AMERICANA ATMOSPHERICS
I seek out unusual environmental conditions, using atmospherics and the meager range of light conditions in my art photography to evoke mood and feelings in my images. While such conditions can significantly impact an image’s overall look and feel, I’m more focused on the depth, mood, and emotion they add to the visual narrative by creating a dynamic and engaging visual experience for the viewer.
The soft, diffused light of fog, mist and low clouds can create a dreamy, ethereal quality that is enhanced in post-production to express the mood and messages being spoken to me by the landscape. Soft transitions and overlays remind me of the impermanence and flux of life. Often these moments occur just before the first and last light of day, and the feelings inspire raw wonder and a sense of humility and gratitude for the beauty of life.
I usually work alone— me and my camera— and my response to the setting in front of the camera goes beyond the lens. Atmospherics usually shroud but sometimes reveal reality, offering moments when I can capture a sense of mystery and uncertainty, evoking feelings of fear, unease, or wonder. At times blue hour light stirs the fog, and suddenly the scene blasts open with drama and energy, occasionally surprising but always well worth my efforts.
Breaking Mist
Deep in the Olympic National Park, snow-fed streams create an atmospheric mist that wraps the evergreens in white cotton puffs, offering a glimpse of what may lay beyond. The sun attempts to shed its wonderous light on the landscape, but only as soon as the gently swirling fog gives up its soft embrace.
Breaking Light in the Redwoods
I captured this award-winning image deep in the wilds of Redwoods National Park as evening light breaks through the afternoon mist. The light signals the path to take just as its ephemeral nature also signals the end of another magical day.
Emerging from the Mist
Walking through a fog shrouded early morning in the Olympic peninsula, I came across these trees that quite literally emerged from the mist. I wondered how I might look to them as I myself emerged from the mist as I approached? Different living organisms, different species yet similar in so many ways.
Evergreen on a Turquoise Fog
A lone evergreen tree pokes through a turquoise fog as I patiently stood with the cold to capture a landscape shrouded in a blue chill. Just what lies beyond, hidden in the swirling fog, I do not know. Do I want to?
First Light on First Frost
There is a magic moment, a fleeting morning light that reveals the crystalline structure of autumn’s first frost. The seasons are changing, yet life goes on.
Hidden in the Mist
Located adjacent to a well-trodden trail in the Olympic peninsula’s Hoh Rain Forest, this evergreen revealed itself as I approached, yet not revealing tother mysteries just beyond its gently arching veil.
Mossy Mist
The Queets Rain Forest remains one of the more isolated areas along the western facing slopes of the Olympic peninsula. A slow transit of this unique forest reveals its secrets only if the viewer takes the time to reflect, evaluate and conclude that mysteries are closely kept and rarely answered.
Night Haze
The subtle colors and shapes of this image belie the message being forecast from this locale. Are we witnessing fog and a downed tree, or, a gently flowing stream, a waterfall, or all of the above. The answers to these questions are available only to those intrepid enough to seek out and find.
O' Sun
The sun is the most precious gold shed on earth, and the morning atmospherics of the Bumpass Hell Steam vents cast an uplifting glow for a day of positivity and hope. That is if we are only willing and bold enough to reach out and claim it as our own.
Red Dawn Moving
Atmospheric Conditions launched a special morning across a land emerging from the night, heralding the promise of a new day. What light have we been given, and what will it portend for the new time of this landscape?
Reverence
The uplifting fog drifts into a low cloud deck and steams into heavenly skies. Landscape atmospherics presented this scene as a moment of reverence, a moment of conscious tranquility, a moment not soon forgotten.
Sea Mist of the Hidden Arch
Sea Spray and an Atmospheric Mist tinted by sundown light swirl through a Pacific Arch on the Washington Coast. Waves slowly lap at the exposed rock formations, ever-flowing, never-ending, like the seasons in time.
Silica Winds on Blue
I waited on the atmospherics to reward me with this special moment of wind lifting the sand from the edges of a Kelso Dune in the Mojave National Preserve. The knife-sharp edge of the dune demarks the boundary beyond which there is no return.
The Blue Rain
A soft blue rain advances over the sundown atmosphere and gently stirs the sea along the lonely Washington coast. The band of atmospheric gold, its existence such a precious moment in time, slowly fades to a lasting memory.
The Pastel Forest
Shimmering atmospherics hang as a veil over the forest, allowing me to peek into the reticent pastels of this landscape. What might be revealed, I wondered?
Soothing
Washington’s western coast provides stunning images when viewed through the lense of an extended time photograph. Yet even this view altering approach cannot begin to capture the breadth of stunning complexities and untold stories of this windswept and isolated area.