Thoughts at the start...........

After about 10 years of running around with a camera in the woods and along country roads and scenic byways, I've been thinking a lot about why I like nature photography so much and where to go next.  Somewhere along the line, I borrowed a Galen Rowell book called Mountain Light from my dad (and naturally still have it on my shelf).  Now, Galen was a stark raving mountain madman......over 100 first ascents in the Sierra Nevadas, first one-day ascent of Denali, El Capitan at age 57, and so on before his untimely death by plane in his early 60s.  I have no ambition to go on technical climbs of big mountains at this point in my life and doubt that I'll get to travel to half the places he did, but I loved that Galen Rowell's photographs were so mesmerizingly beautiful that they made me want to get off the couch or away from the office and go see some of the places he saw........Tibet, the Sierra Nevadas, Alaska.  He also figured out that if he just took his camera where he wanted to go and wrote a few words about it, he could pretty much go wherever he wanted, and I'm beginning to think I could do some of that.  It also wasn't about the photography for him; it was about the beauty of the places and the process of trekking through the landscape.  That is what I hope to emulate when I take photos and is a big part of my somewhat dogmatic focus on natural light and minimal photo processing.  It's partially about making a good photograph, but it's mostly about being the only one on the trail or the road at sunrise and placing myself at the right location and taking it all in at sunrise or sunset when the colors come alive.  To quote some famous musical hippies, "Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right."  My favorite part about showing other people my work at art shows and on my website is when people see a photo, and it inspires them to go to a place or to talk about memories of happy times in the outdoors or tell me where I should go next.  I also enjoy when or people ask, "Is that real?" or say "You must have done a bunch to that in Photoshop."  My answers are always yes, and not much. 

Smokey Sunrise

For this posting, I'll share the above photo from a recent roadtrip to the Smokey Mountains for lots of hiking, backpacking, and just driving around and taking photos and listening to books on tape and good music  The additional photo below is a favorite from a mountain bike ride in a park near my current home in Columbia, Missouri.  Both are composites of several images stitched together in the photomerge application within Photoshop.  The former is at sunrise, and the latter is at sunset.  Both were planned the day before for timing and lighting conditions and taken from a tripod. 

Fallscape

So, the plan for the future is to keep poking around in the woods and expand my range to other parts of the U.S. and the rest of the big wild world.  Hopefully, I'll also get to write about my adventures here and potentially in magazines and books.  If I'm lucky, I'll be able to use my camera to fund my adventures and to promote conservation of some of the places I love so they'll still be around for other generations to enjoy.  I welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions for future postings.

Aaron

www.sawyerphoto.com