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Dr. Roy L. Leamon
of Austin, Texas, has been photographing the wilderness of western North
America for over thirty years. He is not a professional photographer,
but an avid hobbyist whose frequent journeys into the unspoiled corners
of America's back country have resulted in hundreds of images, a small
fraction of which are presented on this site.
Dr. Leamon is my father, and it wasn't until I was in my thirties that
I began to appreciate the artistic lessons I had been absorbing from him
all these years. First, that a "mere amateur" can produce work
that is every bit as professional in quality as those who photograph for
their living, so long as he dedicates himself rigorously to his passion.
The one or two times per year he's allowed himself to take time off from
work have usually been spent on horseback (or in scuba gear under water)
in distant places, eye squinting for the perfect angle and light, camera
equipment in tow and at the ready. He spent long minutes--at least they
seemed long to me as a kid--assembling his equipment, composing the shot,
measuring light, and photographing the image, then starting all over again,
this time with a different lens, a new filter, another angle, and a different
emphasis on the subject. This was no shutterbug leaping out of the car
every few minutes to click away with an all-automatic camera for the mere
purpose of remembering his trip. Dr. Leamon gets into it.
The second lesson I learned is that everyone needs to follow their artistic
interests, to allow them full expression, to give a personal, individualistic
interpretation of their life's experience, and to savor the outcome of
their art--humbly. My father did not turn our house into a museum
for his work, requiring each visitor to endure a long war story about
how each shot was made. Instead, a few weeks after he'd get back from
his trip, that bare patch of wall in the hallway would suddenly have a
new photograph hanging in it, without a word spoken. If we felt like viewing
the slides from the trip, rigorously edited and put in order (and even
during the slide show he'd click quickly past slides he suddenly felt
couldn't bear even our scrutiny), the screen would go up, someone
would make popcorn, and we'd sit in the darkness watching images of such
color and depth and intrinsic interest flash on the screen that sometimes
we'd ask him to go back a slide or two to be given the chance to look
longer, harder, at the image he'd recorded.
He didn't do it to gain our approval, or even, I suspect, to give us pleasure.
He did it because it was who he was--an artist. It was what he savored
doing--planning and anticipating the trip, packing his equipment, traveling
by plane, automobile, boat, and horseback to reach the long-anticipated
vista, capturing the image with the patience and speed of the surgeon
he was, and upon his return give a quick summary of the trip by telling
me how excited he was about getting this or that print back from the lab,
always certain he'd departed with hope and returned with a camera full
of gold.
Early in his life his hobby was big game hunting, going so far as to British
Columbia and the Yukon Territory to hunt moose, caribou, sheep, and bear.
Even on these trips he probably squinted through his camera's viewfinder
more than through his rifle scope. In his thirties he gave up hunting,
and every trip our family made would just happen to have some coincidental
opportunities for outdoor photography. We weren't hauled around just so
Dad could take pictures, we were given the chance to see a man find pictures
worth taking everywhere we went. And even if the scenery was beatific,
he seemed to feel the presence of his children in the shot added to, not
detracted from, the image.
The third lesson I'll mention is probably the most important. As I mentioned
earlier, not one of the images he photographed was taken with any expectation
of sale. Dr. Leamon never earned a penny for a photograph, never even
considered selling them, but if you were his friend (or his child) and
you liked a particular image especially, a week or two later you'd find
a large framed print of it wrapped in brown paper and given as appreciation
for your appreciation of his work.
He worked quietly, without drawing attention to himself, for only occasional
praise, doing something he loved, purely for his own pleasure. He was
free to photograph what he liked, when he wanted to, and never had to
apologize for his subject matter or give in to the requirements of another
person. If he had given it up at any point along the way, no one would
have faulted him for it, but he remains a steadfast disciple of the power
of the photographic image.
He took hundreds of photographs over the decades of his life because he
is an artist. It's as simple as that, and I believe the integrity of his
work reflects this simple, clear passion. He did it for himself and for
the greater cause of "picture-taking," with no intermediate
exigency to cause the dilemmas that cloud the work of lesser spirits.
Though I'm sure the thousands of patients he has treated over the years
will remember his gentle manner, easy humor, and dedicated care, my feeling
is that time will honor him, as I do, for his photographic legacy and
the spirit imbued in it by his simple, straightforward love for the work.
This third lesson is, then, that art is joy. Everything else is merely
in service to that.
A final note about Dr. Leamon's aesthetic: most outdoor photography, especially
of the American West, emphasizes the dramatic, the grandiose, the sunny
immensity of the landscape's power. While many of Dr. Leamon's photographs
are in line with this tradition, his eye also finds the quieter aspects
of the landscape's soul: a small waterfall, a canyon's quiet stillness
on a cloudy afternoon, the glistening yellow of sun-blazed leaf against
a rocky cathedral subdued by shadow. I find his aesthetic to share traits
with traditional Japanese art, especially in its reverence for the subject's
completeness in itself, caught in a moment of eternal calm, when all creation
might be understood by meditating on a young tree rooted in golden autumnal
glory next to the ever-flux of a river.
Nearing retirement, Dr. Leamon has finally given in to his family's badgering
and allowed a select few of his images to be made available to the public.
The images on this site's pages are selected various trips ranging from
day trips to photograph wildflowers near Austin to a recent trip to Zion
Canyon in southwestern Utah. Although every effort has been made to reproduce
them in all their glory for your browser, serious lovers of photography
are encouraged to purchase their favorite images in large, high-quality
prints--their intended form--so that the power and beauty of these photographs
can be fully appreciated.
Thank you for dropping by. More images will be added to this site as I
convince Dr. Leamon to let me have them.
Roy Leamon III
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