“When I view a scene of our natural world, I feel an emotional connection.  My goal as a photographer is to capture those qualities in the scene that create the emotion I feel.  The lines of the mountain ridges, textures of the plants or rocks, the colors, and the shapes; those qualities make the scene of the mountainside art and create the emotional connection I have to the scene.  Without those, the image is just a good picture of a mountain.

“Like many photographers, I sometimes spend hours in a site without taking pictures, taking the time to experience the feelings and the emotional content of the place. There is often more to a scene than initially registers.  By paying deep attention to a scene and fully opening my senses, additional layers of colors, textures, shapes, movement, and especially light begin to emerge.  Sometimes these enhance a scene; sometimes an entirely new scene emerges.  It is these additional layers that I attempt to capture with my images.  The inner glow of inanimate items.  The palette of colors in scenes.  The textures of simple surfaces.  The energy of a still object.  These characteristics of an image capture the feeling and emotional connection more than a simple faithful recording of the scene.

“I want to continue to expose these hidden layers in my work, to find ways to reveal the qualities of a scene which are often overlooked, but which are so necessary to establish an emotional connection.   I feel my images are complete when they create the same feelings and emotions in me that I felt while taking the picture.  I hope they do the same for the viewer.”
                                                                                                                                  -- Dan Jacobs