North Carolina's incredible natural resources have inspired many artists over the ages.
* The Office of Environmental Education would like to express great thanks to these local nature photographers who provided some fantastic photos for our new website.
Kevin Adams*
Nature Photography
 "Kevin has always loved nature and the outdoors. As a kid, his family vacations were always to the mountains in search of waterfalls and his mother and older brothers would often talk about writing a waterfall book one day. Well, it didn’t take very many mountain trips with his new camera to decide that HE was going to write that book. But first, he had to learn how to take pictures. Early on, he signed up for a camera course at a local community college but after a few classes realized that the best way to learn nature photography was to get out in nature and photograph it.
Kevin started teaching photography seminars in the early 1990s, and soon thereafter began leading photo tours to the North Carolina mountains to photograph waterfalls. One of his greatest satisfactions is producing books. In 1994 he wrote North Carolina Waterfalls and followed it up in 1996 with Wildflowers of the Southern Appalachians. Then he took a break from books for a few years and concentrated on building up stock files and leading a few photo tours. Now he’s heavily back into the book world, having produced Waterfalls of Virginia and West Virginia in 2002, Hiking Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2003, and North Carolina’s Best Wildflower Hikes in spring of 2004. Several additional books are in the works.
Kevin is often asked by aspiring photographers how to break into the business. The best advice he has to offer is to concentrate on one region and shoot what you love. If you travel all over the world and shoot everything along the way, you’ll have a tremendous amount of competition from other photographers who probably will have deeper files. From a marketing standpoint, we think it’s much better to have quality, in-depth coverage of a small region, than it is to have mediocre coverage of a large area. As for shooting what you love, why get into photography in the first place if you’re not going to enjoy what you shoot?
Taking a dose of his own medicine, Kevin decided long ago that he would concentrate on his home state of North Carolina and shoot what he loves. Of course, to remain in business, we often take on assignments and projects from a purely economical standpoint (“prostituting”, as we call it). But more often than not in any project that Kevin does, you’re likely to find him following his passion through the swamps, sand flats, old-growth forests, and mountain trails of the Tarheel State." (Text taken from Kevin Adams' website.)
Kevin took some of the photos you see on this site, including the dragonfly, Venus flytraps, and salamander.
David Bibb
Nature Photography
 David grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and has lived in Raleigh for 16 years. In all his work David seeks to reveal the beauty of simplicity and the unexpected. He also uses photography to educate others about nature and land conservation. He believes in the persuasive power of imagery to help all of us change the future of our world.
David strives to improve people’s awareness of the environment through intimate portrayal of the natural world just outside our doors. We are losing more of our natural environment each and every day through human activities. Through his inspiring images David strives to embolden us to work towards restoring the natural world we inherited.
Accommodating and re-inviting the natural world into our lives is David’s professional vision and personal joy. His wildlife photography confronts people with the beauty of the natural world. David’s macro photography jogs people out of the false perception that the artificial world is the world. His imagery reminds us all to step out of the air conditioning and out of the car and into the open spaces where we can reacquaint ourselves with natural wonder.
The bee is a perfect emblem for wildlife photography. Bees make a profound contribution to life on Earth. Countless plant species depend them for propagation, including many agricultural species that feed humanity. Yet in many areas, natural bees are absent. They must be imported in boxes and maintained by beekeepers. A recurring image in David’s photography, the bee reminds us to do our part to support wildlife.
Robert Cable
Nature Photography
Mike Dunn*
Nature Photography
 Mike Dunn is the Coordinator of Teacher Training at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. Amazingly enough, nature photography is something he does on the side.
His keen eye for detail, careful observation skills, and quiet patience make him an excellent naturalist, teacher, and photographer. His photos are featured on this website and include the pine warbler you see above.
Art Grand and Jean Parks (Grand Creative Enterprises)
Nature Photography
Tara McGee (Tara McGee Pottery)
Pottery
 Tara McGee specializes in hand crafted pottery. She was born in Pinehurst, North Carolina and grew up in Randolph County. She quickly gained an interest in and appreciation for pottery as a child due to her proximity to Seagrove, and area with a rich pottery tradition. Tara belives that pottery should serve a purpose and use in everyday life, and this is very clear in her work. Your garden will be both more beautiful and more functional (for birds, that is) with these birdbaths. No two are alike!
Eric Saunders
Nature Landscape Photography
Eli Strull*
 Nature Photography
Eli Strull grew up in Los Angeles and received a degree in Environmental Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz. After teaching in wilderness, farm, and children's garden settings in Northern California, he moved to Asheville in 2000.
Eli has worked as an Education Specialist at the WNC Nature Center since 2001, where he takes photographs to document programs and use as teaching aids.
Paris Trail*
Nature Photography
 If ever there was a nature photographer who truly understood environmental education, it was Paris Trail.“The human race desperately needs the next generation to be interested, knowledgeable and concerned about the deteriorating quality of our environment,” Trail wrote. “If it is not, and we continue to pollute and poison our water and air as we and our predecessors have done, we may find that having driven other species to extinction, we are not sacred and immune as a species ourselves. We won’t destroy the Earth. Mother Earth will simply take a few million years to rid herself of poisons and will start over again, crossing out intelligence as a viable option.” Trail's passion for nature is evident in his photographs. Thank you to Dorothy Trail, for allowing her late husband's photos to be featured on this site. They include the marbled salamander, one of the rotating photos on the homepage.
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