i often attempt to photograph distinct elements of a landscape. i try to pay close attention to my surrounding and to the environment that surrounds me. the more often i visit an area, the better i get to know what those distinct elements are. the more i get to know these elements of distinction, the more intimately i feel i’m able to get to them, photographically.

there are a number of things that i adore about the pacific northwest and two primary elements are the forests and the clouds, or fog. the forests are completely different from those i grew up with in the midwest, and completely different from those i’ve come to know in half my life in colorado. after leaving the dreariness of all-to-common overcast days in the midwest for the three hundred days of sunshine in colorado, i see myself longing for the overcast days, rain and moisture of the PNW - particularly over the last few years of extreme drought in the southwest. this image also shows elements of scale and negative space as the land feels so innately huge to me. and so this picture, Living on the Edge, is a combination of those elements - elements that make the pacifc northwest uniquely, the pacific northwest - at least to me.

along with attempting to capture the essence of a place, i will sometimes capture my psychological feelings in an image. sometimes this is a conscious effort, while at other times it is not. sometimes my psychological feelings don’t come into view in the image until i view the image on my computer. as my nephew - a very talented, budding photographer himself - was photographing and asking about the photographs he was taking, a core question continued to be asked: does this image show an example of photographic rule x? granted, he was given a photographic assignment to show many of the rules, but his reliance on photographing within the constraints of those rules likely eliminated a number of interesting images he could have taken. the key to using photographic rules in my humble opinion, is to know why they’re considered “rules”, and to know when to break them for your artistic purpose. and so, this image was my way of telling him that not everything needs to “fill the frame” or comply with the rule of thirds.

as i viewed it on the computer, the image took on a new meaning however, as not only were the trees bunched up on the edge of the image frame, but they stood for where i feel humanity stands currently. we are, at least as it feels to me, living on the edge. there are climate issues galore, which i believe strongly we are making worse due to our love for money and will in all likelihood end with mass migrations and continued stress on the earth, human and wildlife populations. there is a war with continuous threats of escalation to nuclear war - an apocalyptic end to what the entire world knows as life today. there is political partisanship throughout the world that increases on what seems to be a daily basis. the ability to treat our fellow humans with compassion and understanding grows more distant as each night turns to day. we are, as a society, as a planet, living on the edge of life as we know it. how long we can continue to do so is unbeknownst to us, but a truth appears to be emerging from the clouds - that we cannot live on this edge forever.

i’m not a fan of the rock group, Aerosmith. i know they released a song with the title, “Living on the Edge” in 1993. i googled the song to see how close it was to what it is i’m feeling about our human condition today. i was incredibly shocked to find that the lyrics match to a ‘T’ what seems to be happening to us as a society. dare i say, the members in the band seem utterly prophetic in describing our world today almost thirty years ago.