I am a photographer and writer with a distinct approach to my life and work. Like many photographers I started in school, eventually moving on to lighting for film and television projects in my late 20’s. The world of motion picture production, with its continuous lighting and on set video monitors, was a revelation to a young darkroom-bound still photographer. In 1996, enthralled by video and wanting to branch out on my own, I joined the family construction business with the hopes of obtaining easy financing and abundant free time to produce my own short films but got mired in the typical day to day concerns of that life and never made a single picture.

On a climbing trip to Yosemite in 2001 I encountered my first digital still camera and all my plans were turned upside down. Staring into the screen on the back of that camera it seemed some genius had combined the best of both video and classic film photography into the immediacy that makes digital so attractive. I spent a few years reacquainting myself with a camera and the specifics of digital in particular. At some point, I came across motion blur…

In 2008 I sold my house and quit the business and headed for the fall colors of the East to perfect the motion blur techniques I started in California. I spent several seasons roaming the steep, wooded hills of West Virginia before moving on to upstate New York. Except for the winter of 2009 where I worked at a lodge for room and board outside of Lake Placid, I lived in a van doing odd jobs for locals all the while shooting the rivers, brooks and colored landscapes of the High Peaks region in the Adirondack Mountains with many side trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Green Mountains of Vermont.

I returned to California in 2011 and immediately began applying my lessons learned on the road to the Black Hill woods above Morro Bay. I also stayed busy with many trips to Yosemite Valley shooting around the banks of the Merced River and three extended roadtrips to the Eastern Sierras in 2014, 2015 and 2017. At home, I began experimenting with motion blur on interior still lifes, using my collection of blue and green glass bottles in the windows of my constantly shifting living spaces and studios.

Currently I’m living in Meadow Vista, California printing my work and writing about my time in the mountains and on the road.

I can be reached at: Info@scottbirchell.com