My collection of photographs, titled “My Private Idaho,” consists of places I visit often near my home. They are my “Private Idaho”. Places that resonate with my energy and feed my soul.

I grew up here in Boise, Idaho. I’ve explored it for decades. I know it well. Everyone has places like this. Places they go for refuge. Happy places.

Boise is filled with a variety of landscapes I can take my camera. To the north of my home is the Payette River Canyon with steep mountain slopes covered in pine trees; the Payette river roaring next to the highway.

To the south is the high mountain desert, flat and dry with an eternal sky.

A bit further south, the ground falls away to one of my favorite features: the Snake River. I photograph, fish, explore, and float that mighty river whenever possible. I love it.

The Boise River threads its way through the Boise valley and works its way westward, watering farms and communities such as Eagle, Middleton, and Notus. Eventually joining the Snake River near Parma.

I’ve photographed this entire area for many years, though I feel like I’ve just begun. There is still so much I haven’t photographed. I’m currently working on a book using images from the “Private Idaho” portfolio. The title I have in mind is 50 Miles from me.

The title comes from the realization that almost all of my favorite places are within 50 miles of my front door. I plan to layer the images with my stories of them in the manner of John Szarkowski to illustrate this majestic landscape.

One of these places is Warm Lake. Like most of the locations in the portfolio, I’ve been there many times taking photos, and many times just being present. Warm Lake is a relatively small lake (640 acres) sitting in a pretty little fold of the North Fork Range. It’s 26 miles to the east of its larger and more famous sister, Cascade Reservoir.

I visited Warm Lake many times this fall, trying to capture its essence. I even took my fishing kayak out there with my camera, shooting the landscape while looking for fish.

I’m a fisherman; I can’t help peering into the water for flashes of trout, bass, or panfish.

It’s difficult to focus on photography when I see a school of fish swimming beneath my kayak.

 

Warm Lake is quiet and calm. It’s set back from the highway far enough that the number of visitors remains low, even in the summer.

There are likely weekends in July and August when the campgrounds are full, but I don’t go at those times. I go in the fall, when the place is empty. I don’t go in the spring. Too much scattered snow hiding in the shadows surrounding the lake, spoiling my photos. Each time I visited last October, I was the only person on the lake.

I’d like to photograph it in the wintertime, completely covered in snow.

I’ve been photographing Warm Lake for about ten years. My first successful photo of the lake is still for sale on my website. I took it with my Rolleiflex FX camera.

This fall, I rephotographed this scene with my medium-format digital camera.

I like revisiting the same places; I always find another layer to the location. I also like to see how I respond to the same landscape through the years. It’s not the landscape that changes, we change.

These two photos are separated by eight years, yet little has changed in the scene.

I suggest that photographers embrace their local environs. Travel photography is popular and fun, but it’s very difficult to get to the soul of a place with a single visit. Even a long one. Nothing compares to the depth you can achieve with repeated visits throughout different seasons at your local haunts. I’ve still got hundreds of images left to capture around here.

A prospect that makes me happy.