“Embracing Light: Working with what’s available”

Scott Erskine’s photography concentrates on both natural and scenic landscapes of New England.  Along with landscapes, his other photographic interests include wild flowers, natural still life images, and abstracts.    He has a deep fascination with the nuances of light, especially the subtle variations in luminance and colors that are often overlooked in our daily lives.   “I tend to look for the more intimate scenes, which is best appreciated in stillness and solitude, without intrusions from other sources.  I would like the viewer to feel that they could step into the photograph and see what I was experiencing when the photograph was made.”    He is strongly influenced by Ansel Adams, Elliot Porter, David Muench, Joe Cornish, Guy Tal, and William Neill.   

Largely self-taught, his images have been displayed in exhibits at Worcester City Hall with the Worcester Alliance of Photographers and at the Worcester Academy of Music. There have also been two solo exhibits at UMass Medical School and another at a gallery in Uxbridge, MA. He has been photographing for over 45 years. “Actually, I took pictures for 35 years, I only started making photographs in the last 10 years.”  

During 2014-2015 he photographed daily in Acadia National Park while working in Bar Harbor Maine, sometimes for 8 hours a day, through all seasons and in all weather conditions, including hurricanes and blizzards and subzero weather.  What started out as social media posts of images and experiences while on Mt. Desert Island led to the creation of his book, “Embracing Light: A Year in Acadia National Park and Mt. Desert Island”, published in 2019. 

In 2017 he spent 6 months working in Yellowstone National Park, where he was able to photograph in both Yellowstone and Grand Teton every day.   In the last few years, he has also visited Glacier, Badlands, Bryce, Zion, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Grand Staircase- Escalante, Mt Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Cape Cod National Seashore, Delaware Water Gap, and the Custer Battlefield as well as made several additional trips to Acadia.  

Scott combines his love of photography and nature with the discipline he learned as a medical laboratory technologist during a 20-year career in the United States Air Force.   He has called over 40 places home, including Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia, Michigan, Texas, California, Alaska, and Germany.  After Retiring from the Air Force, he worked in healthcare, biotech, and Information Technology. Now fully retired, he continues to photograph and make prints of the natural world near his home in Blackstone, Massachusetts with occasional forays to Acadia. 

Assignment
Our assignment was to use a shadow as your subject, experimenting with the use of exposure compensation to keep the shadow dark, with little detail.

Share

Members shared these additional images from their travels over the past month.

Critique

Members submitted these images for constructive feedback.

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