Towering at a near-90-degree angle above you is a grey and white-capped mountain. A sea of vivid green grass rests at its foot, and bright red poppies pop out, dotting the landscape around it. A royal blue stream ambles throughout the spring scene, and you half expect to see the Yellow Brick Road in this colorful land of life. A wall of winter rises to your left, with white snow as smooth as a blanket. Silence and fog hang in the frosty air, suggesting an outline of fir trees in the distance. To the right you’re greeted by a swirl of deep purple and blue summer hues. Sunset-tinted sky and water are unified by a line of dark green pines. With their mirrored reflections, you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. It’s difficult to pull yourself out of this temporary hypnotism, but slowly you shake yourself awake and realize: You’re not actually among these brilliant hues and sweeping landscapes. You’ve been persuaded into this illusion by the mesmerizing curves and colors that Rodney Lough Jr. has created for you. However, everything you’ve just witnessed is real.
An acclaimed landscape photographer, Lough has built his world around astonishing images of nature. Immense in size and vibrant in color, they enfold you in their grandeur. The dimensions and grainy details trick the eye into seeing an image as if you’re really present within the scene, according to Lough – and each of his six wilderness photography galleries, known collectively as The Lough Road, thrum with life. So far, Lough has carved out his niche in Las Vegas, Nevada; the Mall of America, Minnesota; Sausalito and San Francisco, California; Happy Valley, Oregon; and now Park City, Utah – his most recent gallery.
But Lough’s success is about far more than big, bright images. What separates him from his counterparts is not just his content, but rather his method of capture. In other words: Lough shoots solely and unapologetically in large-format film. In such a digital-centric age, his choice to remain one of the few purists in the world isn’t a likely one – or an easy one – and it’s earned him a great deal of respect. With an 8×10 apparatus in tow – not dissimilar to a 80s-style box TV with an accordion posterior – he traipses out to the most obscure glaciers, cliffs and crevices, and uses it to turn the environmental spread before him into an artistic masterpiece. Back in the studio, the negatives are imported through a large drum scanner, and developed into the gigantic representations that are displayed in his galleries. His most recent image is six-gigs alone. Half of Lough’s motivation, however, is about the exploration of the great outdoors itself, and not just about the photography.
“It’s [often] like, ‘Oh look, there’s a bamboo forest; let’s go check that out’ or “Hey, it looks like there’s an off-the-map arboretum that used to be a nature reserve in the early 1900s.’ Most of the time, it’s just all about discovering someplace new,” he says.
Donning a blondish beard and kind eyes, Lough is the epitome of a wilderness man – from head to cargo-boot-clad toe. In the field 30-40 percent of the year, the earth is his canvas – but that hasn’t always been the case. A former statistician, he spent many years immersed in corporate culture, working in a cubicle in a room without a window. His logic circles around numbers – but what satisfies his soul is far different. He deeply appreciates the sometimes-subtle, sometimes-strident, altogether beautiful features that Mother Nature creates. So, in the end, he made the decision to get out into the world, capture it on film, and present it for us to see in a compelling way.
“If we were meant to walk on concrete, that’s what we would have been given. But we were given grass. We live in an amazing place, we really do, but we don’t take time out to enjoy it. And okay, I realize that the grass in Africa is hard to capture [accurately in a photo] on the wall. But, if you boil it all down, my mission is to enrich people’s lives through nature – to bring back that piece that has been long removed from our lives.”
For Lough, the best possible way to accomplish his mission and reveal the essence of nature is on film. For some, that notion is hard to grasp given the capabilities and efficiencies of digital photography, and there have been attempts to convert him. At one point, he was given about $80 thousand worth of Phase One “P” Series 65-Megapixel medium-format digital equipment, and essentially told to “go play with it.” It proved handy in situations where Lough couldn’t put the film camera together in time, and he admittedly got some nice shots. In the end, however, he gave it back, explaining that it wasn’t up to his level. But the issue had nothing to do with film conceit. The issue had to do with the technology. Due to the sharp detail and lighting conditions produced by the 8×10 film capture, the immense size of the photo is possible. However, the moment someone invents a digital camera the size of a credit card that can capture a one-gig image in a second, Lough assures us he’ll be all over it.
