Ian Coristine has been active in aerial photography for over 25 years and has written extensively for U.S. and Canadian aviation publications. His air-to-air aircraft photography has graced numerous magazine covers and stories, while also serving his former career distributing Challenger aircraft across Canada. The demands and discipline necessary for air-to-air photography proved ideal training for a subsequent career that came unexpectedly.

In 1992, a flight in his Challenger float plane led to a chance discovery and subsequent love affair with the 1000 Islands. Three years later he became an island owner and has spent summers here ever since. Living on an island in "the assignment" with a plane, boat and camera and the experience to use them effectively, he realized he had an opportunity, an obligation even, to share a view of the 1000 Islands that few people ever see.

Coristine's first book of photography, "The 1000 Islands", was an astonishing success, selling out three large printings and becoming by far the most successful book about the place ever to appear and now a sought after collectible. "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 are bestsellers, with over 54,000 copies sold despite not being distributed outside of the immediate region. A smaller, fourth booklet "1000 Islands" was published in 2007, winning a Premier Print "Benny" Award in the graphic arts industry's largest and most prestigious worldwide printing competition.

His Thousand Islands photographs have been featured internationally, in publications including Country Discoveries, Canadian Geographic, Lakeland Boating, Coastal Living, Cottage Life, Central New York Magazine, Volvo's LIV Magazine (international edition), Kingston Life, Gourmet, Volvo Car España, France’s Le Figaro and Les Echos, Série Limitée as well as in a number of books by other authors about the region.

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 with historian and professor emeritus Paul Malo lecturing through an exhibition titled "A Floating World." St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. hosted "A Floating World - Ian Coristine's Thousand Islands", again with Professsor Malo at the 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.