Tom Chesnut is a fine art landscape photographer and has been hiking and backpacking solo in wilderness areas since he received his driver's license in 1967.  He states, "Going into wild areas by myself despite the risks, I experience a deep spiritual connection with nature that human presence has not spoiled or invaded."

Art has been a large part of Tom's life since his early childhood.  One of his oil paintings, painted when he was seven was framed and hung in his father's house.  The first piece of art he sold was a pen, ink and watercolor wash drawing created at the age of thirteen.  As he got older, his two obsessions, one with art and the other with the wilderness, combined into landscape photography.  This was an artistic medium he could carry in his pack and use to express what he felt about his wilderness explorations.  "Through the use of both color and monochrome fine art photography, I express my feelings about the wilderness and how I feel while in the wilderness. The standard elements of visual design in my photographs--color, form, shape, line, texture, and tone--are my tools to express my feelings of connection with wild areas."

He uses film for highest quality image capture and then scans the processed film into a high resolution digital image. The "digital darkroom" of Photoshop allows him to achieve his visualized end result using techniques analogous to those used in a traditional darkroom, such as contrast masking, burning and dodging, and local contrast control. The resulting fine art photographic prints are output using an archival Giclee printing process.

His work has been exhibited and sold through galleries, art fairs, and dealers in art photography.  Inspired by a recent workshop, he's been developing a new fine art collector's series entitled "The Stillness of Zen".  The images in this series use the light-dark design principles of Notan as well as emphasize negative space.  The images you see on this page are from that series.