I’ve been a member here since October and finally got around to making an introduction. Nature photography has been a passionate and personal experience for me and I have only recently begun to share these experiences to small audiences. Though I have been deliberately taking photographs for only about the last 5 years, but I have been using photography to preserve my experiences in nature using a cheap point and shoot film camera as a young boy.
I have more hobbies and interests than I could shake a stick at, but being in nature and preserving those experiences using photography will always be the guiding force that gets me to the weekend. Professionally, I’ve worked in various conservation efforts for the federal government since 2015 using my geospatial and environmental geography education.
I enjoy how nature photography balances my technical work and how I can apply my technical knowledge to put me in beautiful places at ideal times and increase my odds of successful portfolio images. Equally, I enjoy wandering the backcountry without purpose or a destination even if it means not even a photograph. To develop a story of place, I often return to the same place several times. With my limited available time and range of my electric car, I most often shoot in wilderness areas of Central Colorado. But, I also really enjoy immersing myself in the surrounding deserts.
Embarrassingly, only recently have I discovered that successful nature photography can be, and should be accomplished in any of the 8760 hours in the year. So despite being a slow learner in nature photography, I have also realized that it’s about the photographic journey, not the destination. I’m not sure where this journey will take me, but I strive to tell the story of place and time. To accomplish this, I believe photography must not only capture grand scenes from a cruising altitude, and not only capture small scenes that cannot see the forest through the trees. A complete story of a place through time must be captured at all scales, day and night, through the seasons, and in wildly different weather conditions.
Like many others, Ansel Adams was one of my early influencers and I admired the work by nature photographers in National Geographic Magazines since I was a very young. Ironically, as I got older and more into photography, I looked at nature photography less in lieu of focusing more introspectively at my own hobby and learning from the great observers of the world for a more developed connection to the nature. As I have stated previously, nature photography was a means of preserving ‘my experience’ in nature. However, in the last couple of years, I have begun to feel the desire to view others’ work and share my own. I suppose I had an epiphany that experiences are best shared. Having said that, being in nature with my camera is still a very personal experience that I primarily share with my partner and my dog, or alone in the wilderness. But, I am here because I want to begin to connect with others here to share our experiences in nature and get to know this awesome community.
Looking forward to connecting with you all!