For now, he believes the attempts at digital persuasion remain unfounded. “It’s like telling a painter to use a different paintbrush,” he says. “Or reading The Shining by Stephen King, and then asking him what kind of typewriter he used. The artistry of the medium will always be with the artist, not the technology.”
Lough understands film inside and out, too, as he started at a young age. When he was just 12 years old, his father’s friend noticed a photo that he’d taken. It was a simple shot of a barn, but something told the man that Lough had a gift. He gave him a point-and-shoot wind-up camera and a pat on the back, and sent him on his way saying, “You know, this kid’s got some talent.” By age 14 he was already working in darkrooms on a regular basis. Now, 36 years later, Lough has earned himself quite a few nods by way of multiple awards, exhibits in the
Smithsonian Museum and a couple of published books (“I have stood on mountaintops that echo a pure silence, like that in a chapel, and wept from the excellence of the experiences…” reads a passage in Wilderness Collections). It has also earned him a spot as one of Yahoo’s Master Photographers – alongside the likes of Alfred Stieglitz and Ansel Adams.
Adams, in fact, seems to be the one predecessor who has traversed the same path as Lough. Similarly, his fame was claimed by capturing large-scale nature in striking ways on film. If you look at his work and wonder why collectors find it so ingenious, consider this: In his day – roughly the 1920s through the 60s – grand lighting did not come by way of incandescent bulbs or computer-generated contrast, and composition wasn’t perfected by way of the crop tool in Photoshop. Adams made magic happen with a giant hooded camera contraption that one might recall from the earliest days in the Sears portrait studios – only slightly more antiquated. An incredible shot was not an easy task to accomplish.
When asked if he’s ever compared to the landscape legend, Lough’s weary response seems a familiar one. Everyday, he replies. Bearing the likeness of Adams proves both a blessing and a curse, in that Lough’s work – rather than his path – is often compared to Adams’. But Lough shoulders the burden with humility. Hoping to usher in his own era of art, he says, ”I understand what they’re trying to say and it’s a gigantic compliment – and I have no disrespect for Mr. Adams – but my hope is that someday somebody will look back and say, ‘Hey, your work reminds me of Rodney Lough, Jr.’s’”
Lough has certainly laid the foundation for this. According to Sausalito gallery director, Cathy Oblak, collectability has changed quite a bit. “It’s pretty interesting to see where photography is heading in this generation. I’ve noticed people are trying to collect [his work] more and preserve it for the future, passing it down to their children through the generations. They’re viewing it more as an art form,” she says, adding that the galleries are thriving. “People are blown away by the colors [in the Sausalito gallery]. The first thing they say is, ‘There’s no way that’s real.’”
While the colors appear especially vivid for film, Lough maintains that they are not digitally enhanced unless absolutely necessary – and only as part of a truth-telling effort. He says that his sole mission is to get back to where he was, visually, when he witnessed the sight with his own two eyes – passing along to his viewers the same sensation that he felt when he stood before it. “I believe that there’s an up and a down escalator when you die. And I want to be on the escalator up,” he says. “It’s not worth it to lie, because Mother Nature is amazing. We’ve all seen and experienced breathtaking sunsets. We’ve all experienced that ‘wow’ moment – when something inside of you tells you the truthfulness of it, and tells you it’s real. With color filters and [digital enhancement] software, you can tell it’s overdone and it’s not real. But my goal is simply to get back to what I saw, without focusing on the black box of how I got there – so you believe what you see to be real, and you see the inherent beauty that is in nature.”
“Photography is an artistic expression through a medium – it’s art, not documentation. You’re looking at it through an artist’s eyes. [And] Rodney captures Mother Nature through his eyes,” says Oblak. “His message is to pause from the hustle and bustle of life, and get out there. His work facilitates that, and people appreciate acquiring it. It’s where the name The Lough Road comes from – and it relates to his motto, which he uses as a personal sign off: ‘See you on the trail!’”
For a comprehensive view of Rodney Lough Jr.’s work, visit his website: www.theloughroad.com
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Gretjen Helene is a little like the motorcycle she rides: Free. Infiltrated by the open air, and breathing in all of her surroundings – because there’s no room for windows in life. Understandably, her photos are very real. They embody the essence of living, with its differing emotions. Some are funny; some are giddy; some are despondent. But what they share is a particular fervor for taking it all in.
