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Often When I Walked Alone In The Mountains, I Tried To Make Sense Out Of The Two Halves Of My Life. What Went On In The City During The Week Seemed Chaotic And Unrelated To The Events In My Mountain World.

-Galen Rowell

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Often When I Walked

Galen Rowell

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Often When I Walked Alone In The Mountains, I Tried To Make Sense Out Of The Two Halves Of My Life. What Went On In The City During The Week Seemed Chaotic And Unrelated To The Events In My Mountain World.

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Ever Since The 1860s When Photographers Travelled The American West And Brought Photographs Of Scenic Wonders Back To The People On The East Coast Of America We Have Had A North American Tradition Of Landscape Photography Used For The Environment.

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A Lot Of People Think That When You Have Grand Scenery, Such As You Have In Yosemite, That Photography Must Be Easy.

The Most Interesting Parts Of The Natural World Are The Edges, Places Where Ocean Meets Land, Meadow Meets Forest, Timberline Touches The Heights.

Memory Selects Single Important Images, Just As The Camera Does. In That Manner Both Are Able To Isolate The Highest Moments Of Living.

My Mountaineering Skills Are Not Important To My Best Photographs, But They Do Add A Component To My Work That Is Definitely A Bit Different Than That Of Most Photographers.

When The Magic Hour Arrives, My Thoughts Center On Light Rather Than On The Landscape. I Search For Perfect Light, Then Hunt For Something Earthbound To Match With It.

I Like To Feel That All My Best Photographs Had Strong Personal Visions And That A Photograph That Doesn't Have A Personal Vision Or Doesn't Communicate Emotion Fails.

There Is No Question That Photography Has Played A Major Role In The Environmental Movement.

When The Light Is Right And Everything Is Working For Me, I Feel As Tense As When Making A Difficult Maneuver High On A Mountain. A Minute - And Sometimes Mere Seconds - Can Make The Difference Between A Superb Image And A Mundane One.

You Only Get One Sunrise And One Sunset A Day, And You Only Get So Many Days On The Planet. A Good Photographer Does The Math And Doesn't Waste Either.

My Interest In Photography Did Not Begin With Books Or Mentors, Or With Any Burning Desire To See The World Through A Camera. It Evolved From An Intense Devotion To Mountains And Wilderness That Eventually Shaped All The Parts Of My Life And Brought Them Together.

We Mountaineers Always Live With The Feeling That We Came On The Scene Too Late.

I Began Taking Pictures In The Natural World To Be Able To Show People What I Was Experiencing When I Climbed And Explored In Yosemite In The High Sierra.

My First Thought Is Always Of Light.

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When I Go To The Mountains, I Intuitively Know My Place In The World Much Better Through These Experiences. The More Intense They Are, The Better I Know Myself, And The More I Am Able To Challenge Myself.

My Advice For Climbers Or Photographers Is To Really Tune Into Your Own Passions And Not Just What Other People Are Doing Or Aren't Doing. Figure Out What Works For You, What Turns You On, What Gives You The Greatest Amount Of Energy And Feeling Of Satisfaction.

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Today, I'm Very Careful Not To Mention Very Specific Locations When I Write Or Give Captions.

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