About the Artist

"The Joe Decker School of Photography"
© 2006 Josh Andrews

Born in 1961 in the San Francisco Bay Area, Joe Decker received a B.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1984, which in turn led to a successful and diverse career in the technology industry. His work in visual perception during that time provided a foundation for his understanding of color and how people "see photographs."

Joe remembers the day he first "saw the light" and began his pursuit of fine art photography--it was New Year's Day, 1991--he woke at dawn to see the mile-high face of El Capitan glowing gold through a faint mist, and he was profoundly affected not only by the beauty of the scene but also by its spiritual quality. Joe's desire to capture and communicate such experiences inspired his study into photography.

At the Smithsonian

Self-taught early in his photographic career, Joe began studying with other masters of nature photography in the late 1990s, including Galen Rowell, Richard Knepp, and Bill Atkinson. In 1999, Joe published his award-winning body of work October, entirely taken from images created during a particular month in the Eastern Sierra.

Joe's nature photography is a descendent of the West Coast school of landscape photography, showing influences by such artists as Galen Rowell and Frans Lanting. Color, often intensely (but still accurately) saturated, is often a forward element of his work, while composition is often used to signify deeper, more personal levels of the captured experience.

In 2003, one of Joe's landscape photographs, Granite and Snow, Little Lakes Valley was "highly honored" by the Nature's Best Foundation at the National Museum of National History, part of the Smithsonian. In 2005, his image Frightened Tree and Pogonip was awarded first prize in the show Monochrome by Mark Citret, photgrapher and former assistant to Ansel Adams. In 2006, his "wildlife" photograph Aphid and Desert was awarded first prize in the show Flower Power at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto, California. In 2008, the National Park Service awarded named him an artist-in-residence at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona for that year.

Joe's CV can be found here.

About the Photographs

Joe utilizes a synergy between modern and classical photographic techniques. Digital capture is used as a "digital darkroom" to recreate the power and veracity of the natural scene. Digital techniques are used only to overcome the limitations of prints, and to recapture the color, the sharpness and the interplay of tonalities that were present in the original experience. The final printing process utilizes the LightJet digital enlarger, Fuji Crystal Archive paper and traditional photo chemistry to produce powerful photographic prints that will, with proper care, last a lifetime.

Additional information about the gear Joe uses is available here.