ART Habens
Dennis Casey
backpack the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, USA, for instance. I camped out for the night on a remote beach, and when I woke up there was a beautiful fog over the ocean. I quickly got out of my tent and captured my popular “Mystic Stacks” image. Planning, chance and improvisation all came into play for this piece of work. This is a typical day for my nature work. Although I plan my adventures, some of the best shots come to me by chance. Sometimes I will come to a ridge or rock formation at a certain aspect, and I will set up camp and shoot the milky way over it in the middle of the night. “The Mystic Forest” came to me as I was driving down the wrong road while heading home after a backpacking trip. You have been an outdoor adventurer for almost half a century, and you have always had a passion for being alone in nature: how do your memories and your everyday life's experience fuel your creative process as a photographer? Dennis Casey: Even though I am relatively new to photography, my father got me into backpacking and exploring when I was six years old. So, I have had 45 years of outdoor experience behind me by the time I took my first photograph. After retiring and moving to Texas from California in 2013, my wife suggested that I take up photography as a way to record my journeys. This was the beginning of my life as a photographer, and I started to photograph many of the places I went to as a child. I have always like hiking, climbing and surfing without having people around me. I find that an ocean or a forest looks and feels different when you are alone and have nobody to talk to. This is what fuels my creative process. I want to make people feel exactly
Special Issue
Island Of Secrets
what I feel when I am out in the field. As you have remarked in your artist's
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