Local photographer in touch with nature
Local photographer in touch with nature
| CAPTION: Laura Kirby/Daily Mining Gazette Photographer Steve Brimm focuses on some lillies. Brimm’s specialty is nature scenes, from Lake Superior to his backyard. His work is being featured at The Einerlei in Chassell during the month of August. In addition, Brimm is conducting a few classes on photography. |
By LAURA KIRBY, DMG Writer
CHASSELL — Being self-taught may have been the long road for The Einerlei’s artist-of-the-month Steve Brimm, but it was also the high road. Look at any of his nature photographs of the Upper Peninsula and you might think you live somewhere far more exotic.
The 40-year-old photographer from the Carolinas has his latest exhibition, “Written in Stone: Images of Rock in the Lake Superior Basin,” on display at The Einerlei in Chassell. Brimm, whose nature photography work has been published in issues of Midwest Living, Lake Superior and Traverse City magazines, said being able to transform everyday Lake Superior scenery like rock surfaces into vivid images is “what makes a photographer a photographer or an artist an artist.”
With so much of Lake Superior embedded in stone, Brimm likes to let the rock textures tell their own history and that of the lake. The difference between his own pictures and those of the average tourist’s is a healthy interest in light, and the way it can take an image from stale to stunning, Brimm said.
“One of the things that I do, and painters do, and better photographers do, is use natural light and have an understanding of light,” he said. “If I run into something that’s visually interesting, the first thing I do is try to find the light it needs.”
More often than not this means returning to the same spot time and time again in search of the ideal light to make a subject or scene stand out. Conveniently then for Brimm, he has always spent most of his time outdoors backpacking, paddling, or “just looking and learning” about natural things, he said.
“When I was 16, we had a little sailboat, and we would take the summers off and sail through the Bahamas,” he said. After his mother gave him an underwater camera, capturing nature scenes through a lens soon became second nature and Brimm’s way of telling a story.
“Since I couldn’t rub two words together in a sentence, I thought I’d have to explain it some other way,” he said. “It was basically just an extension of being outside and showing the places that I’d been.”
Now based at his own gallery in Copper Harbor, for the past six years most of Brimm’s work has focused on the Lake Superior Basin and Northern Forest beyond.
“I am drawn to the shoreline because I grew up on the ocean,” Brimm said.
Brimm’s most notable recent recognition was beating some 20 or 30 thousand entries in the International Nature’s Best Magazine competition in December 2005. His winning image, “Aster on Shale,” won best of show in the plant life category and was hung in the Smithsonian Gallery in the Natural History Museum for several months.
Brimm will host a free photography workshop at the Einerlei on Aug. 26. The Einerlei in Chassell is open Monday to Saturday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call or e-mail Nancy Leonard 523-4612 nancy@einerlei.com for details. Brimm’s work is also on display at his Earthworks gallery in Copper Harbor.
Laura Kirby can be reached at lkirby@mtu.edu.
Previous page: Different Drums linking cultures one beat at a time
Next page: Keweenaw National Historic Park walking tours popular with visitors