Featured Artist Nathan McCreery

Artist Nathan McCreery elevates the art of photography with dramatic and inspiring black and white landscape images. Find more of his work on his website.

 

 

I have been involved in the art of photography for many years. Beginning in 1976, I’ve been drawn to the art of photography as inexorably as a bird to the sky.

 

 

I intended to go to a university near my home to earn a degree in graphic design and then continue my studies at the Art Institute College of Design in Pasadena, California. I was planning to concentrate my studies in commercial interior design. However, that all changed on the day that I attended my first class session in a required course in photography.

 

 

When I saw that first image appear as if by magic, in a tray of stinky chemicals in the basement darkroom of the institution where I was enrolled, I was hooked. That was the most amazing thing I had ever seen in my life. I was fascinated.

 

 

In fact, I am just as fascinated now with the whole process—four decades later—as I was on that day in 1976.

 

 

Much has changed in the years since then. I have witnessed the two largest paradigm shifts ever in the art of photography. When I first began this journey, most professional photographers worked predominantly in black and white. I have seen the shift from primarily black and white, and hand colored black and white, to the use of color photographic materials, and now to the use of digital photography.

 

 

In the years since then, I have worked doing almost any kind of photography there was to do. This ranged from large set commercial work to automotive work, food photography, forensic and medical work and many portrait commissions. Someone once asked me what my favorite type of photography was. I easily replied, “Whatever is in front of my camera at the moment.”

 

 

When I began taking photographs, some of my very first subjects were nature studies. It’s what I enjoyed the most at the time. Whether it was backpacking into the Pecos Wilderness to photograph wild sheep, the details in a verdant forest, or the arid New Mexico desert, nature was calling. It still is.

 

 

After all these years doing photography, it seems that I have come full circle. I began my art career doing black and white of natural scenes with small cameras and making prints in a basement darkroom at my university. I now photograph the wonders of creation with large cameras, using black and white film and traditional means, to make black and white prints in a traditional wet darkroom.

 

 

In my work I have been greatly influenced by the work of, of course, Ansel Adams, as well as Morley Baer, Edward Weston, Dr. Eliot Porter and many others. I have been privileged to be mentored by some of the most well-known figures in the field of photography. They have freely shared information and instruction. I have also gotten some brutal critiques of my work, and for that I have immense gratitude. I have lived a blessed life.

 

 

The photographs in this portfolio are drawn from a larger body of work that I call An Enchanted Land and another personal project entitled Rio Pecos. Each of these images depict areas of New Mexico that I travel to as often as possible. The images from An Enchanted Land are being organized into what I hope will become a coffee table book.

 

Artist Nathan McCreery invites you to follow him on Facebook.

 

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