A Photographer's Life: A Journey from Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalist to Celebrated Nature Photographer by Dykinga Jack

Author:Dykinga, Jack [Dykinga, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rocky Nook
Published: 2016-12-13T16:00:00+00:00

Indian Paintbrushes

Days spent roaming the high desert canyon country of Utah—that began as food for my soul—finally morphed into my book Stone Canyons of the Colorado Plateau . The same visual story-telling technique I learned as a Chicago photojournalist compelled me to seek ways to illustrate the fragility of the land as well as the reasons to treasure it.

So, as I rumbled down four-wheel-drive roads in the backcountry north of Capitol Reef National Park, my eyes became accustomed to the red and yellow striated sandstone landscape. But when I crested a hill leading into an arroyo bottomland that was suddenly electric green, I was instantly struck by the uniqueness of the lush green sedges and the flowering Indian paintbrushes that were surrounded by pure arid desolation.

For me, this was one of those teachable moments that I could share using my images. Illustrating the ecosystem with its unexpected anomalies of sheer beauty is something that drives my photography. Recording and sharing images of the wildness with urban dwellers has become my passion. The very fact that places are allowed to remain protected hangs on decisions made in urban areas and our nation’s capitol.

I feel a certain responsibility to record the wilderness with both honesty and a sense of wonder. The very fact that I am awe-inspired as I witness beauty in the landscape makes communicating that feeling to others easy for me. I follow my feelings as I carefully compose images in the ground glass of my view camera.

I intuitively seek a design in the scene, as I did with this image. I looked for spacing between the Indian paintbrush flowers and the emerald green garden of sedges. My eyes traced the borders of the ground glass image as I repositioned the camera ever so slightly so each plant was spaced with no overlap.

My leisurely pace turned into a race with rising sun. My camera pointed due east would soon be engulfed in bright morning light flaring into the lens. To make matters worse, the same moisture that had given me a visual banquet, also harbored an endless supply of biting flies. Of course, I was wearing shorts. I danced to and fro—focusing, swatting, loading film, swatting—and finally, I grabbed my camera with lens still mounted and quickly retreated into my truck.

The serene beauty and my sense of wonder had been abruptly confronted by the reality of the wildness. That’s wilderness.

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