My relationship with photography today is the result of a long dance between my interest in art and my love for the outdoors.
I have always been interested in art, but I didn’t own a camera until 2013. I had a lot of fun playing around with it in those early days, and I even produced some work that I still like. But photography didn’t mean too much to me back then.
Contrast this with my love for nature, which has been a foundational part of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up outside, playing and exploring at every opportunity. When I moved to the DC area in 2016, I began to realize nature’s integral role in my mental wellbeing.
During that time, I sought quiet solitude in Shenandoah National Park, bringing my camera with me on hikes and eventually on backpacking trips. Somewhere in those rolling blue mountains, something clicked for me. I began to realize that an image has expressive power far beyond being pretty or documenting memories.
So began my love affair with photography, which has grown more and more inseparable from my appreciation of nature over the years. And these days, the experience that photography affords me is at least as important as the images themselves.
Check out my Features page to see where my work has been featured — including an interview with Matt Payne on F-Stop Collaborate and Listen and articles in On Landscape and Nature Vision Magazine.
Want to chat? Feel free to reach out on Discord (@nbeckerphoto) or via email. I respond to every (legitimate) message I receive.