Photographing Lake Tahoe

Winter Dawn.  Tahoe Keys.  Lake Tahoe, California.

Winter Dawn. Tahoe Keys. Lake Tahoe, California.

Every time I set up the camera, my goal is to create a photograph worthy of a patron’s wall.  To attract an audience the work must first be beautiful.  To persevere, it must be insightful and create awareness. Photographing in the large format tradition with normal perspective lenses subtly conveys the historical  perspective.  It was the view of many early 19th Century photographers that wide angle lenses distorted reality.  To paraphrase Michael Carey Lea in his Manual of Photography from 1871, gardens should not appear as parks.

Lake Tahoe: A Fragile Beauty begins with the beautiful and often subdued images of land, light, and shape.  So much of our affection for Tahoe comes from a sense of awe and wonder upon seeing its shores.  Slowly the imagery shifts toward, what I term, the intersecting landscape.  To quote the Forward: “While Tahoe’s sublime vistas always capture me, it is upon closer contemplation that I inevitably find myself at those intersecting landscapes, those brought on by our industriousness, dreams, and ambitions.”