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Robert Betka
I am a photography enthusiast who recently retired after a 38-year full-time career as a management consultant. For me, photographing the natural world is an antidote to my workaday world of business and organisational change. I find it rewarding and fulfilling to capture in a photograph the mystery, power, grace, and sublime beauty of all the aspects of nature, from grand landscapes to intimate moments.
This selection of images is from an autumn workshop in Washington’s Olympic National Park that was led by the inimitable photographer Art Wolfe. I have visited and photographed in several of America’s National Parks, but this was my first visit to Olympic. The theme of this workshop centred around identifying and capturing artistic elements in a scene, such as pattern, line, texture, and movement.
The dense and complex temperate rainforest of Olympic, the rain-saturated colours, and the diffused light provided a fertile canvas for creating intimate landscapes as well as experimenting with both abstract and representational compositions. Encountering such an overwhelming and complex environment, one needs to slow down and observe for a while until the images present themselves, then work through various compositions and exposures. The four images I present here are intended to provide just a small glimpse of the magnitude of photographic opportunities in this wonderful location.
