There is considerable overlap when categorizing the images I share on this site. However, here in mountainous Idaho so much begins with the landscape, the earth. The mountains are my playground and the source of artistic inspiration. Their beauty never fails to calm my soul, to beckon me outside, to awe.
As a trasnsplant from the East Coast, I learned quickly that fire season is a real threat in the high desert of the mountain west, and in the years I have lived in Idaho I noticed it starts earlier and lasts longer during the summer months. Fears of a robust fire season can begin in winter if the snowpack is lean. Even a spring with heavy rains is a mixed blessing.
Wildfires are complicated: they terrify as they threaten communities but are necessary to burn away dead wood; they spew noxious smoke for miles but set the scene for rare beauty in the sky and even in the scars they leave behind on land.
We have an ever-increasingly complicated relationship with water in the American West as the climate grows warmer and drier. Drought affects food production, the health of the forest, and the lives of creatures that inhabit both land and rivers.
But an abundance of precipitation also poses threats as snowmelt overfeeds rivers and heavy spring rains create more fuel to burn during the dry summer months. The year 2023 had both - abundant snowfall and spring rains. These images shot in May of 2023 cast light on the drama caused by a river that knows no boundaries, the beauty of reflections in the overflow, and the everyday reality of havng enough water to irrigate crops and to fill the reservoir to capacity following years of drought.
It's during the hot month of July, when there is one clear blue-sky day after another, that I remember how much I love cloudy days. It's the way clouds cool down a hot summer day and warm up a winter one. It's the way clouds create shapes that I can paint with color. It's the way clouds filter light like a giant softbox and make the world glimmer and glow.
These mountains are my playground any season of the year. But what brought me here many years ago was the joy of attaching a narrow board to each boot and carving turns with them on Sun Valley's frozen trails. I am, and have been since early childhood, a skier. Since that time, I have added different types of skis to my quiver and with them different modes of skiing. It's difficult to name a favorite as resort skiing vies for time with nordic trails and backcountry magic.
I live in a Dark Sky Reserve where stars dazzle on moonless nights, the Milky Way is visible to the naked eye, and the moon's cycle from new to full and back is one way I measure time. My interest in the night prompted me to explore other remote areas largely unaffected by light pollution. From moonsets, shooting stars, the Milky Way, and Neowise Comet at home, to the Aurora Borealis in Iceland and Greenland, to a closer-up look at the galaxy core in Antigua, these images tell part of the story of my love affair with the night.
When COVID-19 continued to interfere with travel plans during the winter of 2021, I bought a new lens to see the familiar in an unfamiliar way. It was the photographer's staycation. The images I created appeared off-scale and dreamy. Some I juxtaposed with others that, while not contiguous in reality, were linked in some way, a shape or a blur or a theme. I call them Dreamscapes because I imagine they make most sense to the dreaming mind.
Often things must align perfectly to create brilliant hues in nature: a smoky sky with a setting moon, high clouds during sunset, a field of flowers noticed at just the right moment, lightning on a cloudy night. The serendipitous occurrences and resulting colors are as extraordinary as they are fleeting,
I would almost rather photograph myself than another person, whether posed or in the more candid style of street photography. There is a barrier I find difficult to cross - a mix of overcoming shyness, not wanting to intrude, and fearing I will disappoint the sitter. Once on the other side, those fears pale under the light of connection and the permanent capture of an ordinary moment in time.
Strangers and loved ones, thank you for allowing me in.
Earth meets sky at the horizon, and where the land is flat or hugs the coast, the perspective suggests infinity. But from a mountain valley, the eye must scale up, up, up before meeting the horizon at the mountain ridge. Where vastness is a quality commonly used to describe the American West, the horizon here, by contrast, can feel constrained.
In this project, non-contiguous ridgelines connect to broaden and flatten peaks and hills and create the illusion of a more open horizon line. The separation between earth and sky is seamless but most everything else in the combined images - foreground, background, difference in tone - create contrast and reveal or perhaps underscore the deception.
My sweet Lola, who passed away at age 14 last spring, makes a cameo amidst other creatures wild and domesticated. I loved photographing them all but I loved and will miss her the most.
In some ways, all photography is as much an act of meditation as it is a study of form and color, light and shadow. Shooting in studio with transparent shapes and color gels, I worked by instinct and curiosity, enjoying the random nature of the process itself. The abstract images are infused with the playfulness I felt while shooting them.
In 2022, I traveled north to Greenland for a 6-day trek. I encountered my first icebergs, fell in love with the tiny trees and shrubs of the tundra, soft underfoot, watched glaciers calve, and experienced the awe of the aurora borealis while on Bear Watch each night. Six weeks later, I had crossed the wild waters of the Drake Passage and stepped foot on the southernmost continent. We were closer to the pole than we had been in Greenland and the icebergs were more numerous and otherworldly in the way they glowed blue in the filtered light of the southern sky.
There is a corner of my heart reserved for the people and magical wildlife of Kenya. I have been fortunate to have made several visits there, two of them with the NGO The Boma Project. BOMA works within tribal communities to end extreme poverty by elevating the poorest women, teaching them to run and own businesses so they can feed themselves and their children as well as pay school fees to ensure continued success through the next generation. With available money to spend comes power and a voice.
For more information on BOMA's good work, go to http://boma.ngo
The West is the smell of sage on a spring morning, a chance encounter with a herd of sheep while heading to a trailhead, and clear starry nights. It's the parade of wildflowers from May through August, a random hailstorm in July that leaves the ground looking, temporarily, like January, and the tranquility offered by a day in the wilderness. It's a slower pace and a connection to a different history. It's a special kindness perhaps rooted in a shared love for the outdoors. It's a feeling in my heart. It is my home.
