Aaron Hemens is an award-winning journalist and freelance photographer, currently working as a reporter with IndigiNews. He is of mixed Filipino and European heritage, and is located in Penticton, B.C., Canada.
His pictures and stories have been published in the Associated Press, the Canadian Press, the Globe and Mail, CBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Narwhal, the Tyee, HuffPost, APTN News, Inuvik Drum, and more.
He is available for both editorial and commercial freelance photography assignments.
In 2025, he won gold in the Digital Publishing Awards’ best news coverage for a community publication, for his three-part series on the Copper Mountain Mine’s proposed expansion project near Princeton, B.C.
He is also the winner of two photojournalism awards from the Canadian Online Publishing Awards, with both achievements coming in 2022 and 2023.
His photos of the 2025 Universal Ostrich Farm culling controversy in Edgewood, B.C., were published across international publications throughout that year. His coverage earned him nominations for two national photojournalism awards at the News Photographers Association of Canada’s annual National Pictures of the Year 2025 awards.
Aaron is an alumnus of Carleton University’s School of Journalism, graduating in 2018. That same year, he was selected by the school as the recipient of their Mitch Jacobson Memorial Award in Photojournalism.
His career in journalism began soon after. For eight months in 2019, he lived in Canada’s Article Circle in Inuvik, NWT, where he worked as the editor/reporter of the community’s weekly newspaper, the Inuvik Drum.
Aaron was a mentee in Room Up Front – a Canadian Photojournalism mentorship for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour – in its inaugural year in 2020.
Contact:
● 250-870-3064
● aaron_hemens@hotmail.com or aaron@indiginews.com
Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn
Aaron Hemens 