trilogy of photographic books about the islands in 2006. All three became bestsellers, together selling 50,000 copies despite not being distributed beyond the immediate region. A smaller, fourth booklet "1000 Islands" was published in 2007, winning a 2007 Premier Print "Benny" Award in the graphic arts industry's largest and most prestigious worldwide printing competition.
The first one-man gallery exhibition of his work was held at the Brockville Arts Center in 2004. The Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York featured “Aerial Perspectives – The Photography of Ian Coristine” during the summer of 2005. The popularity of that exhibit prompted a sequel “Another Aerial Perspective” in the summer of 2006. Onondaga Community College, in conjunction with the Everson Museum of Art, brought Coristine's images to Syracuse, NY in the fall of 2006 through an exhibition titled "A Floating World". St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. hosted "A Floating World - Ian Coristine's Thousand Islands" in the summer of 2007 at their Richard F. Brush Art Gallery.
DxO Labs of Paris, France, award winning publishers of revolutionary high-end camera and lens correction software, selected Coristine as one of their 12 founding "Image Masters" from professional photographers around the world. The City of Brockville, Ontario nominated him for its “Tourism Award” in recognition of the attention his work has brought the region.