“I wanted to hold onto the feeling of being there.”
This is how Carl Heilman describes his inspiration for becoming a photographer. More than 40 years ago, after moving to the Adirondacks in upstate New York, he was compelled to recreate what it felt like to take in the area’s staggering landscapes. “I figured I could do that with a camera,” he says.
Since then, through limited formal training and a lot of self-taught pluck, Heilman has become a prolific and acclaimed photographer, taking thousands of pictures across the United States and Canada, and teaching workshops in New York’s Adirondacks region (where he still lives) and Maine’s Acadia National Park.
Among his favorite encounters, he highlights shooting pictures of a mountain range in the immediate aftermath of a snowsquall, and photographing a deer just after a rain had ended, as the sun went down and a perfect mist formed. “There are so many times where you just have this magic that comes together,” he says.