GRANT KAYE

Grant was born on the rural Hawaiian island of Lāna`i, and was raised there as well as in California and Pennsylvania. Pursuit of academic degrees and a career in geology and volcano hazards took Grant to Colorado, Oregon, Hawai`i, and California, and eventually to New Zealand where he earned a PhD in 2008.

Grant moved on from working in natural hazard science in New Zealand to return to Lake Tahoe, where he created maps with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for the Town of Truckee through 2012.

Photography has always been a fundamental part of Grant’s life, harkening back to the lessons he learned in his father’s darkroom on Lāna`i while his father was a professional documentary photographer. As Grant was preparing to leave the Town of Truckee, he was cultivating his passion for photography on nights and weekends, and eventually, he gave in and decided that creating imagery and teaching others how to achieve their vision would be his next career.

From 2012 to 2020 Grant taught photography and timelapse classes & workshops in Lake Tahoe, Iceland, Alaska, Bodie, and New Mexico. His classes took place at Sierra College, Atelier, the Martis Camp Club, and Action Camera in Reno. Grant joined the Mountain Workshops in Kentucky as their Timelapse Coach from 2013-2018, and also taught at at the Shooting the West photography symposium in Nevada.

Grant no longer teachers photography classes or workshops, and is now the Director of Marketing & Community Outreach at Truckee Tahoe Lumber Company in Truckee, California, where he works with numerous non-profits to help them achieve their missions in Tahoe and Reno.

As a photographer, Grant specializes in landscape and night-sky photography, motion-controlled timelapse, and creative filmmaking.

CLIENTS

Grant’s images and timelapses are currently represented by Cavan Images (formerly Aurora Photos). Grant’s work has been featured in local Tahoe publications Tahoe Quarterly, Sierra Sun, Moonshine Ink, Nevada Magazine, Squaw Magazine, Tahoe TV, Tahoe World as well as national magazines and websites Mountain Magazine, Squaw Magazine, Skiing Magazine, Powder Magazine, Mana Magazine, Hawai`i Magazine, Travel Nevada, and National Geographic Adventure.

Grant is proud to list BorrowLenses, Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows, Red Bull, MSNBC, Yahoo, Skiing Interactive, The New York Times, Friends of Black Rock, Arcade Apparel, Points North Heli-Adventures, Friends of Lāna`i, Sierra Watch, the Shane McConkey Foundation, Arts for the Schools, Truckee Tahoe Lumber, the River Ranch, 50-50 Brewery, Evolution Capital Management, PlumpJack, and Teton Gravity Research among his many clients.

In addition to photography and timelapse, Grant also creates beautiful, custom cartographic maps for many of his clients.

In 2015, Grant pioneered a method for converting Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) into CNC-carved works of art : accurate, detailed 3D wooden maps of the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. You can view those at Terra Ligna.

Grant completed training as a Wilderness First Responder by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in January 2019 and re-certified in 2022.