Artist Statement:
As a landscape photographer, our national parks and public lands are some of my favorite places. Not only to photograph, but to connect to nature, with myself, my inner core. Especially in difficult times I look to escape to the natural environment. Its beauty has a way to sooth my soul. Most of the time I choose to go to the parks when they are not crowded, preferring solitude. During Covid, I found myself making multiple trips to Death Valley National Park as well as trips to Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton. More recently with our nation’s political environment, the need to get away and back to nature has been more intense. Get me away from the dismal news. In February I traveled to Bryce Canyon National Park. It was my first time at this park.
Bryce Canyon sits at the top of the Grand Staircase which stretches from southern Utah down to the Grand Canyon. Layers of rock from different ages are exposed in the staircase. Formed by a process of uplift and erosion that has taken millions of years. The top layer at Bryce is the youngest layer, the Claron formation. Warm days and freezing nights cause frost wedging that helped to form Bryce’s Hoodoos. Walking around the park and looking at the hoodoos, they almost feel like earthly ghosts looking over an evolving planet in despair. Kind of like how I see our country.
Tom Vancisin
As a landscape photographer, our national parks and public lands are some of my favorite places. Not only to photograph, but to connect to nature, with myself, my inner core. Especially in difficult times I look to escape to the natural environment. Its beauty has a way to sooth my soul. Most of the time I choose to go to the parks when they are not crowded, preferring solitude. During Covid, I found myself making multiple trips to Death Valley National Park as well as trips to Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton. More recently with our nation’s political environment, the need to get away and back to nature has been more intense. Get me away from the dismal news. In February I traveled to Bryce Canyon National Park. It was my first time at this park.
Bryce Canyon sits at the top of the Grand Staircase which stretches from southern Utah down to the Grand Canyon. Layers of rock from different ages are exposed in the staircase. Formed by a process of uplift and erosion that has taken millions of years. The top layer at Bryce is the youngest layer, the Claron formation. Warm days and freezing nights cause frost wedging that helped to form Bryce’s Hoodoos. Walking around the park and looking at the hoodoos, they almost feel like earthly ghosts looking over an evolving planet in despair. Kind of like how I see our country.
Tom Vancisin
© The Photographer's Eye: A Creative Collective