Inspiring Landscapes
Nature's Nobility in Photographs - by David Dilworth

This website, including all images and poetry are © Copyright 2004-2010 David Dilworth.

All rights are reserved worldwide (and throughout our Milky Way Galaxy).

Image names are Trademarked by David Dilworth 2006-2010

I did not plan any of those moments, but thank goodness I was prepared for them. They help make up for the exquisite moments when I didn't have a camera. Like the spectacular Carmel Sunset in Fall 2008 which was so far beyond 1,000 words . . .

Art is merely the use of skill to devise an aesthetic result. It can be as simple as Bill Cosby's idea of a child putting a nick in a stick for his mother, or as grandiose as wrapping miles of landscape in fabric.

Art has one particularly notable facet. Unlike phenomena in physical sciences, aesthetics, beauty and feelings cannot be measured (objective vs subjective).

We can not accurately tell someone else how they feel. Telling someone else how they should feel is a presumptuous insult, especially about art.

So don't let an art expert tell you which art you should like, or shouldn't.

If you like an art work - that's great. But you don't need training to know what feels good.

If you don't like a work - that 's fine too; don't worry about it -- not even for a moment.

Now beyond the raw emotional impact you might get from an image is an intellectual delight it may give you. (This is where art experts can help you.) There may be exquisite details (feather quills), subtle colors (a woman's cheek in shadow), or hidden structure (eyes closeup), which only become apparent upon careful inspection.

Good art, like good writing and good teaching, is what jumps off the work and stays in your mind.

Great art does that and more; it enkindles and ignites you to create new ideas . . . the more the better.

 As a professional environmental science consultant, David has helped dozens of environmental groups achieve more than eight hundred environmental successes since 1992; some small and a few with international impact.

He has lead efforts to protect thousands of acres of imperiled forests, wild lands, their wildlife and watercourses; directly taught hundreds of people about forest ecosystems on walks in the native forests and taught thousands more of many disciplines in environmental science, law and policy; written adopted world class laws for water conservation, silence protection, and Campaign Finance laws; He has written several model environmental and democracy protection policy elements. 

After growing up in Pacific Grove, Carmel, Pebble Beach, and Big Sur and describing himself as merely an "art appreciator," David was delighted to discover others thought he had artistic ability, getting rave reviews from friends and winning fine art competition awards for his color landscapes.

David has spent thousands of hours capturing some 70,000+ images, and has been honored with numerous awards.

His work has been collected by Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP) and is in private collections as far away as New England.

His first solo Gallery exhibition and party was in Big Sur's Soul River Studios Fall 2008.

He has provided public slide shows at Carmel Foundation, Canterbury Woods, REI and for Big Sur's Henry Miller Gallery on their 20x30 foot screen.

I do not believe it is possible, nor do I try, to improve on nature's beauty.

But it is possible to compose, to line natural features up, by being in the right place at the right moment for fabulous light. What my photographs provide is my skill at knowing what places will exhibit spectacular beauty at specific moments, like sunsets or moonrises and how I select features to highlight. Or as Ansel Adams said "a good photograph is knowing where to stand."

He also once wrote "You don't take a photograph, you make it."

On this point I respectfully have a different philosophy. I do not "make" photographs, my goal is to show as closely as possible what the actual landscape looked like at the moment I was there.

All images are as close as I can get them to the true natural light reflected or emitted by the real natural phenomena at the place and moment it was photographed. Only one image (the Tiger Lily) employs artificial lighting.

Every camera makes some errors in capturing a vision such as rectilinear distortion (barrel and pincushion), noise, and color skew (DSLR Bayer Pattern chips have to guess most colors and use a filter that intentionally blurs images. - I'm not kidding.)

While I often do adjust images slightly, I intentionally do not adjust my images by an amount larger than the errors introduced by the camera system.

In any case, none of my images are modified in any way with Photoshop. None are dodged or burned or contain parts of any other image or have anything except dust spots removed; few are even cropped.

All images in this exhibition are available as museum quality photographic prints using Fuji Crystal Archive Type One Paper (silver-halide emulsion color prints - none are printed as "Giclee" a $25 word merely meaning "ink jet").

They are mounted and matted using museum acid-free paper and tape.

We can provide world class framing to suit your home or office and to protect your investment.

We can guide you to world class lighting suitable for your home or office and to protect your investment.

For encouraging me to pursue fine art photography I want to express my deep appreciation to -- 

Vienna Merritt-Moore

who persuaded me that other people might like my photographs as well, and insisted I enter photographic competitions, 

Cole Weston

for getting me to realize the fine art landscape photography can be in color,

Sarah Joplin

who advised me to put my images on the web, 

Morley Baer

who shared my love of Big Sur's magnificent sculptured vistas, and most of all -- 

Retired Colonel Joel Dilworth

my father, who, when I was young, convinced me that I could do anything I really wanted. 

My deepest thanks.

-David

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