Inspiring Landscapes
Nature's Nobility in Photographs - by David Dilworth
Presenting Large Scale -- Award Winning Fine-Art Natural-Light Color Wild Landscapes
"David's photographs are world class art."
- Terrence Zito, Landscape Painter, Pacific Grove
"We've seen thousands of Big Sur photos,
but you've captured it."
- Carmel Foundation photography critic 2007
"
Good art is what jumps off the work and stays in your mind.Great art does that and more; it ignites you to create."
-David Dilworth, 2009
Artwork Information
This website, including all images and poetry are © Copyright 2004-2012 David Dilworth.
All rights are reserved worldwide (and throughout our Milky Way Galaxy).
Image names are Trademarked by David Dilworth 2006-2012
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Artist's Philosophy
"I try to bring back pro-tographs of the magical majesty of our world's most beautiful wild scenery, of nature's own unspeakably magnificent fine art."
I am always grateful, almost never take for granted, that I have been given a gifted life that allows me to see a lot of spectacular natural beauty. I often experience breathtakingly sublime wild places at times when no one else is within miles; particularly twilight, sunrises, sunsets, and animal behaviour. I try to capture those visions and bring them back for you and other appreciators. When fortune is with me, the images closely resemble the heart-stopping beauty I've seen.
Many of my images support the definition that "good luck" is when preparation meets opportunity: Meteor Over Point Lobos, Condor Kiss, Mother Nature's Valentine (Heart), Eye Light, Big Sur Dawn, Welcome My Children, Point Lobos Blue-Green Flash, Big Sur Turbulence, Vivid Vision, and Half Dome Snow Smoke.
I did not plan any of those moments, but thank goodness I was prepared for them. They help make up for the exquisite moments when I didn't have a camera. Like the spectacular Carmel Sunset in Fall 2008 which was so far beyond 1,000 words . . .
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Artist's Background
As a professional environmental science consultant, David has helped dozens of environmental groups achieve more than eight hundred environmental successes since 1992; some small and a few with international importance.
David is sometimes known, perhaps with tongue in cheek, as the fellow who stopped both "Dirty Harry" and "The Terminator" for leading efforts to protect the Pebble Beach imperiled Monterey pine forest of tens of thousands of trees from Clint Eastwood's "Chainsaw Massacre" and the battle to stop Governor Schwarzenegger's aerial spraying of the Monterey Peninsula with untested, secret pesticides.
He has also lead efforts to protect thousands of acres of imperiled forests, wild lands, their wildlife and watercourses; directly taught hundreds of people about forest ecosystems on walks in the native forests and taught thousands more of many disciplines in environmental science, law and policy. He has written adopted world class laws for water conservation, silence protection, and Campaign Finance and Political Conflict of Interest ; and several model environmental and democracy protection policy elements designed to be used anywhere worldwide.
After growing up in Pacific Grove, Carmel, Pebble Beach, and Big Sur and describing himself as merely an "art appreciator," David was delighted to discover others thought he had artistic ability, getting rave reviews from friends and winning fine art competition awards for his color landscapes.
Attending photographic exhibits at Carmel's Sunset center since the early days of "Friends of Photography" David did not realize that Fine Art Photography could be in color until he saw Cole Weston's spectacular large color prints.
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David has spent thousands of hours capturing more than 100,000 images, and has been honored with numerous awards.
His work has been collected locally by Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP) and is in private collections as far away as New England.
His most recent gallery exhibition (and party of course) is displayed at Big Sur's Camaldolese Hermitage Winter 2011.
He has provided public slide shows for Carmel Foundation, Canterbury Woods, REI and for Big Sur's Henry Miller Gallery on their 20x30 foot screen.
This website displays some 150 of his unique images in the areas of : Landscapes, Fluid Flows, Sunsets / Twilight / Moonrise / Dawn, Soaring Birds (plus a Condor Kiss), Trees, and Nature's Patterns.
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"None of my images are modified in any way with Photoshop."
I do not believe it is possible, nor do I try, to improve on nature's beauty.
But it is possible to compose, to line natural features up, by being in the right place at the right moment for fabulous light. Or as Ansel Adams said "a good photograph is knowing where to stand."
It is also possible to predict when a place will look spectacular. What my photographs provide is my skill at finding places where natural phenomena looks most fabulous, and knowing specific moments when those places will exhibit magical beauty, like sunsets or moonrises.
However, even then, I've made images in some places where I could visit another 1,000 times and never see the same flowers or clouds I've captured.
Adams also once wrote "You don't take a photograph, you make it."
On this point I most respectfully have a different philosophy. I do not "make" photographs, my goal is to show as closely as possible what the actual landscape looked like at the moment I was there.
All images are as close as I can get them to the true natural light reflected or emitted by the real natural phenomena at the place and moment it was photographed. Only one image (the Tiger Lily) employs artificial lighting.
Every camera makes some errors in capturing a vision such as rectilinear distortion (barrel and pincushion), noise, and color skew (most DSLR cameras such as Canon and Nikon use Bayer Pattern chips which have to guess most colors and use a filter that intentionally blurs images - I'm not kidding.)
While I do adjust some images slightly, it is only to correct them. I intentionally do not adjust my images by an amount larger than the errors introduced by the camera system.
In any case, none of my images are modified in any way with Photoshop. None are dodged or burned or contain parts of any other image or have anything except dust spots removed; few are even cropped.
So you will not find super-saturated colors - unless the natural phenomena really looked like that. You will not find the Moon moved to a place where it makes a better picture. This is because I value physical reality.
All of these images on this site have inspired someone. The images are sharp and silky smooth when printed at 2 feet by 3 feet (66cm x 1 meter), and even show sharp detail at 4 feet by 6 feet. Some can ignite passion at wall mural sizes.
Fine Art Photography and Resources
Museum of Photographic Arts – San Diego
Center for Photographic Art – Carmel
Museum of Modern Art - San Francisco
Metropolitan Museum of Art – New York
J. P. Getty Museum – Los Angeles
Friends of Photography – San Francisco
Colleagues' Fine Art Websites (alphabetically by height)
Photographic
Berkley White - Underwater Adventures
Cara Weston - Clouds
Charlene Mitchell - Land and Townscapes
Christine Humphreys - Wild-Life
Chuck Davis - Underwater Spendor
Dave Glover - Landscapes and Nudes
Jeffrey Becom - Vivid Architecture
John Sexton - Wild Landscapes (B+W)
Peter McArthur (B+W)
Tony Keppelman - Exquisite Landscapes (B+W)
William Giles - People and Scenery
Film / Videography --
Painting --
Sculpture --
Poetry --
and Illustration -
For encouraging me to pursue fine art photography I want to express my deep appreciation to --
Vienna Merritt-Moore
who persuaded me that other people might like my photographs as well, and insisted I enter photographic competitions,
Cole Weston
for getting me to realize the fine art landscape photography can be in color,
Sarah Joplin
who advised me to put my images on the web,
Morley Baer
who shared my love of Big Sur's magnificent sculptured vistas, and most of all --
Retired Colonel Joel Dilworth
my father, who, when I was young, convinced me that I could do anything I really wanted.
My deepest thanks.
-David
Notes:
Since I'm asked so often about my equipment - I primarily use digital SLR cameras -- because I'm not into negativity ;-), and occasionally SLR film cameras . . . So that makes me a Pro-tographer (which is correctly spelled)."
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