Roots

When I heard the words "Natural" and "Organic" used to describe my wedding photography, I knew my love for nature photography was undoubtably surfacing. My love for gorgeous natural light and stunning scenery stem much further than simply my beginning in wedding photography. This goes far back to when I first started shooting many years ago. Early in high school I was in search of a way to create images that were more akin to what the eyes see > I searched far and wide for the proper equipment and film (yes film). Amid feeble attempts to record the stars on film, I was given a Canon Rebel film camera and my passion was born. I became fully immersed in nature photography. The world was my playground... I went out every day and sometimes several times a day to practice new techniques. In nature photography the difficulty lies not in trying to flatter a subject, rather in trying to render a subjective image, in to an objective one. There is a deep misapprehension of the seemingly facile nature of the photographic process of a landscape photograph. The process of creating a pleasing landscape requires, planning, a tripod, a large collection of skills, and a little luck. Additionally, it requires discipline and a discerning eye. I learned to tune in to the environment and became extremely selective. Those same ideals and skills I learned out in the field have now transferred to weddings. The lighting and technical skills are quite the same, the only difference is the use of a tripod and the pressure. Where I would spend hours in the field and come away with just a few photographs, now I will take several hundred images in ten to fifteen minutes. In the last year or so, I have had little time to travel and shoot nature photography, yet more and more I see nature flooding through my images."The true gestation period of a photograph is not the seconds, or fractions of seconds, of the exposure but rather the years the photographer has spent on a journey that is both physical and intellectual before reaching the point when the shutter was opened."David Ward