Growing up the son of a National Park Ranger and living in and around some of our country’s greatest treasures, it is all too simple for me to figure out how I ended up a landscape/nature photographer. For one whose mind wanders, it has changed my life, providing an escape from the expected and a motivational outlet that has proven irreplaceable. Pushing me to seek out adventure and encouraging a drive to experience freedom under my own interpretation.
My introduction into photography started as a way to unwind while I was approaching the end of college. I was completely directionless with what to do with myself and it seemed like a healthy outlet and one that would get me outdoors, something I’d drifted away from during that time. After a couple of random trips to Rocky Mountain National Park with my first ‘real’ camera, I was sucked in. What had started as an occasional hobby quickly snow balled into an obsession. I started spending most of my time learning whatever I could, reading books and magazines, digging through the internet, and whatever else I could find to try and figure out this new addiction. Soon after that I started visiting more of the South West, specifically, Zion National Park and the surrounding areas, it is where I believe I developed the style and vision for my work.
My goal in photography is to create and experience something memorable, unique, or at least somewhat puzzling. To spend days alone in the wilderness and try to bring back something I can personally enjoy and hopefully inspire others to as well. It hasn’t been an easy road to follow, year after year of scraping by and working temporary random jobs. Battling the temptations of traditional life pursuits for the end goal of being able to disappear for a while to follow my passion and create life experiences.
For the most part I tend to focus on wide and dynamic scenes but also spend much of my time shooting smaller more abstract possibilities that nature provides. Using photography to hopefully confuse the viewer into wondering what exactly they are looking at. For me, that is what photography is all about, playing with the camera’s ability not to just capture a moment but to create something more.
-John Whitworth-