STEVEN YEO

My images both real and surreal, encompass diverse topical subjects including but not limited to Wisconsin and the Great Lakes, their history, natural biotic communities, floral and vegetative forms and landscapes.

I seek to discover exceptional views of ordinary subjects in their surroundings, that capture their essence, and that are visually interesting, evoking an emotional connection between the image and the viewer.

At the instant of snapping the shutter I'm primarily interested in capturing an exceptional composition. While it is very rewarding to capture an exceptional image at that instant, I also enjoy creating digital artworks mixing and distorting elements from my photographs, and experimenting with how our visual perception can be deceived by our expectations

Our visual relationship to our surroundings is embedded in our memory throughout life, in ways that are not fully conscious or readily verbalized. The visual memories of the landscapes of our youth develop our conceptions of "homeland" and even our concept of the "sacred". As stated by H. D.Thoreaux, "Our eyes were not made for such groveling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God?"

My own view of life is from a naturalistic/humanistic perspective. I have professional training in natural history and biology and have been employed as an aquatic biologist for over 30 years. I have had a lifelong fascination with natural systems and our intimate relationship to the cosmos. My sense of aesthetics is grounded in an appreciation of natural form: its development and close correspondence to function, the underlying geometric regularities, concepts of tesselation and fractal geometries that can be extended to appear asymmetric and choatic. My view of nature reaches beyond a merely descriptive scientific/technical viewpoint, and avoids the more conventional "warm and fuzzy" or top predator and game orientated views of "wildlife" art. I identify more with reading the woods and hold a viewpoint emotionally closer to that expressed by Aldo Leopold and other naturalists.