Where It Started

My photography pursuit began a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…Or maybe just in Northern Minnesota. But it was a long time ago, and when I was a kid it seemed far, far away.

Growing up, my family had a cabin near the Boundary Waters. We vacationed there every summer. One of those summers I saw a wild wolf in the woods near the cabin. It had a radio collar around its neck and looked incredibly mangy. It was gone in the blink of an eye, disappearing back into the trees. That brief encounter stayed with me.

I grew up admiring the work of Jim Brandenburg, the National Geographic photographer based in that same area. Every year I’d stop by his gallery in Ely just to look at his amazing images. I first went for the wolf photographs, but I quickly fell in love with his landscape images and the way he conveyed the emotion of the moment. I decided that someday I would buy one of his prints to hang on my wall. I didn’t know the first thing about art or photography, and I didn’t have a place to hang them yet, so every year I simply stood there and admired his work.

Years later, in preparation for our honeymoon in Maui, I decided I needed to learn how to take photographs the way Brandenburg did so we could have massive, beautiful images like that on our own walls. Sounds simple, right? Go somewhere amazing, point a camera at something, take a few pictures and voila, beautiful images. Can’t be that hard, the landscape does all the real work, any bozo can take pictures with a nice camera, right? Turns out, no, no they can't. I would soon prove that…over, and over, and over…

How It Started (Year 1):

I did eventually get there (the ability to make large, beautiful prints for the wall) but the path was anything but short, straight, or simple. It didn’t happen the way I expected or in the timeframe I expected. And I’m still never completely happy with any of the images I make. I’m always looking for a better one.

How it was going (10 years later…):

It’s easy to take these fleeting moments for granted. I’m always seeking the unknown, the mystery, and the adventure tied to every photograph, both the ones already made and the ones still out there, elusive, calling to be captured.

That pursuit continues… this Journal is simply the next step in it.