LightBox Files 2017

Views From Home • David Lee Myers

The views from my home in Astoria are at once epic and intimate: big skies and big water, thick with weather. Rolling clouds, fog, and every form of water and wind. The light ranges from luminescent to soft and heavy. I have come to feel at home in this, to treasure the everyday and exult in the extremes. Is it odd to find comfort in the rhythm of the rain on my roof, of wind and hail on my windows? I think not: I suspect I have company in this. Great ships carrying commerce of the world pass through these scenes. They seem so slow, but only because the water is so big. Try to photograph one or chase it, and they’re going too fast. From town, the ships seem to glide past in eerie silence, though in the quiet of the night, I hear them before they come past the buildings and trees into my view from home. •••••• I photograph to explore the world and share it with you, hoping to offer what I saw, as closely as possible. The spectral color language of the sunlit world must be translated into the much smaller color vocabulary of the photographic print. These pictures were made on slide film, scanned, and printed digitally.  In my quest to make the translation as true as possible, I often turn my eyes back to the sky, studying and comparing. The colors are all there.  It’s easy to miss them, as they can come so early in the day, or for just a few minutes.  ••••••• Forty years of teaching college photography has been a great satisfaction. Helping people find their own voices to explore the joys and challenges of life is a real highlight. Figuring out how to explain the artistic issues and the techniques increases my own understanding and helps my own work. Workshops and presentations where art joins natural history are especially favored. Art and natural history photography and marriage make a good life.