We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Douglas Brown a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Douglas, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?
Douglas S. Brown Photography, Landscape and Nature Photographic Art has been a long evolution from a childhood hobby to a small business opportunity. As a young man, I was influenced by amazing family, friends and mentors who encouraged me to step out of the box and explore a broad range of activities and challenges. I was encouraged to participate in sports, band, and other extracurricular activities that provide me with a broad life experience to build knowledge, skills and learn to work with others effectively. In addition to being encouraged to participate in school and community actives, my brother and I were active in our parents’ small business and were exposed to the challenges and rewards associated with running a successful business. The skills and knowledge I learned in these many areas provided me an understanding of my passions that I would later apply in my life. A key thing I learned from my family was that applying myself fully at whatever I did and following it through to completion was a key to success. I also learned the importance of creating a win-win scenario for partners and customers by providing high quality product and services at a competitive price.
One of my hobbies growing up was photography. My parents and grandparents took many family photos and home movies as we grew up and I was given my first point and shoot film camera at a young age. When we traveled, I would take my camera with me and I was encouraged to explore the hobby. When I went off to college I bought my first Cannon AE 1 and took my camera with me to sporting events, on hikes and on vacations. I did not have a specific genre I focused on, but I learned through experience and gained an eye for capturing my subjects in a pleasing manner. I did not take formal training but learned by trial and error and by asking fellow photographers for tips. Overtime I expanded my photographic skills, but the results were primarily to share with friends and family.
When I graduated from school my photography took a backseat to my career as an engineer. As I got busy with work and life, my AE-1 was replaced by an easier to carry point and shoot camera that could travel easily. Photography became a way to capture memories but aspirations of more than capturing family and vacation memories faded. I still took lots of photographs but they ended up in albums and drawers collecting dust.
In my early 50s, I found myself overweight and needing to focus on improving my lifestyle and health. I found myself focusing on eating better and started to focus on exercise to improve my health. This proved to be a pivotal moment in my photography journey. As I started to join hiking groups and getting out into nature, I of course took along my point and
shoot camera but more and more I found that I was missing incredible captures of wildlife, wildflowers and nature because the camera would not react as I was wanted. As I found myself in more amazing nature environments, I decided it was time to take back full control of my photography and purchase my first Nikon DSLR camera. Suddenly those missed opportunities turned into amazing captures. I was still in hobby mode and taking the photographs to share with family and friends, but the passion was renewed and an amazing transformation was on the horizon.
As I expanded my hiking network, my spouse and I found ourselves invited to harder hikes, to amazing locations around the southwest. Of course, I always had my camera with me and as I would share my favorite captures with friends, family, and hiking network more and more people would comment on my photographs and their composition. I heard comments about my ability to see things others missed on the hikes and to capture then with a unique perspective. Many would comment that I should consider selling my prints and making it more than just a hobby. While I appreciated the feedback, I took it as positive feedback that my skills were growing but I still saw it just as a hobby.
Then in 2017, I had the opportunity to travel to Idaho to shoot the Great American Solar Eclipse. I purchased some specialty lenses and filters and joined some of my hiking friends to make an event of the eclipse by climbing Mount Borah, Idaho’s tallest peak, and then camping on the line of totality with a goal of capturing the eclipse progression. I went into the shoot with an artistic composition in mind that would capture the sunrise, the star fill sky from the night before as a backdrop and then a series of shots capturing the eclipse from start to totality to finish. Working with a fellow photographer Gary Novotny, we captured the eclipse and collaborated on my creating a composite of the eclipse. To accomplish this, I got my first exposure to Photoshop and built out a 40 something layer photographic art composition of the eclipse. The results exceeded my expectations and highlighted to me that I had been leaving great photographs unrealized by not understanding and using the tools available for digital photography that could pull out their true potential.
As I shared the final work with friends and family I was surprised by the interest. I received numerous inquiries to purchase and found myself selling a large quantity of the print. I found myself needing to establish a website through which I could handle the credit card purchases and more professionally present my photography. This eclipse project ended up being a turning point and from the sale of that work I was able to fund my website and create an internet and social media presence to share my photography. Using the skills I learned with photoshop and other more advanced photography techniques I went back into my extensive library of nature and wildlife photographs taken through the years and established an active website.
