(Winter’s Dawn, Sparks Lake by Stuart Gordon)
Stuart Gordon is a Bend-based nature and travel photographer who has journeyed to more than 30 countries around the world in search of extraordinary landscapes, wildlife, places and people since starting Stuart L Gordon Photography in 2010.
“Most of my life I’ve been a writer, and I was the last person you would have expected to become a photographer,” he said. “I was the guy who went on vacation and was reluctant to ever pick up a camera and take pictures. I regarded a camera as a distraction from viewing a scene or enjoying a moment directly with my eyes.”
That all changed in 2009 after he took a photo of his youngest son and later viewed the image on his computer screen. “I was struck by how it captured the essence of that little boy in this portrait. I was moved by that photo, and I wondered if I could repeat that in other images,” he recalled.
That’s when he realized that “if you’re talking about photography that merely records what you’re seeing or doing, I’m not very interested. But if you’re talking about photography as a means to capture and reflect what you feel about the subject you are shooting… that’s art, and count me in. I was hooked after that epiphany.”
After 12 years of pursuing photography, including one year in which he photographed every day while on a round-the-world journey with his wife and three children, Gordon says he now realizes photography is more an approach to life than a way of recording where you’ve been.
“To me, photography is a way to train your mind to be constantly attentive, aware and present,” Gordon said. “It becomes not just something to practice when you have a camera in your hands on weekends, holidays or vacations.
“Photography trains you to see the world with fresh eyes. It has a way of deepening and enriching our experiences by strengthening our connection to the people and places we encounter on our journey through life.”
As photographers strive to capture the spirit of a place or person they frame with their cameras, they train their eyes to “see” the extraordinary in the ordinary and attempt to “reveal” what Gordon calls “the hidden wonders.”
He says his “best” images are the best precisely because they capture the raw emotion of the moment when he framed the subject in his camera and snapped the shutter button. They trigger not only memories but also emotions. “I love it when people look at one of my images and tell me they feel as if they were standing right next to me when the the picture was taken,” he said. “It’s one of the highest compliments you can pay an image.”
Although he has visited some of the most iconic photographic locations in the world, from Patagonia to Iceland, he enjoys discovering new locations that do not draw busloads of people or fellow photographers. “It doesn’t matter to me whether a place has been photographed by hordes of photographers, seldom photographed, or never photographed. I try to approach each location and person the same way — with gratitude, reverence and humility. They’re all iconic subjects to me.”
While largely self-taught, Gordon credits time spent with master photographer Art Wolfe with helping him hone his craft. But most of his inspiration, he says, comes not from other photographers, but rather painters Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Fredrick Church and JMW Turner, who celebrated luminous light and landscape in their work. “These masters of light made me realize that whether you are a painter or photographer, being an artist is all about being a participant, rather than merely an observer, in a singular and unrepeatable moment when light, weather, location and subject combine to produce an extraordinary scene,” he said.
While much of Gordon’s portfolio consists of images close to home in the Pacific Northwest, travel has been a major part of his photographic inspiration. “Like photography, travel teaches us to see the world with fresh eyes,” he says.
Travel negates our human tendency to cultivate “a disdain for the familiar,” he added, because when you travel, the natural assumption is that nothing is familiar. Everything appears to be new and fresh.
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things,” he said quoting American novelist Henry Miller on the value of travel.
“After we traveled around the world for a year, every member of my family was changed by the sheer magic of seeing and experiencing something new each and every day for a year — a rare opportunity in life that was both humbling and inspiring.”
Photography books by Gordon: One World: A Photographer’s Global Journey Volumes 1 & II (available at Amazon); My Oregon Coast: Inspiration Where The Land Meets The Sea (available online at Blurb) and Coastal Pleasures: Seascapes of the Monterey Peninsula & Big Sur (available at Blurb).