As the year 2014 is just dawning… and the dew is still wet and sweet beneath our toes… I am struck with thankfulness.  Today is a new day, and this year is quite the new year.  I am excited for what it will bring, as I renew my passion of photography, and aim to see, yet again in new ways.  And to let the Light change us.

A Credo for Mountain Photographers

The mountain photographer is interpreting the face of nature – that mysterious infinity, eternally a refuge, a reservoir, an amplifier of spirit; a mother of dreams; a positive though elusive voice in whose depth lies its subtlety. They will interpret best who are never so content as when under the influence of situations where silence is rich in the mute assurance and beauty of mountain surroundings. The quality of emotional knowing has a finer integration with our spirit than anything that comes from barren intellectual processes. This point of view only accumulates slowly, out of long experience and contact with wordless influences. Under the spell of solitude and of natural beauty the root system of this kind of awareness establishes itself.

Great art is usually created under some such saturation of awareness. The work is then permeated with an inner perception of beauty and an inner personal philosophy. The hope for our photography is that it shall retain these high lights of more than beauty, that through it symbols shall be preserved of response to our mountains, keeping them to a flow, a golden thread, in our experience.

— Cedric Wright, 1941

Cedric Wright’s words are resonating deeply with me today, and I feel refreshed and free to pursue my passion for mountain light.  I am hopeful for you and me in 2014…

Keep close to Nature’s heart…

and break clear away, once in awhile, 

and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.
Wash your spirit clean.

— John Muir