While my photography is still a secondary career for me as I still have my primary career as an engineering leader, I have gained a following for my landscape and wildlife photography and sell prints through my site and put together annual calendars from my photography that have gained a following. The hobby has become a side business with the foundation to become a primary business when I ultimately retire from my day job and take this passion and love of hiking in the outdoors and capturing the amazing images Mother Nature has to offer to the next level as I continue to share my photographic art with my family, friends, and customers.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a landscape and wildlife photographer who has combined my love of hiking and the outdoors with my love of photography. During my hiking adventures throughout the Southwest and Pacific Northwest, I look to capture highlights from my special encounters with Mother Nature and turn them into artwork which will help bring an awareness and appreciation for her special gifts she has to offer. Whether it be capturing magical landscapes with the unique beauty of the southwest desert; alpine meadows in the Sierra Nevada or Pacific Northwest or remote interactions with Desert or Sierra Bighorn; the many interesting reptiles of the desert; or the many amazing wildflowers I encounter I look for the unique aspects to present in my art.
In my work, I try to capture the magic of nature and bring my audience an appreciation and hopefully gain a passion for what the outdoors has to offer. Through my work, I attempt to inspire my audience to go out and encounter nature for themselves and develop a love for what she has to offer them. My greatest excitement comes when I meet young hikers and photographers who are just getting into the hobbies and sharing my stories with them.
Although on occasion I will create an artistic print based upon my photography, it is my primary objective to capture the beauty of nature as close as possible to her natural beauty and share it with my audience.
My goal is to share my experience with the outdoor with others and when one of my images strikes a chord with a customer, I look forward with providing them the opportunity to bring that photographic work into their home or work environment and brighten the space through landscape and wildlife images.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
One of my regrets on my photographic journey is treating it as a self-learned hobby for too long. By not recognizing that my passion translated to others and potentially could become a business venture through which I could share my experiences I did not learn the technical detail behind image capture, impacts of post processing on image quality and size and not
fully appreciating the value of purchasing tools to allow me to pull the full potential of my photography from my initial capture. Examples included using .jpg for my primary captures and not leveraging raw files trying to safe memory and capture more images on a trip. I would then often use free post processing tools that resulted in fantastic looking images on the computer or phone but inadvertently destroying my file size and losing details in the file as I processed the work. I ended up with so many digital images that started out with much more detail that I lost through not properly managing my core files and overwriting those files with degraded images which could never be recaptured.
I look back on the many images with so much potential which I destroyed by not taking the time to understand the fundamentals of digital photography and image processing much earlier in my digital career. Once I got more serious about 15 years ago and as my subjects became more intriguing and unique, I began to take classes and read up more on the subject matter and have learned the importance of treating my raw images with care and translating those into my photographic prints through a systematic process. Luckily old dogs can learn new tricks and I have a large library of photographs to work from.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I have a passion for getting into the outdoors and experience unique and beautiful places and encountering the wildlife and landscapes that they present. I have been fortunate to have built a large group of friends with similar passions who have brought me along on so many of their journeys to share incredible adventures together. Through my photography I have captured some of these amazing places and experience for my memory but also to share these experiences with my many friends, family and customers who cannot personally get to the places I have been fortunate to go to and experience.
I am energized by those who follow me when they comment on how much they enjoy seeing images of these locations and how it helps them feel that they are sharing in the experience. Whether those shares come through my website, social media or sharing my work firsthand with others, it is the joy and passion which my work inspires in others which brings me the greatest satisfaction.
It is a lot of work to capture the special image, going through hundreds of captures to find those unique and special shots and then translating them into a print quality image that enables the customer to experience my encounter with nature through my lens. It makes the time and effort worth it to provide the window into my world for others to bring into their world.
Contact Info:
- Website: douglassbrownphotography.smugmug.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/douglassbrownphotography/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DouglasSBrownPhotography/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglassbrownphotography/