About the Photographer
I started in photography more as a way to record my travels and hikes. I did alot of hiking on various sections of the Appalachian Trail under the name Windwalker. I loved meeting people from all over the world hiking on this famous trail. One day you can find yourself talking to someone from California or Texas and the next a group from England or Germany. It is a true melting pot of people coming together to tackle this grueling 2,175 mile long scenic hiking path from Georgia to Maine.
Alot of my original photography of my hikes, the negatives and the prints were destroyed one winter in Somersworth when our cellar flooded out. I was gone on a three day fall hike and when I came back home, it was too late to save anything. The water had reached waist level and destroyed all of the things I had down in storage. Being cool down there and dark, it was the best place to store my negatives and what not. Oh well.
I became involved in 2005 in a special program designed to get people who are on disability back to work. Previously I had been a cook and worked as a nursing assistant, but was placed on disability in 1993. The P.A.S.S. cadre whom they assigned to me, Stephanie Moffat, saw some photos I had taken of a February hike from Amicola Falls to Blood Mountain and advised me that I should go into photography. I actually tried to discourage her from what I thought was silliness...but she persevered more than I discouraged and actually I thank her for it.
Thanks to this program and the people at the New Hampshire Vocational Rehabilitation office in Berlin NH, Melissa Wedge and the rest of the staff there helped me start to realize my goal of getting off of disability. They have all been incredibly supportive and have really pushed me into working in the photography field. I actually can never thank Stephanie, Melissa and the rest enough for all the help and support they have given me through the years. Yes I have done alot of it on my own, but with their support I made it through some of the rough times and I know photography is what I was meant to do.
In this program I was actually able to do two things I loved the most...hike the beautiful New Hampshire Mountains and photograph it to show everyone else why I believe there is nothing that can touch the beauty here anywhere else in the world.
I have been to alot of places all around the U.S. and I may be a little partial because I was born and raised in NH, but nowhere else have I seen such a variety of different landscapes in such a small area. From the seacoast to the Canadian border and everywhere in between, you visit everything from a seashore, to a lake shore, to rivers and streams so cold and clear they just amaze you. From the White Mountains, once so tall, they rivaled the Himalayans, to the deep Notches of Franconia, Crawford, Pinkham, Mahousic and Grafton. From small New England towns to bustling cities, to the northern farmlands, and sleepy mountain villages, New Hampshire offers so many scenes that they can literally overwhelm the senses.
I have been "working" for the last five years, hiking these hidden mountain trails of the Great North Woods and the White Mountains of Northern NH photographing all the jewels that make Northern NH what it is. Once I fully cover this section I plan on starting with Lakes Region, then working my way down eventually to the Seacoast. I hope to cover all of New Hampshire photographing the beauty of it and the uniqueness of it.
Another aspect of photography that I truly love is photographing florals. Garden or wild, it does not matter to me. The variety of flowers, well they just literally blow my mind. One thing I have learned though through my photographing them. If all of these different varieties of flowers and plants can co-exist and live together, then I would wish man would learn from them...and learn how to do the same.
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