Stephen Penland: Mt. Rainier Landscape Photography
You've never seen landscapes like these before.
All photos, © 2008 Stephen Penland 
Eunice Lake
Fall Colors
After using "point-and-shoots" since I was a kid, I can distinctly remember getting my first SLR (a Miranda Sensorex) in 1971 and being amazed that I could actually manipulate the f-stop and shutter speed to suit the situation. Today I find that I still prefer film, especially medium format, although I enthusiastically use digital.
I prefer landscapes. There are two reasons for my choice of subject matter. I grew up in a family in which alcohol and the unpredictability that it produced was a constant theme. In contrast, I find landscapes to be solid, stable, and predicatable, even when they express their potentially violent aspects during the seasons. Another reason is that I had cancer 32 years ago, and that experience did away with any sense of complacency about life that I may have had. The silver lining to five years of radiation and chemotherapy is that it is impossible for me to take the beauty of the natural world for granted. Trying to capture the essence of a natural place through photography only enhances the experience of being there. There's nothing else that I'd rather be doing.
Find out more about Stephen at
www.penlandphoto.com.
