Joe Lategan | Wildlife photographer" > Joe Lategan | Wildlife photographer

Photography can help us reclaim and remember our identities as part of the natural world. To me capturing an image is an uncontrolable act of love, forcing me to travel, stop, look, and look again, to feel whatever it is that Im seeing, and perhaps even to assimilate some aspect of the scene into the core of my being. It is a way of saying; wait lets pay attention- I saw this, this moment, had this experience and it was important to me and it just might be important to you, the viewer, if you were to see it too. It will never be enough to capture the image just for myself. It is meant to share with others and sometimes only one! Sometimes I only discover the true reason for capturing an image years after capturing it and knowing it would not sell but keeping it on public display for some unknown but deeper reasons will reward me when someone will make an emotional or physical connection with the image instantly. This is much more rewarding than the money I could've received for an image more sellable than that one.(Read more about "devine intervention" on my blog JoeLategan.com)

It can also take decades to be emotionally and spiritually ready to capture a scene or subject. Something I have driven past for decades and something will then make me stop and capture a scene with mixed feelings or no real connection but the moment the image is opened on the computer it will rattle me to the core spiritually and I guess emtionally as well. This is the reason I believe photography is a calling and only those that responds to it being a calling can be sucessfull.