James Watts | Blog

Landscape Photographer. Exploring light and form within the natural landscape.

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Paprec Group

Some of my photos out about about in the world supporting great causes! Accompanied by wonderful layout and print design by Allégories Créations, @sylvielescure for Paprec Group.

Paprec grew from a paper recycling company to a massive industry leading recycling group that is at the cutting edge of recycling waste products into reusable materials. With 12,500 employees at 280 sites they process 16 million tons of waste into usable materials and are a cornerstone of waste management throughout France and Switzerland. 🌍♻️

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In Shadows from Before, Colorado. 2021

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Volcanic Ash Pile, Utah. 2020⁠

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Obligation

Blue and Gold Abstract, Mojave Desert. 2020

It is difficult for us to simply experience. In those wonderful moments away from everyday tasks that we are able to spend pursuing creativity, there is always a struggle against these temporarily displaced demands. They press upon us an obligation to return from any amount of time spent in creative endeavor with something to show; evidence of progress made. But making is only one part of the creative process. Creativity also lies within our exploration of experience. Our senses, thoughts, emotions and how through them we attend the world that exists around us.

Having the intent of making a photograph is an obligation. Through its need to be fulfilled, it pulls at us to seek only within the known, to look only for a resemblance of moments passed. Experience is without obligation, experience is the now.

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Luminous Obelisk , Eastern Sierra. 2019

James Watts

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If you could stop the shouting of your own thoughts in your ears, you might be able to hear the small voice of… a pine cone in the sun.

Minor White

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The physical landscape is baffling in its ability to transcend whatever we would make of it. It is as subtle in its expression as turns of the mind, and larger than our grasp; and yet it is still knowable. The mind, full of curiosity and analysis, disassembles a landscape then reassembles the pieces - the nod of a flower, the color of the night sky, the murmur of an animal - trying to fathom its geography.

Barry Lopez 

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Summer Storm, Washington. 2019⁠

James Watts

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New Website!

jmswts.com

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Spring Scree, Tuolumne County. 2019⁠

James Watts

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Spring Touch on Fire Scar, Mono County. 2019

James Watts

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Pines on Hill. 2019

James Watts

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Sandbar Willow in Canyon Shadow. 2019

James Watts

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Most of us look at a thing and believe we have seen it, yet what we see is often only what our prejudices tell us to expect to see, or what our past experience tells us should be seen, or what our desire wants to see...

Bill Brandt