Award-Winning Nature Photography: Passion, Creativity, and Belonging

Photography isn’t just what I do.

It’s who I am.

Every morning I wake with a pull toward light, shape, and the quiet wonder of both nature and structure. The camera isn’t a tool I sometimes pick up—it’s an extension of how I see. A motivator. A reason to rise early, to chase color across the horizon, to remind myself that belonging is found in the rhythm of creation.  

Recently, I submitted one of my nature photographs to a juried competition by the Professional Photographers of America. It wasn’t a typical landscape—it was a wash of saturated color, streaked with vertical motion blur, a shoreline cutting through like a horizon remembered in a dream. I thought of it as a meditation on how dawn feels, rather than how it looks.

The juror, Teri Whittaker, said things that made me pause and smile:
“This abstract style of landscape is unique, is so creative, and definitely has impact for me…I really like it, I really enjoy it!”
“I love the vivid color palette.”
“It is a gorgeous image! As you can tell, I’m a fan!”

Her words—about creativity, impact, and the vivid palette—were fuel. They affirmed what I already know deep down: my photographs carry both my craft and my love for the natural world.

Recognition is nice, of course. But even more than that, it reminds me why I step into the field again and again: to create, to connect, to translate what I see and feel into images that move others.

Nature
Color
Belonging

That is what lives at the core of my photography. And it’s also why I’m really good at what I do. Because when I work with architects, builders, and designers, that same energy and devotion comes through. My passion for photography—born in wild spaces at sunrise—finds its way into every project I shoot.

So yes, I’m proud of this image and the “merit status” it earned. But more than that, I’m grateful. Grateful for mornings that get me out of bed. Grateful for the trust of those who invite me to show off their work.

Maybe your story is next.

What follows is the poem I published online a few weeks ago to accompany my photo.

Newly Painted Dawn

I am awakening  into a new dawn 

Into a world newly painted.

Bleary eyes adjust to this new reality.

  It’s hard to open them.  

Aligning my vision with this new potential

  It’s hard to focus. 

Emerging into a new way to see

  It’s hard to believe.

A world of grey left behind

One where days were described with leaden pencils.

   flat and endless,

Grey clouds hung heavily

  motionless, 

  without mercy,

Not pregnant with potential, but 

  with a pallid paucity.  

Holding in rain that would not fall,

  denying even the smallest kindness

  of summer drops upon my skin.

A decade devoid of touch. 

Where ghostly hands

  traced remnants of broken promises.

Whispered grief in graphite

Now, a glimpse of gold

  bursts forth on the horizon.  

A brilliant bird flutters by,

  wings dipped in dawn.  

With every wing beat, 

  it pollinates with pigment.  

Vibrance drips from flowers 

 in honeyed hues

Cobalt rains from the sky to be 

 born again through radiant rivers

 that leap over cliffs in waterfalls.

Baptising everything in beauty.

There is no dank stillness here.

The world paints itself again with each new dawn.

With each passing hour.

Within each moment.

And I am here, awash in awe.

–Patrick Rogers