I love quiet photos. Not overly edited and flashy. Something simplistic that tells a quiet story.

I called this photograph Perception.

I was in the Arctic.

After eleven grueling days of searching, dealing with the cold and the isolation, I finally decided I was finished.

We packed our equipment and began the journey back.

There were no roads. Just snow stretching in every direction.

Halfway back, my tracker suddenly stopped his snowmobile.

He turned around and smiled.

I had spent enough time with him to know that smile meant something.

I jumped off the snowmobile and started putting my camera together.

Then I saw them.

Arctic wolves.

There were seven or eight of them, moving across the snow with absolutely no fear of us.

They weren't skittish.

They didn't run.

They simply kept coming.

I started photographing.

I noticed that the wolves appeared to have a system. The alpha male seemed to position himself between us and other members of the pack, while this particular wolf kept circling and changing her position.

I didn't understand what she was doing.

Then she came extraordinarily close to me—within roughly seven feet.

She stopped and looked directly into my eyes.

I pressed the shutter.

Even after returning to New York and seeing the photograph on my computer, I kept thinking about that look.

What was she thinking?

I had spent eleven days searching for wolves. In my mind, finally seeing her was extraordinary.

From her perspective, perhaps the extraordinary thing was me.

Maybe she was looking at me thinking:

What is this animal doing here?

I was trying to understand her behavior.

Perhaps she was trying to understand mine.

Neither of us could know what the other was thinking.

We could only interpret what we saw through our own experience.

That is why I called this photograph Perception.

Because sometimes the same encounter can mean something completely different depending on which side of the gaze you are standing.

Last few days of fall colors left in my Saskatchewan rural area, I just love how a low sun light can highlight and bring such vibrancy thru the translucent leaves. Hope
You enjoy 😉

Hi! Here is a my art portraits: old to new.

Polaroid