Landscape and nature photographers are by their nature often lone wolves. My favorite working environment is a great wild place with as few people around as possible. I would have given anything, though, to have had a mentor. Three much older landscape photographers were my heroes, and unlike now, landscape photographers were not growing on trees.

I had a brand new 4x5 back in 1976 and absolutely no clue how to use it. One of the three photographers was actually giving a workshop, sponsored by the now long extinct Desert Magazine. This was my big chance to learn something, anything, about the camera, but unfortunately the workshop was cancelled due to lack of interest. I lost my big chance, and pushed on with my career, learning by trial and error. My isolation in Moab, while great for photography, and my general shyness didn’t help.

I visited another photographer I admired in the older generation for his opinion. He told me making a living in nature photography was impossible and I might pay for my film if I was lucky. I met all my of my other three heroes, and one was genuinely encouraging and a wonderful person. I wish I add been able to cultivate a more solid relationship with him. As for the other two, one was a kindly but elderly Eastern gentleman, but certainly was not in the stage of life where he wanted to waste time with a young photographer. The third, the photographer whose work I admired the most, and still do, was not only not interested in being a mentor, but was openly hostile to me.

Like a son determined not to repeat the sins of the father, I have tried to be as encouraging and helpful to aspiring photographers as I can, and I’ve had some success stories, and I’ve officially mentored local high school students with photography interests. I know I can do more, and as time permits, I hope to spend more time looking at the work of up and coming landscape photographers and encouraging them as much as possible. I’ve been very touched by the compliments I’ve received from some younger photographers, something I never received much of from my colleagues in my own generation.

I know competition is part of the reason photographers don’t support each other more, and I think it’s tragic. I have never understood the idea that another photographer’s success diminishes anyone else.