When Larry Carver was 12 years old, his parents sent him to monthlong summer camp in Canada’s north woods. It was his first taste of the outdoors, and, he said, he was instantly enchanted.
“I took to it right away,” Carver said. “I just love living in the outdoors, canoeing and traipsing around the woods. That was the start of a lifelong love of adventure.”
Camp evolved into trekking across mountain ranges, climbing wild peaks and backpacking into pristine landscapes. Early on, Carver started bringing a Kodak Brownie Star-series camera along to document the adventures. But it wasn’t until the guy who developed his photos at the drugstore told him he had a good eye that he started considering photography as more than a hobby.
That led Carver to a career in wilderness photography that has seen his images land in magazines, calendars, posters and coffee table books. His specialty is wild places – lush cataracts in the Pacific Northwest, toothy peaks in the Canadian Rockies, ethereal slot-canyons of the Southwest – and the photographs tell of a life filled with glorious adventure and a deep passion for nature’s splendor.
It’s appropriate, then, that one of Carver’s photographs has been selected by Nature’s Best Photography magazine, the Wilderness50 coalition and the Smithsonian Institute as one of the top 100 wilderness photographs in a competition that marks the 50th anniversary of The Wilderness Act.
The competition is part of a celebration that launches Wednesday with the opening of the exhibit, “Wilderness Forever: 50 Years of Protecting America’s Wild Places,” at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Carver’s image, one of 100 finalists selected from a pool of 5,500 submissions, captures a backcountry skier making fresh turns in the Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness area in 1997. Unnamed peaks are in the backdrop. The image, which won honorable mention in the “Most Inspirational” category, will appear in articles, videos and online galleries in conjunction with the event.
Though Carver admits the photograph is not one of his all-time favorites, he said being picked as a finalist is terrific.
“I was very honored, no doubt, because wilderness is very dear to my heart,” he said. “That’s where I spend most of my time photographing, the wilderness areas.”
This isn’t the only piece of good news for Carver. Three of his wilderness images will also be published by National Geographic Society in its 2015 calendar, “Beautiful Landscapes,” which will be available in the fall. Locally, you can see a collection of Carver’s images at Zia Taqueria, where they will be displayed starting Wednesday.
These days, Carver may be better known around Durango for his music; the guitarist plays regular gigs around town with his Black Velvet band, trio and other groups. But before he dove into music with both feet in recent years, he was an accomplished wilderness photographer.
In fact, Carver has already been able to achieve all three of the career goals he set out for himself when he was getting started: get published in National Geographic magazine, have a magazine cover shot and have a solo calendar. His images also have been featured in national parks books and graced the covers of landscape calendars.
With surreal light, breathtaking landscapes and sweeping vistas, Carver’s photos make for the kind of landscape shots that belong on blown-up posters or large prints. He has shot everything from Proxy Falls in Oregon to Antelope Canyon in Arizona, Mount Moran in Grand Teton National Park, Fitz Roy in Patagonia and Mount Whitney in California.
Carver said taking photos has always been fueled by a love of getting out into wild places and capturing them in light that borders on sublime.
His favorite method for getting those shots is hiking several miles into the wilderness, setting up an isolated camp, finding a spectacular scene and getting up the next morning before dawn to wait.
“When you are a photographer in the right conditions, you don’t feel cold, you don’t get impatient,” Carver said. “It’s like you are in the zone; it’s a very special moment.”
kklingsporn@durangoherald.com
If you go
Larry Carver’s wilderness photographs will be exhibited at Zia Taqueria, 3101 Main Ave., starting Wednesday.
