Hi, I'm Eric Thoemmes, photographer, skier and avid lover of the natural world.
After 40 years of spending way too much time at a desk and in crowded rooms, the time came for me to move to a place with more space and fewer people. Teton Valley, located to the west of the Teton Mountain Range, and Teton Canyon, which rises up to the Grand Teton and the Grand Targhee ski resort, is now home. This place inspired me to reconnect with some long dormant loves, especially skiing and photography. Et voila, the idea of Teton Photo Studio was born. This "studio" is more of a place to express myself, for myself, rather than show and sell photos to the world. But it also provides an outlet to share my art with those who may be interested.
When I last dabbled in photography I was in my twenties and digital cameras and photo processing remained in the future. The internet and cell phones were years away. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had just started Apple in a garage, but the idea for the iPhone was not even a dream. I grew up in a dark room with developer and fixer on my hands. For a period of time I managed and operated a photography lab at the US Army base in Kaiserslautern, Germany. Ansel Adams was still alive and a huge source of inspiration for me. I too grew up in Northern California and spent many wonderful days in Yosemite.
Well, like Rip Van Winkle, I woke up decades later to find out that photography had not fundamentally changed. Yeah, kinda like riding a bike! You now capture images on memory cards and process them on a computer, but the basic principles of composition, depth of field, light control, etc., are the same. Digital cameras even have the same lens aperture and shutter speed settings and light sensitivity controls that were present with film cameras (minus the film, of course). If Ansel Adams woke up today, I imagine he would be right at home with my mirrorless camera and Lightroom.
So that's my story in a nutshell. Feel free to drop me a note if you have any comments or questions.
Cheers!
Eric -- or"Gandalf" as I'm known to my granddaughter, and she is "Arden in the Garden"