Hello! My name is Brent and I like to go outside.
I grew up loving nature and camping a lot with the Boy Scouts. I also loved tinkering with computer software and hardware. Eventually I found a beautiful confluence of these two worlds when I started taking digital photographs of nature in 2012. I still feel pretty new to this game after reading about how long you’ve all been at it! There’s always so much to learn.
I am from the wonderful town of Madison, Wisconsin. There aren’t a ton of photographers I really connect with here, so I am looking forward to interacting with y’all. Wisconsin has a lot of great and overlooked natural beauty, so I do my best to share it with the world, but at the same time I am continually drawn to the western part of the country. My wife and I take a lot of cross-country trips together and have dreams of visiting all 60 U.S. National Parks someday. I’ve been to 30, so far!
I am on the photoshop train, but I usually try to make my photos look pretty natural. I don’t drop in fake skies or anything like that, but I will clone out distracting elements, blend exposures taken at the same time and place, shift colors, dodge/burn, add a bit of orton dreaminess, and do slight warps and stretches as I see fit. I also love to read and talk about these techniques and their ethics with others.
Earlier this year I just got into printing. I got an Epson P800 and have been making my own large prints at home. I’ve done a couple of galleries as well and learned a lot about that whole process.
I enjoy taking and looking at photographs of wider scenes, but in the past couple of years, telephoto, intimate, and abstract photographs have really caught my attention. I feel like the photographer’s creative heart and soul are a little more exposed in that genre, and they are often times less formulaic than the wide stuff. When I go to a photographer’s website, I usually look through their favorites, recent work, and intimate galleries first. I have a big pile of intimates myself that I’ve never posted but am working up the courage to post them soon
I feel like I joined the online nature photographer’s community just a couple years too late. By the time I joined, sites like 500px and flickr were already super-established, with certain photographers and styles already very entrenched and it was difficult for newcomers to grow. Don’t get me wrong, my photos weren’t great and I don’t think I deserved a huge following or anything, but I was really hungry for honest critique and growth. Perhaps some mentoring.
Although I am on the other social media sites (begrudgingly), I would so much rather take photos just for its own sake, and have real discussion with others rather than vying for followers and likes. I had always heard about NPN from a lot of the photographers I look up to, and how it was part of the good ol’ days. I am really excited that it is back and I hope it ends up being a strong community of passionate people. Thanks so much to @David_Kingham and @Jennifer_Renwick for investing some energy into this (and also being really fantastic photographers)!
If you’d like to see some of my photos, visit my website: brentgoesoutside.com!