If you are anything like me and you enjoy physical media and books and arts of all types you probably have stacks and piles of things all over the place. Bookshelves both virtual and physical of books and arts of all kinds. I have bookshelves at home that are covered in art. Rows of books. Art books. Novels. Graphic novels. Some of these are books I read and loved. Some are books I have not yet started.

Photography is one of my favorite things. I love to take photos. I love to look at photography anything from cute dog portraits to stunning landscapes and everything in between. I love to read about the medium of photography and those who create it. I enjoy learning the craft both the technical and creative side of things. I love to be inspired.

I recently realized that I had this book my my shelf that I wasn’t sure I ever actually finished. This book was a coffee table style book about the photographer Galen Rowell. I am not sure I was even that familiar with him as an artists at the time, but the book had this beautiful mountain landscape scene on the cover and it captivated me. I bough this book likely a decade or more ago. I started reading it and then put it back on my shelf not to be tougched again.

That is until now.

I recently was looking at my bookshelves and wondering if I ever read that book. So I picked it up and opened it up. There was my bookmark I had placed inside. On a page very near the beginning. I resumed reading.

This was a beautifully written book that also contained beautiful photographs. There were many gorgeous large format photos of landscapes and adventures taken by Galen Rowell. And the photographers were interleaved with essays written by those who knew him. Stories of adventures, and who he was as an artist and as a person. how he developed as an adventurer, an artist, and as a person in the world over time.

I am in no way in the caliber of Gallen Rowell as an artists, an adventurer, or a conservationist, but reading this book helped me to reflect on my own photography and ow I pursue it. I love nature and wildlife photography. And often the key to great photographs of that type is patience as you sit and wait for an animal to make their presence known or waiting for just the right light. But my biggest weakness as a photographer is a lack of patience. Sometimes I can summon it to wait for a beautiful sunset to develop, but not as often as I like. I prefer to be on the move. To always be seeing new things. I want to hike, see a sight, photograph it, and mov eon to the next sight. Then maybe plan a return trip to places I love for further study with the camera.

I have always considered my style as a photographer weak or unserious because of the seemingly casual way I practice it, always on the move, sometimes with little intention. But after reading this book on Gallen Rowell where so much of what he did was founded in the philosophy of always being in motion. You have to be moving through those places to get the photos. And as an adventurer you don’t always have time to wait for just the right light.

I realize that I am not hiking grand expeditions or scaling mountains where time is the essence. But moving through the woods and across landscapes as much as I can is the essence of my photography. It is what allows me to capture the images I can in the limited time I have. Instead of showing the world grand landscapes they will never visit, I hope to show people little hidden gems that they can find if they just hike down this trail that they never knew was even there. That is how I found it. I didn’t know it was there until I wandered down that trail either.

I appreciated reading about how Galen Rowell photography changed as his focus in life in general changed. He began as more of an adventurer photographer and was focused on showing the athletes moving through the landscape. And developed over time into more of a landscape photographer as his mission and style evolved and the types of plans he had changed over time.

I think about this as it relates to my work because I have shifted my focus in photography over time. And mine often shifts between capturing athletes in motion against a landscape, running, versus photographing a scenic landscape shot of a tree with waves hitting the shore around it. And I often think that my photography of athletes is lacking because I don’t like the light or the glare or something that is really out of my control because the purpose of the photo is to photogrpah the athlete not the scenery. The scenery is a backdrop and creates a more interesting image and hopefully might inspire someone to travel this path, but it is not the point. And that seemed to be the way Galen Rowell photography of climbers and other athletes was described.

There were two stories that I really appreciated in this book. One of Gallen Rowell as a mentor and one about his photographic eye. In one of his last expeditions before his untimely death was one of the veterans on an expedition and one of the younger people on the expedition was Jimmy Chin, now most well known for the Free Solo documentary. The story told in the book talks of how despite the difficult journey and work they were undertaking Gallen Rowell took time to take Jimmy Chin under his wing and mentor him and pass on as much knowledge as he could during their time together. And the other story was from this same arduous expedition. The essay recount s photo that Gallen Rowell took and that was on display in an exhibit that the other members were attending after his death. The other members of the expedition party did not even remember seeing the scene that Gallen Rowell had beautifully crafted into a photo for all to see. The expedition had all whitnessed the scene but only Galen Rowell had the eye and took the time to create the image and capture the moment forever.

I hope my photography can be anything like that. A gateway into times that we might all forget or not even realize we whitnessed. I want to create the images others don’t see. I want to pas son wha it have learned. I want to advocate for the conservation of this wonderful world that we all share together.

I hope that I can live up to even a small fraction of the legacy Gallen Rowell pushed into the future and the impact we as photographers can make with our art.

PS.

If you have a book that you have been meaning to read or that you picked up and started but then forgot about or otherwise never got back to despite wanting to read it, I encourage you to pick that book back up and commit to reading it now.

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