About Jeff Brown

Inspired by nature's beauty growing up near the Sierra Mountains and Yosemite, Jeff has found many opportunities to trek into nature and spend time shooting landscape photography. With his roots in film photography he (reluctantly) transitioned to digital creating a mixed collection of both film and digital photographic images.

Artist Statement

As an amateur photographer, I don’t consider myself an artist but more of an opportunistic borrower of light. I've been a student of photography for more than 40 years, and prefer to take photographs rather than make them. I try to capture the action or mood of a scene as naturally as possible and keep my editing lite – letting the image have its voice. With my experience growing up shooting, processing, and printing with black and white film, I often see a scene that in my opinion speaks louder without color. I rarely shoot with filters or use heavy editing to alter a scene. I try to keep my workflow simple using a variety of the digital tools available today to adjust my images.

My profession is Landscape Architecture which is likely due to an early introduction to drawing, the Sierras, photography, and golf by my father. As a result, many of my images are of landscapes. I grew up in the Central Valley of California. With the western Sierra between Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks a part of my extended neighborhood – I was regularly recreating and exploring the region with friends and family. Going away to college in Oregon further reinforced my interest in photography and provided more scenic landscapes to explore and photograph when time permitted.

San Diego has been my home for more than 30 years. When I started exploring the landscapes of my new home, I found myself missing the Sierras or Cascades in my “backyard”. I’ll never forget my first trip and attempt to camp in Anza Borrego Desert State Park. As crazy as it sounds, I didn’t “get it” and went home! I thought, what could possibly be the attraction of such a harsh and barren a landscape? Fortunately, as a result of my “day job”, it didn’t take long for that opinion to change!

It was a difficult transition for me from film to digital. Around 2012 I made the leap, bought a used Canon 60D, and donated my film gear to a local school (I did keep my trusty Pentax ME Super that went to college with me). The initial justification was to capture my daughters’ sports activities. Since that time, I've upgraded camera bodies twice and thanks to the camera capabilities of smartphones, I'm almost never without a camera because you never know when you’ll feel the need to borrow some light...