Digital Photography: Nature Unveiled

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Nature Photography

2005 - present

"Nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed.”

So wrote scientist and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon half a millennium ago. Experience with a lens has shown me that Nature reveals herself most exuberantly to those who heed his advice.

I have found that patient (but never passive) endurance of Nature discloses her as a theophany; and I am convinced that if we were to greet the prosaic greenery underfoot with the same naïve wonder we bring to a night sky in the wilderness, that same vertiginous feeling of the infinite would be ours with every little weed sprouting through a crack in the pavement.

“Concepts create idols; only wonder grasps anything,” St. Gregory of Nyssa tells us. I therefore use my lens as a wedge, to pry the alien out from under the familiar in order to preserve the sense of wonder that is the privilege of every newborn, and of everyone newly-illumined into the sacred mysteries of baptism. And possessed of wonder, we might at last take hold of what it means to be alive, boldly requesting such a disclosure from those discrete moments and places where Godlife has tangibly broken into plantlife, and plantlife has broken into song. This book and the body of work it presents is my prayer that our fallen and fractured world may be a lens onto Eden for those who have eyes to see.