A great American philosopher once said, "Follow Your Bliss. Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it." Words to live by, and those words led me to the Pacific Northwest of the United States several years ago. I was born in Dallas, Texas - not known for its vertical relief - but I fell in love with the mountains on a family trip to the Rockies when I was seven or eight years old. Since then, I have always yearned for the majesty, grandeur, and isolation of mountains.
Having spent my entire adult life in the Pacific Northwest - on the ancestral homelands of the Puyallup and Muckleshoot Tribes - I don't take for granted the fact that it's rich in stunning landscapes and seascapes - where mountains, oceans, rivers, deserts, and rain forests are only a short distance away.
I try my best to make photographs about the landscapes I'm in. I view my work as creative expressions of wilderness where I just happen to use the medium of photography. So I go where I like, I shoot what I like, and I don't allow myself to hold any preconceived ideas of what shot I need to capture or how many "likes" it might get. Photography, for me, is about enjoying and capturing nature as it is, and then translating images into what I felt at the time. It's this gloriously imperfect pursuit that I love.
I hope you enjoy the tales my images try to tell.
Derek
Give me silence, water, hope. Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes. -Neruda