While on my vacation in
Florida, I spent a few hours going through the cool shops in Sarasota. One of
the shops was the St. Armands Art Gallery. What pulled me into the gallery were
the massive framed black and white landscaped photographs. At first I thought
the photographer of the photos was Ansel Adams.
A few steps inside I
saw an old fashioned camera on a pedestal. It was beautiful, old and the wood
gleamed in the sunlight that streamed through the door. The camera took my
breath away. I loved it. I loved cameras and it reminded me of my original
Yashica camera that I used as an undergrad at Kent State where I majored in
Journalism.
A man, who worked in the gallery. walked over to me and we started to talk about the photographs. He then
proceeded to give me a crash course, 101, about the camera and the photographer
called Clyde Butcher!
Clyde Butcher is an
American photographer, artist and environmentalist. He is famous in Florida for
his large photographs of the wilderness of the Florida landscape. Butcher was
born in 1942 and he was from Kansas City, Missouri. He is a photographer who used to shoot his photos in color. When his son was killed, he ended up spending time
in the wilderness where he used his over sized camera taking black and white
shots.
Butcher, who is revered in Florida, earned numerous
awards, like the Florida Artist Hall of Fame Award, Ansel Adams Award from the
Sierra Club, North American Nature Photographer Association Lifetime
Achievement Award in Nature Photography and many others.
As I walked around the
gallery, I felt very small and very humble amidst these huge landscape photos.
I finished my tour, bought a book, and two black and white photo cards. Now I
know a little bit about Clyde Butcher. I hope that I
see more of his work. I not only discovered his works but I learned about the
man thanks to the man who gave me a crash course in him. At least, I have a book to read about
him with some of his photographs.
I hope to see more of
his work, even if it means going back to Florida to visit his gallery.
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