I am a Maryland fine art photographer specializing in landscape photographs of the Middle Atlantic area, including the Chesapeake Bay, Washington D.C., and the Maryland and Virginia countryside. My photographs have been featured in eighteen solo exhibits, and more than 80 juried and invitational group exhibits. My photographs are on permanent display in the Maryland State House of Delegates Offices, the National Institutes of Health, Inova Fairfax Hospital, Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital and the Aquilino Cancer Center, and are held in private collections in the U.S. and overseas. Sales of my photographs have raised thousands of dollars for charities such as the C&O Canal Trust, Rachel’s House and Critical Exposure. When not pursuing my avocation as a photographer, I made my living as a renewable energy lawyer, representing owners and investors involved in the development and financing of solar, wind, and other renewable energy projects.
Landscape images of the American west by Ansel Adams and others are very well known, and many photographers from the East Coast bemoan how far they are from those classic subjects. However, the Mid-Atlantic area is also full of excellent photographic opportunities. Washington is a beautiful city that many people travel thousands of miles to see each year. Great Falls is an outstanding natural photographic subject, and it is remarkable to find such a wild and unspoiled place in the midst of so much urban sprawl. The C&O Canal and the Potomac River are peaceful counterpoints to the wildness of the falls. And the Chesapeake Bay offers almost limitless possibilities. I have been photographing these subjects for years, and every time that I think I have exhausted their photographic potential, the weather will change, or the water will rise or fall, and a world of new images will open up. Clyde Butcher, the famous Everglades photographer, has said that photographers have to accept that we can’t all live and photograph in Yosemite (Ansel Adams' home for many years), and that our best photography will come from exploring subjects that are close to where we live, no matter where that is. I have been fortunate to have photographic subjects like these so close to my home.
My photographs represent a modest effort to capture the beauty of these subjects, but they also demonstrate their fragility, because even though these images are only a few months or years old, many of them could no longer be taken due to changes that have occurred since they were made. For example, “Lock 7 in Fog”, which has been one of my most popular photographs, would look very different now, since the National Park Service has had to add braces to stabilize the lock walls. Similarly, many of the photographs from Fletcher’s Cove could not be taken today because man-made changes to the Potomac River upstream from the cove have caused huge silt build-ups in the part of the cove where these photographs were taken.
One of my recent projects has been to photograph the countryside around the Chesapeake Bay, with particular emphasis on the places where land and water meet, and which are most vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change. Working on this series has brought together my passion for photography and my professional commitment to sustainability and the development of renewable energy. Photographs from this project have been featured in several group exhibits, and in solo exhibits at the Delaplaine Center for the Arts in Frederick, Maryland in 2013, and in the Garden Gallery in Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis in 2017. Photographs from the Endangered Landscape series are also on permanent display in the Maryland State House of Delegates Environmental Matters Committee Room and Appropriation Committee offices in Annapolis.
Like many photographers, I learned my craft using a variety of small, medium and large format film cameras, and developing and printing black and white photographs in a traditional darkroom. However, more recently I have been drawn to the creative possibilities offered by digital photography. While I like the detail and the rich tones that I could achieve with traditional processes, I appreciate the flexibility offered by the digital medium. The images on this site have been taken with a variety of classic and contemporary cameras. Currently, my day-to-day photographic tools are Nikon Z8 and Z7 mirrorless digital cameras.
You can follow my photography on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/leegoodwinphotography and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/leemgoodwin/.