I was a 19-year-old college student from Ohio when I first saw the American West. I had a summer photography internship with National Geographic Magazine. The editors sent me to McCall, Idaho to shoot a Fourth of July rodeo.
Landing in Boise, I was awestruck, smitten, knocked for a loop. I was wowed and bedazzled. My eyes were fried and OD’d on beauty. My mind was blown. Mountains! Big Sky! Rivers! Prairie! Why, a guy (or gal) with a camera could make some serious images here! Given this landscape--and fer-real cowboys, American Indians and other interesting folks I met on that trip-- it seemed like killer pictures would just doe-see-doe their ownselves right into my camera.
Today, some 30 years later, I’m still crazy about the West. It’s my home now, and my cameras continue to be busy, taking it all in.
This past weekend I traveled back to Idaho, this time to photograph a wedding. Leah and I climbed into the car at our home near Seattle and drove east to find The West. We drove through the Palouse country of Eastern Washington, where the fields of wheat and canola and corn and soy beans seem to go on forever. Eventually the fields bump into mountains. Out in that country, finding photographs is as easy as pie.
