Stacie Gary

Creative Statement

I was raised in Juneau, Alaska, surrounded by water, wilderness, mountains, and wildlife. It is to this that I credit my respect and affinity for all that the natural world has to offer, and it is where I picked up and fell in love with my first camera.

I moved to Western Washington in 1989, where I found my true home. I like to think of it as “Alaska lite” as it has much of the same natural beauty and grandeur, but less rain and snow, which are excellent features for a photographer willing to go to any lengths except frost bite and drowning.

Aside from being cliché, it is not enough to just say that I have a passion for photography and leave it at that. After all, shouldn’t every photographer have it? The truth about my passion is that it exceeds common sense. To illustrate, I once climbed down a sheer embankment using shrubs and exposed tree roots as handholds and whatever I could find as footholds, just to get the perfect angle of a waterfall. (Did I mention that I’m extremely terrified of heights?) After taking the shot and the anticipation of taking it had passed, my normal senses returned, bringing with them the realization and terror of having to climb back up the cliff that had inexplicably quadrupled in height and steepness. That ordeal is too much to detail here, but I can tell you that it still haunts my dreams. I would like to be able to say that is the only time I’ve done something like that, but…

Though I am primarily a nature and wildlife photographer, I see beauty in all things. Whether in the wilds of nature or the “wilds” of civilization, nothing is more exciting or rewarding than capturing that beauty, and in ways that everybody that sees my images can enjoy. I won’t lie; what I do I do for me first, with how anyone else will perceive it as an afterthought. However, each and every time I frame a subject with my camera lens, it is because that subject makes me feel something, so when someone looks at my photographs, it is my hope that it is the same for them.