Kurt Shaffer
Gifted a Kodak Instamatic camera in 1970 at the age of 13, I was eager to take pictures of just about everything I saw! Born in Buffalo, NY but growing up in California, Illinois and elsewhere, I was given an early broad exposure to the vast beauty of ‘the world.’ I enlisted in the Navy right after high school mainly because of the promise of travel. My focus has mainly been on nature but not exclusively as I love photographing whatever interests me. A deep love of nature and its conservation was sparked by my Eagle Scout father and I’m certain I received my artistic eye from my mother who had a natural sense of design and her mother’s artistic talents (I have several of her paintings).
My therapy is being present in nature. We are nature and it only makes sense that we feel closest to ourselves when immersed in nature. Photography is the ultimate way to share my experience and I’ve always been driven to share what I photograph.
In this era of Photoshop and artificial intelligence one never knows what’s real and what’s not in a photograph. While I do process every image in Photoshop, it’s used only to help make the photo appear to be exactly as I witnessed it. On rare occasions, I will only delete unwanted elements, but never add anything that wasn’t there.
Since 1980, I’ve called Cleveland, Ohio home and I never cease to find new and  interesting things to photograph.
Showing 1–36 of 136 resultsSorted by latest
