Hello!

It has been a couple months since I have been in touch and I have a lot to update you on! This is my first letter of what I plan to be a monthly series going forward. I will be writing to share new work and what has been going on in my life. If you know someone who would be interested in my photography, please pass this on so they can subscribe too.

Here is what’s new this month:

Introducing my new series, Alpine
What is the deal with my exit from social media?!
A review of 2020 & plans for 2021

Alpine Collection

Abstract Alpine Series
Why am I making this series
Process
Limited Edition
Limited Edition Art Book

For my latest work I have been studying the many layers of the Colorado Rockies, and specifically the Tenmile Range in Summit County, where I now live. I have been photographing the Tenmile Range for years and am particularly drawn to the pyramid shaped Peak 1 which marks the northern most point of the range and towers over the town of Frisco and Lake Dillon. It’s not a mighty 14er or even a 13er for that matter, but it's an iconic mountain profile for the county. I recently set out to capture the glorious peak and those surrounding it in a new and unique way.

I wanted to emphasize the mountain profiles, the movement of winter’s blowing snow at the peaks, and the many layers. I have always been interested in double exposure photography but have not made many multiple exposures in my work. Multiple exposure techniques date back to the film era where one would expose the same negative more than once before advancing the frame. It can be an exciting and rewarding way to expand a realist capture towards the abstract.

For this latest series I am taking several photos, all blended in-camera, using traditional multiple exposure techniques. Photography is simply painting with light. One is painting by exposing film or a digital sensor to light. With multiple exposures overlapping it's as if I am painting brush strokes with each capture of light resulting in a painterly photograph.

I aim to subtract in my compositions. This is one reason why I work in monochromatic photography. Photography by its very nature is already an abstract image as you are taking a 3D subject and presenting in a 2d picture plane. By stripping color, I take it another step towards an abstract image as we don’t naturally see the world in black and white. To dive deeper into abstract impressionist work the multiple exposure effect blends the details, and with the Alpine Collection, the brush strokes of light simplify the composition to a study of greyscale gradients and geometric shapes, while emphasizing the mountain peak profiles recognized by those who call this area home. The work is a celebration of Summit County, my new full-time residence and why I set out to create this body of work. I created this series for me and for those who love Summit County, Colorado, and the Alpine lifestyle.

Each photograph I create in this series is truly a unique one-of-a-kind capture, one that can never be repeated. It’s technically impossible to recreate these compositions. I will be limiting the prints to an Edition of 10, regardless of size, so there will never be more than 10 prints produced regardless of the physical print sizes acquired by collectors.

Ron Landucci with Infinite Editions is my Master Printer partner and we will be printing each photograph on Hahnemühle Photo Rag fine art paper, a beautiful high end paper suited for this body of work. The work is currently available online as print only and will be shipped rolled in a tube. If you would like to work through me for mounting and framing options please contact me via the contact page for a custom quote.

I will be releasing the Alpine Collection over time and am pleased to share that the following prints are featured this month and available here through my website! I hope you enjoy the collection!

Featured - Alpine Collection

*“Elevation” by JC Buck - 64’’ x 28’’ - Alpine Collection*

*“Avalanche” by JC Buck - 32’’ x 48’’ - Alpine Collection*

*“Alpine Waves” by JC Buck - 80’’ x 35’’ - Alpine Collection*

*“Summit” by JC Buck - 60’’ x 40’’ - Alpine Collection*

SHOP ALPINE COLLECTION

Social Media fatigue

Am I on Social Media or what?!
In January I announced I was going off indefinitely. I’ll explain.
I regained my focus and my phone usage is down BIG TIME.
I miss my friends.
Yes, I will be re-engaging.
I need to define what that looks like. Can you help me?

On January 19th I announced that I would be departing social media for the indefinite future. I shared this announcement on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Living without social media is something I had been thinking about for several months as I had become increasingly distracted and fatigued by endless feeds.

