I first took up photography as a teenager, shooting roll after roll on a cheap Instamatic and a '50s-era Yashica twin-reflex, graduating to a "real" 35mm SLR in college, where I was employed as staff photographer for my college's official publications. While working toward a master's degree in film and video at CalArts, I continued my photographic studies, having my work selected for display in a gallery exhibit -- a rarity for students not majoring in photography.

During sixteen years in my "day job" as a software developer, I continued my photographic work as a sideline venture (shooting corporate assignments in addition to wedding photography and videography), as well as producing, writing, and directing the award-winning feature film Messages and the short "unauthorized sequel" Titanic II. In the early years of the twenty-first century, I became an enthusiastic supporter of the revolution in photography brought about by high-resolution digital cameras and the computerized "digital darkroom." As a result, the time came to take the next step, and move into photography as a full-time occupation.

Although I photograph other subjects at times, my principal focus is on the natural world, and particularly that of the Pacific Northwest where I live. While I do not presume to be a great naturalist like Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, or Ansel Adams, I agree with Muir that "In God's wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware." Whether it comes to the grand landscapes of the American wilderness, or the intimate landscapes that can be found whenever and wherever one chooses to look closely, my greatest goal in my photography is to create images that capture the "thin places" of this world, those places where the ordinary and the holy come near each other, and through which humans can be renewed through fleeting contact with the divine.

Raven Falls Photography is the result of my efforts. I hope you enjoy your time spent at this site.

- J.D.W.