For me, wild places are holy places. I hope that my work will touch the soul, stir imagination, and rekindle a sense of wonder in us all.

I´m from the "atom bomb place," as my grandfather called it, the once-secret city of Los Alamos, New Mexico. This was compound for PhDs, where kids were encouraged to explore new ideas and to break bounds. Individualism ruled supreme. And the town´s idyllic mountain setting nurtured my innate fascination with wild plants, wild animals, and wild places.

More likely than not, this childhood experience gave me the desire and courage to pursue an interdisciplinary career. In college and graduate school, I studied drawing, painting, photography, and art appreciation along with ecology and evolutionary biology. A deeper understanding of all living things has helped to fuel my creative passions, and the medium of photography has allowed me to comfortably bring both worlds together.

I´m inspired by the mystery, beauty, and complexity of the natural world, emphasizing both form and function. In grad school my love of wildlife and animal behavior led me to motion picture work. Being the perfect story-telling medium, cinematography relieves the frustration of using stills to portray a world that never stands still. Coming full circle, I have added videography to my current multimedia projects.

On the flip side, I love capturing a single moment frozen in time and have an endless fascination with the ephemeral, be it as short as a lightning flash or as "long" as a desert wildflower bloom. Extremes—not the norms—provide the cutting edge for evolution. We often speak of average temperature, average rainfall, average behavior, etc.—but biologically and photographically, the most meaningful and exciting phenomena occur at the outer limits. This is undoubtedly the reason I´m captivated by deserts and have chosen to live in one.

-Thomas Wiewandt
Tucson, Arizona :: 1 March 2011