I received many comments of support relating to the headache much of social media has become. I was struck by how many mentioned they were not far behind me. It was clear that I am not alone in being tired of endless scrolling, addictive user design (we all know what they are doing to us!), wasting time, and so on. I was overwhelmed by the understanding and support!

My thinking at the time was to redirect my attention and use this monthly letter to share new work, revisit older work and go deeper and more personal in expressing my thoughts with you. Instead of being all over the internet, I would focus on one place – my website – where I can communicate directly to you without tech companies deciding who sees what and trying to manipulate how we interact with one another. (To dive deeper - Watch Jaron Laneer videos on YouTube regarding how social media wasn’t created right - he is spot on in my view)

While this sounded great in theory, I am changing the way I am thinking about this experiment. The good part of the past couple months is my focus has increased exponentially, my phone usage is considerably down, and I am spending more valuable time working on my craft – all things that going off social media was supposed to do. In a way it worked.

However, I miss the community, my friends, seeing all the magnificent work, and socializing. Over the years I have embraced social media and have made many friends, clients, connected with fellow artists locally and all over the world – many whom I eventually met up with in person, and some I have even traveled with (shout out to the MN Architecture photography crew!). The connectivity of the times we are living in is truly remarkable and a major positive to social media.

I am naturally an introverted person and it is common for me to isolate myself. I crawl into my projects and can get lost in them for days, weeks, even months... Working as a commercial and fine art photographer it is easy to spend too much time alone. It is healthy for me to be able to connect with like-minded people via social media and has been a game changer in my life. I realize now, while flawed in design, the communities formed via social media is worth finding a way to stay involved. Turning off the TV is not the answer, finding a way to stay on the right channel is.

I have decided departing social media is not the right answer. I will slowly be coming back online and engaging like I used too. However, this time I need to set up parameters and fences around how and when I use social medial. For starters, I will keep the apps off my phone! The designers of the platforms have been very clever at grabbing our attention and not letting us go – even when we know better. Have you seen the Social Dilemma?!

I am going to invest more effort and time into this monthly letter where I can do long form writing, go deeper and more personal and provide an even better photography viewing experience. My main goals are the following:

Interactive with the community
Make announcements
Curate my feed carefully and thoughtfully
Share my work
Stay connected to your work

If you have created a system to managing social media that you find is both healthy and productive, I would love to hear what works for you!

2020 Reviewed

Launched my fine art gallery
Turned 40 years old
Celebrated my Coda Studio exhibit with a large opening party
Covid-19 Pandemic – Lockdown begins – Business comes to halt
Summer comes and commercial shoots get back on the calendar
My large format artwork from the Coda Studio exhibition sells out
Left Denver and moved to Silverthorne, Colorado
I had the busiest 4 QTR in the history of my business
I released my first fine art limited edition photography book, ICE.

*“Pressure” by JC Buck - 48.5’’ x 48.5’’ - ICE Collection - Coda Studio*

2020 was a life changing year for me as it was for all of us! It was the year I turned 40, launched my fine art photography gallery, moved to Silverthorne, Colorado, all while navigating through a global pandemic. I am blessed that my family and friends have remained healthy. My heart breaks for all those who have lost loved ones from Covid-19 and all those whose careers and businesses have been jeopardized and or completely shut down.

As I entered 2020, I had been working on the foundation of launching my art gallery. I had my first couple collections of work ready and plans were in place for a big opening night for my first exhibition at the LA based Coda Studio in the Cherry Creek shopping district of Denver. Everything was moving forward as planned. It was exciting. I produced a series of exceptionally large format pieces from my ICE and HORIZON Collections. And just as the work was being installed in Coda Studio’s new space, word of a pandemic was starting to hit the local news, but no one knew what to make of it at the time and we continued on with our plans. On March 11th we hosted the most amazing opening night at Coda Studio, then just days later the Denver Mayor shut the city down – we were in lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic took over all aspects of our lives. It was frightening and both Liz and I didn’t know what to make of our future - like all of us!

