Wilbur Wong
Fine Art Landscape Photographs
About Me
Biography
I have been a lifelong landscape photographer, the experience of taking images is a way for me to be more fully aware of nature around me. Similar to Navajo philosophy "I walk with beauty above, below and about me" I attune to the beauty about me wherever I go. When I am fortunate to experience scenes that particularly evoke my inner emotions it compels me to capture those feelings through photography.
As I matured as a photographic artist I find images that focus on subjects that convey emotional feelings while eliminating anything else that detracts from those feelings so I show what I want to share with a viewer.
The camera is my tool to control what is recorded. My tool of choice has been a view camera which allows independent movement of its lens relative to the plane of focus for the recorded image. This allows me to place the plane of sharpest focus to be parallel to a lake surface for example rather than a vertical plane of focus if that is what is most needed.
An essential accessory to my camera is a tripod which allows me to contemplate every aspect of an image across time and space. This also allows me an intimate meditative space and time in which to fully absorb myself in my art.
Photography Sessions
The pursuit of subjects like the water lilies and ice shots that I enjoy so much have involved multiple sessions across many season cycles. The water lily, Nuphar polysepala's life cycle has a very short window of days as individuals after their emergence in early summer and when they proliferate across a lake surface packing so tightly together that they push each other out of the water. Scouting for locations as well as photographing often involve long predawn drives and hikes to find subjects in the right lighting and conditions, capturing just one in a year is a bonus to the enjoyment of photographing.
For subjects like Stone & Ice the weather cycle preceding the ice formation requires a series of days with alternating freezing nights and warmer days while the water beneath the sheet of ice slowly recedes night after night while varying patterns form and develop. A rain cycle will wash away these subjects from their location in an intermittent stream bed while a snow cycle will bury them out of sight. As many times that I have made journeys to capture this, I feel fortunate to have achieved a few photographs that convey a special sense of quiet nature frozen in time.