ABOUT THE ARTIST
"As a young boy, I made my first connection with the Spirit of Nature. My father was an outdoorsman, who loved to hunt and fish, and included me on these trips beginning at an early age of 8 years old. The solitude of the Arizona high-desert made quite an impression on me. After several days of being in the mountains, we would return to our home. The quietness and vastness of the mountains would linger in my mind for several weeks. Back home, I kept thinking about the frost of the early morning, the sound of the wind in the canyons, the quietness, the stillness and the transition of night to day and day to night. I was struck with the fact that these wonderful events kept happening every day, unnoticed, even though I was back in school. It took me a lifetime to understand and align my spirit with the energy and power of the quietness of a sunset or the sound of wind blowing through a canyon."
Ernest was born in Bisbee, Arizona, a small copper mining town located just a few miles from the Mexican border. At the age of 21, Ernest moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from SFSU with a degree in Mathematics. He began his career in Silicon Valley writing computer programs for technical and business applications. Having acquired a new set of skills, he founded ECA, a computer consulting business. Being self employed allowed Ernest to work on a project basis, allowing more flex time for other interests, namely; backpacking and photography. In 1996, Ernest hiked the John Muir Trail from Yosemite Valley to Mount Whitney, a 221 mile trip lasting 21 days, a life-changing trip.
"During this trip, I rediscovered what I had learned as a young boy. My spirit soared to new heights when surrounded by the beauty and the power of the Spirit of Nature. My perception of reality took on a different meaning. A tree was no longer just a tree, it was a beautiful woman with long hair. The Gods of the Wind, the Gods of Thunder, the Gods of mighty Mountain passes revealed themselves. I attempted to photograph what I was experiencing and I wrote about my experiences in my journal. The photos reinforced the experience. I suppose that for me, photography is an attempt to capture the Spirit of Nature on film. My goal is to create images which invoke the feeling of being outdoors. I offer them to my family, friends and to you because there is so much good to be found in Nature. "
Ernest now lives in Las Vegas, NV where he owns and operates Galleria de Chavez.
We hope you enjoy the images and perhaps they will help kindle the Spirit of Nature for you.
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