The photographs shown in this collection were produced using a number of different cameras.
My preference is to use the largest format possible, under the circumstances I happen to be working in. A Deardorff 8 x 10 and a 5 x 7 inch get the nod if working within a short hike from the truck. Further out my medium format Pentax 6 x7 goes with me and on the really long hikes a couple of Sony mirrorless digitals get a ride in the backpack.
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Select Bibliography:
Landscapes Developing Style in Creative Photography, Published by Rotovision, 2000- Contributing Photographer
Camera Craft, Black & White, Published by AVA, 2003 - Contributing Photographer
The World's Top Photographers, Landscape, Published by Rotovison, 2003 - Contributing Photographer
Black & White Photography Magazine, Issue # 53 December 2005, Portfolio
Silvershotz Magazine, Volume 3 - Edition 5 - 2006, Profile, From Aviator To Fine Art Photographer
Focus Magazine, Issue 4, Volume 1. Nov./Dec. 2005, Portfolio
Black & White Photography Magazine, UK February 2005, Portfolio
Select Exhibitions:
Florida Division of Emergency Management Art Exhibition, Tallahassee Florida 2013
Schacknow Museum of Fine Art Plantation Florida, 2007
“Florida Landscapes” The Palm Beach Photographic Centre. 2006
Community Foundation of Palm Beach. Everglades restoration benefit, 2005
Artserve, Ft. Lauderdale Florida, “ Florida Fifteen Photographs” 2005
Various other exhibits have been with the New River Arts group in Ft. Lauderdale and local area colleges.
Teaching private workshops on Large Format View Camera technique as well as printing with historical processes, Platinum/Palladium and the Salted Paper Print process since 2002.
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In the fall of 1991 I casually mentioned to a few photographer friends that I was considering making a few trips around Florida to see if I could find anything interesting to photograph.
I had just recently returned from my first extended trip to Southwestern Montana and while not much happened photographically, the mountains and rivers of the Missouri Headwaters did manage to work their way into my soul and created for me an impression that has not only lasted to this day, but has become stronger over the years.
My reasoning behind the Florida trips was that while the West in general and more specifically Montana does have a lot to offer the photographer working in the landscape I do not live there, and while I have returned many times it has been mostly with a fly rod to fish on the Madison, Yellowstone and numerous other rivers and streams around the state. To do something productive with a camera would require repeated visits to easily accessible, visually interesting areas; in short, I felt I needed to stay closer to home base.
The Florida that I grew up in, that is to say, South Florida in the late sixties, seventies and early eighties is, unfortunately, gone. Today's post Disney version of South Florida bears little resemblance to that period of time before the floodgates were opened and the mass influx of new residents hit my part of the state. The booming population and the infrastructure needed to to support them, guaranteed that the lakes and woods used by myself and my friends as our escape from the real world would soon be filled in, paved over and lost forever under a sea of concrete and asphalt, never to be seen again except in memory.
When you spend enough time in a certain place you eventually develop an affinity for and a desire to protect what's important to you. The term“ The predator husbands its prey” is something I first heard in Montana probably around the late 1990's. I attended a lecture series given by a group of land conservationists and one of them used this term when referring to stewardship. Loosely translated it means those that have the most at stake; the ranchers, farmers, those who hunt and fish and basically anyone who enjoys spending time in wild unspoiled places are the ones who will take a proactive stand in protecting what matters to them. In other words we who see the value in protecting wild places become the stewards who work to save these remaining remnants of natural landscapes with the understanding that the rejuvenation of the human spirit requires time spent in these wild places. As a photographer working with a landscape that now exists only as a fraction of the place you once knew, the challenge is to bring awareness to the land through your photographs without resorting to sentiment in the hope of protecting what little we still have left, knowing that loosing this, it too is gone forever.
This collection of photographs is the result of work done over a span of thirty years. On those first few trips around the state, the results were, to ,put it mildly, were pretty disappointing. While much of landscape photography in the West is synonymous with expansive, majestic views, that approach didn't fit my vision of Florida.with more intimate middle distance views, built around a quiet image structure being in line with how I see this state. Not seeing many of of these images on those initial trips I concentrated on more abstract two dimensional close up compositions with emphasis on the relationship of line, form,texture, shape and tone. Working in this manner I gradually learned to “see” and discovered previously unnoticed images almost everywhere I looked. It was this deeper level of awareness gained from working with these abstracts that I did begin to notice certain places throughout the state that agreed with my vision of Florida and that appealed to my sensibilities of what an appropriate landscape picture should be.
With these photographs my hope is to engage the viewer in a way that conveys not only a love of the land but also acknowledges the presence of something spiritual. Not spiritual in the biblical meaning, but something deeper, more to do with the belief that there is this unseen force in the universe larger than ourselves, we can't understand and that science and religion can't explain. More than once it has been suggested to me that my photographs of the Florida landscape have been subconsciously my attempt to bring back the Florida that was, and in doing so recapture my youth and all that dissapeared with it. I've never had an intelligent reply to that comment: however if these images succeed at all then maybe what I've been doing for all these years hasn't been a search for what I've lost of myself but rather a search for the manifested Gods that are to be found within these lands.
Bob Hudak
Havana, Florida 2023