*“One Crack” by JC Buck - 58.5’’ x 40.875’’ - ICE Collection*

For the rest of my life, I will always remember March of 2020, when the world stopped, and I did absolutely nothing. For the first time in my life, I stopped being busy, stopped working, stopped playing, stopped exercising, stopped thinking, stopped planning, and I just sat outside and listened to the emptiness of the quiet streets. I can hear the Aspen leaves in our yard dancing in the wind as I think about it now. While it was scary, indeed, I found those days to also be very peaceful. I was still, reflective and strangely calm.

Business did come to a stop, with a city-wide lockdown, residential and commercial building photo shoots were cancelled. There was no way I could be out promoting my fine art photography. I stayed home.

However, summer came and so did my clients with cancelled shoots making it back on the calendar. Coda Studio was able to open back up, my large pieces eventually all sold, and I had set my gallery up to sell online. Everything was coming back. I was beyond thankful. As a soloist nothing is more important than one's customers and I have never been so grateful for those of you who value my work, both my commercial architectural/interior photography and my fine art photography.

In the fall Liz and I moved into our new home in Silverthorne, Colorado. I cannot even begin to express how happy I am to be living in the mountains. I moved to Denver in 2007 from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida and have always wanted to live in the mountains someday – and our timing could not have been better. Nature is truly healing and having endless hiking out our backdoor has been a life saver during such a difficult year.

I am now based in Summit County and go down to Denver every Tuesday for a guitar playing group I am part of. Learning to play guitar with other mid-agers has been one of the highlights of my weeks for the past year - even during the time we had to do it on Zoom! I use my one day a week in Denver to meet with my various partners, my printer Ron, Anthology Framing, Haven, Rifugio Modern, Coda Studio and Greater than Being.

Plan for 2021

2021, we all hope, will be the year we come out of the pandemic. I am hopeful to be vaccinated and life can return back to some-what normal. For Liz and I that means travel and seeing our families. Our greatest passion we share together is our love for travel and seeking adventure. One of the many reasons I work as a photographer is I need variety in my life. I thrive in new environments. I am a visual person and its critical for my well being and work that I exercise my senses regularly.

I am planning to go on the road, a US Tour of pop-up and art festival shows. I will announce more next month.

This summer Liz and I are going to Africa to follow the Great Migration through Serengetti, Tarangire and Tanzania. I will be working on a new and unique wildlife collection – something completely outside of my comfort zone. I am excited!

I am planning on releasing two to four new collections of work this year, all depending on how the year goes and wether or not we are able to travel like we are counting on.

As I mentioned earlier, last Fall I released my first fine art photography collector’s book, ICE. I sold through my first run and was thrilled with how the book was received. If you are interested in a copy, you can purchase one here. The book is a large format design with 24’’ x 12’’ layflat spreads that make beautiful book shelf display prints.

This year I am planning on releasing one to two more books. So stay tuned for updates on these! And if you have any contacts in the fine art publishing space I would love to connect with them. I am mainly interested in self—publishing and keeping the number of books to less than 500 copies, and making only available through my gallery, to keep the work special and more personal. However, I still have a lot to learn and have several ideas to improve on for the next one. Any help is always appreciated.

Thank you

In a few months I will be celebrating my 8th year in business working as a photographer, a second career and life changer for me. I am thrilled to be working in a field I absolutely love, challenges me, and is filled with great rewards. I want to thank all my commercial clients in the architectural and interior design space, all of those who have purchased my fine art prints and large format pieces, and to all of your support. I hope you continue to follow along with me on this journey. I will be writing you a monthly letter like this going forward. If you know anyone that would enjoy my work and would like to receive a letter from me each month, please share with them this page where they can subscribe down at the bottom.

If you are interested in purchasing one of the featured large format art prints, I have made several available today. Thank you again for all of your support and I’ll be back in touch next month.

SHOP ALPINE COLLECTION