Photographer and arborist David Schwartz is a man in love with trees and captivated by shrubs. His eleven-acre woodland home in Coventry is populated with unusual Japanese maples, fern leaf cypress, mountain laurels and several varieties of Cotoneaster. He shares his hilltop paradise with hawks, owls, fox and weasel.
Schwartz practically glows when he talks about trees. They are his passion, his vocation and his photographic inspiration. "Plants," he declares, "never really took to domestication - that's what I like about plants."
The incredible colors, textures and constant motion of the plant world are the foundation for the photographs exhibited here. Schwartz approaches photography the same way he cares for plants: he lets the plans speak for themselves. His photographs are straightforward images of plants, flowers, trees and shrubs. Yet they convey a real sense of awe and a world outside of mankind's control. These photographs are all about one man's love affair with plants.
"My basic skill," Schwartz states quietly, "is knowing how to look at plants."
Barrington-born photographer Steven Schwartz picked up his first camera at age six. At age nine he was developing his own photographs and by the time he was a teenager, Schwartz had had his photographs published in the Boston Globe and the Providence Journal.
Schwartz works mostly out of doors in natural light and spends much of his time behind the camera anticipating the right shot. "There's beauty that's just waiting," Schwartz muses. "There's beauty in the candid nature of all beings - trees, animals and people. It's incumbent on the photographer to capture that essence. Whether it's people or pets, you actually get some genuine moments."
"A good photographer is able to take whatever the subject matter is - a loaf of bread, a group of individuals or an inanimate object - and capture something interesting," Schwartz continues. "It's up to the skill of the photographer and his knowledge of light, optics and placement that make for consistently outstanding photographic images - images that not only represent the nature of the subject, but do so in a way that directs the observer's eye the way the photographer saw it at time of capture."