RYAN VALASEK via Pelican
Chris Burkard bought his first camera two decades ago. He bought a Pelican case to keep it safe “in practically the same breath.” He was a surf photographer coming up, and that Pelican case had one job: keep the ocean and her elements out of every piece of expensive hardware that he owned.
“At the time I bought my first camera, I also bought a Pelican case, because being a surf photographer growing up, that was the single most important tool you had to keep your gear waterproof,” he told me over a call from Iceland, where he’s spent most of the last two years. “The amount of times I’ve lugged that stuff on boats and on remote islands and in the cold Arctic, I’ve basically trusted my life, my investments to that product.”
Twenty years later, Pelican came to him. Chris describes the blunt pitch from his go-to case brand that he’s used for decades: “Basically, just beat the shit out of this stuff.”
RYAN VALASEK via Pelican
Chris is now the subject of The Detour, the brand’s new campaign built around a philosophy Chris has been preaching his entire career. Real gear, in his words, is “tools not jewels, and they’re meant to be abused.”
And Pelican is there to save the day.
Chris’s work has been on hundreds of magazine covers, and he’s grown his footprint online to over four million Instagram followers. This is an audience he’s built by dragging cameras into places most people can’t find on a map.
Unlike a lot of influencer ad deals, if you dare to call it that, Chris is customer-first, pitchman-second. Alas, his endorsement of Pelican’s trademark toughness is truly backed by two decades of receipts.
The gear he’s destroyed
Ask Chris what he’s wrecked over the years and the list comes fast. You could say he’s had a lot of practice.
The most abused piece in his kit is his 16-35mm lens. It’s the one he loves most as a photographer. “It’s the one that’s always on my camera. It’s my favorite lens. It’s the way I see the world,” he said. It also sounds like it’s on borrowed time. “The lens barrel barely works. There’s a little bit of grit in there. You hear it turn and you’re like, that’s not a great sound.”
He brings up his beloved Sony RX100, the trusty little point-and-shoot he brings on bikepacking trips and expeditions. He says it’s now carrying “dents in it” and “fog in the lens.”
Chris’s real gear casualties are the ones that never make the highlight reel: his bags. “Most of those bags have some oil stain on the bottom or some weird tear through it,” he said. “My roller bag is just beat up. The wheels don’t work. Had to toss it.”
RYAN VALASEK via Pelican
Part of that is the job that he signed up for. But also, a part of it is Chris. “I ask a lot of it too, because I’m usually overloading these bags,” he admitted. “They’re 56, 70 pounds. It’s brutal.”
Just the cost of doing business as one of the most in-demand outdoor photographers in the world.
Emotional support baggage
The Pelican partnership makes a ton of sense for someone like Chris because the campaign gave him a fix for the exact problem he’s been creating for himself for twenty years.
How does an always-on-the-go photographer actually keep his stuff in pristine, workable condition in some of the most remote places on the planet to help him get the perfect shot?
That’s where Pelican’s new Aegis travel line comes in. Chris specifically cites that the new Pelican Aegis line lands in a gear junkie’s middle ground with its combination of utility and luggability, and Chris says he hasn’t found luggage and cases like it anywhere else.
The lineup, which debuted in 2025, includes the PX25 Aegis Travel Pack, the SX5 Padded Sling, and a pair of four-wheel rolling hybrid duffels that expand.
“It sits in this hybrid position where it’s not fully hard case, but it has more padding than anything else I’ve used,” he said. That’s a big endorsement for a guy routinely flying with thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollars of gear; it’s the difference between a good trip and a panic attack over your packing job at the airport.
“There’s a lot of times when you’re traveling with a carry-on and all of a sudden they’re like, you can’t take that on the plane, and you’re like, oh my god, I’ve got to put this underneath the plane. That’s a scary feeling,” he said. “If you have a hard case, you feel totally confident.”
His favorite is the four-wheel model that expands, and he’s given it a name. “That’s like my emotional support baggage. It sits in the corner of my office, and it’s basically always half loaded, ready to go.” He travels so constantly that he’s stopped unpacking altogether. Chargers, headlamp, DOP kit, all of it lives in the bag as a permanent go-bag. “It doesn’t really matter where I’m going. I kind of leave that stuff in there.”
RYAN VALASEK via Pelican
If he had to point one piece of the line out to people, it’s that one. “It’s going to potentially change the way they operate in the world of travel.”
The detour, for real
The campaign’s title comes straight out of how Chris actually operates. “The best experiences are when everything isn’t planned out,” Chris said, and he’d know, because the most important work of his career came out of a trip going completely sideways.
That was Under an Arctic Sky, his Netflix film about surfing under the Northern Lights in Iceland. The plan fell apart almost immediately when the crew got caught in the biggest storm the country had seen in fifty years. “It forced us to reroute. It forced us to go on a side quest for survival,” he said. Chasing the storm instead of running from it is the only reason they got what they got: some of the best waves he’s ever seen, lit by the aurora. “That was the byproduct of simply saying yes to that detour.”
He’s honest about how hard that is for him. “I tend to be more of a control freak. I want to have everything like my i’s dotted and my t’s crossed,” he said. “This campaign is kind of like my inner voice trying to come out, urging people to say, hey, this is hard. It’s hard for me. But if you follow it, some magic can happen.”
For The Detour, he pushed to shoot in Colorado’s Great San Luis Valley, a high-altitude stretch of southern Colorado he’s been photographing for the better part of a decade. It’s cold, obscure, and exactly his kind of place. “Most people couldn’t even point their finger at where it is,” he said. “I wanted to pay homage to the landscapes that are a little lesser known.” The shoot punished everyone. “It pushed everybody pretty hard, I’m not gonna lie.”
RYAN VALASEK via Pelican
Where not to go
I couldn’t let one of the most well-traveled people alive off the phone without asking the inverse question: where should people stay away from? He went there.
“There are parts of China that I’ve experienced that are a little rough, and there are definitely some parts of Eastern Russia where I’ve had a few situations that honestly scare me,” he said. “There are places in the world where you really feel like you could just disappear.” He’s been thrown in jail, deported, had visas and carnets go sideways, and had people try to keep his gear, most of it in his early twenties. His advice comes down to one thing: go in sharp. “Have your escape route ready.”
RYAN VALASEK via Pelican
By the time you read this, Chris is already on the move. In September he’s heading to Greenland to bikepack the longest navigable road in the country, roughly 230 miles of cold and remote nothing.
“I’m nervous,” he said. “It’s going to be rad and scary and cold. But I’m fired up. It’s going to be a big one.”
Somewhere in that emotional support baggage, the Pelican’s already packed.
RYAN VALASEK via Pelican