Today we’d like to introduce you to Craig Burrows.
Hi Craig, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
How I got here can be traced all the way back to my grandfather, a man who grew up on mission fields in India, survived the depression, served in the South Pacific in WWII as a signalman, and who raised a family to appreciate self-sufficiency and the world with all its nature and life. For my parents’ generation that translated into long summer road trips visiting the National Parks and my grandfather photographing everywhere they went. While opportunities for such trips faded somewhat through the years, I grew up camping with family all of whom knew how to fix their cars when they broke down. In one instance I recall one of my uncles propping a penny in the Blazer’s carburetor to keep it driving home.
On those sorts of trips my parents would always point out aspects of nature – crimson ‘paintbrush’ flowers, birds, strange geologies – nothing was not worth paying attention to. In my teens, I was drawn toward digital cameras, just in their infancy at the time, and while I had no idea what I wanted to photograph yet I bought my first DSLR in college on a whim. At the time I would take my camera on bike rides and photograph detritus of human society abandoned under bridges, or shoot fairly passable landscape photos when opportunities allowed, but it ended up being the more technical and strange stuff that drew me in, I think because of the lifetime of tinkering with and fixing things I’d experienced through that time. I modified an extra camera to shoot infrared light and I would say that is the gateway to the main body of photography I do now.
In 2014, I started experimenting with Ultraviolet-Induced Visible Fluorescence (UVIVF), a technique I saw on a forum being practiced by Alex Holovachov who kindly gave pointers which allowed me to get started with it too. I’ve designed custom light sources for my work and refined my process through taking several thousand photos of flowers and other subjects glowing with fluorescent light.
Because most of my photography is plant-related, I’ve ended up becoming a horticulturalist, growing many plants I want as subjects since I’ve already documented the majority commonly occurring in a suburban neighborhood. I am increasingly conscious of the immense biodiversity of California, and even Los Angeles County which alone hosts around 3,000 species and subspecies of native plants! Because plants are the basis of the environment upon which we humans rely, I seek to use my photography as a platform to excite people about the natural world in the same way it excited me.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I would definitely not say it’s been a smooth road, and maybe it’s even less smooth now than it has been in the past. There’s always been a compulsion to do or make something important, something that has value and actually matters, but the realization of the worth of an endeavor presents its own struggle, especially when it seems at odds with the obligations of life. What once started out small and simple enough I could honestly say I was just doing it for myself only seems to be worth it now if it benefits others in some way, something which is not always in evidence and leaves me wrestling with my motivations for continuing when it can already be a struggle to work toward simply being able to live, let alone to work toward another goal on the side. Yet, if I found myself deciding to leave it all behind, I believe I would not feel satisfied because the urge to create/make/do would continue to gnaw at me. Also, plants just don’t always cooperate, so every shoot has at least a little bit of a struggle!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
To summarize from my rather lengthy introduction, I specialize in botanical and alternative light photography such as infrared and especially UVIVF photography using ultraviolet lights to persuade subjects to glow with light from within! Lots of people have seen my work even if they didn’t know it was mine. Before Apple included a selection of my photos in OS X I saw it being used as a person’s desktop background and asked where she got it. She had no idea whose it was or especially that I was the photographer, but it was a little surreal but also really fun to meet somebody who authentically liked my work enough to see it every day.
UVIVF has become a lot more broadly practiced since my work with it became somewhat visible, but one of the things that set me apart is my attention to truth and detail. While many others doing it are focused purely on the aesthetic, I want to capture what the subject is really giving off, which means very fussily removing ubiquitous man-made dust and putting in the time to frame, compose and light the photo so that it doesn’t need huge adjustments in post-production to make it pop. I always try to work with what was really in front of my eyes, rather than bumping it past what would be reasonably called authentic.
While photography occupies the majority of my individual endeavor, I am never far from another hobby or practice, whether it is my previous one of cutting raw opal into polished stones, or my current (and enduring) one of ceramics. I am often left with a need to make/do physical things from scratch or by hand, and pottery has become a natural outlet which ties into what I am already doing with plants. My ceramic work is somewhat unique but fits into the style often used in the American Southwest with earthy textured vessels that complement cacti and succulents so well.
What are your plans for the future?
A future goal I am trying to make reality is to have an exhibition of my work, ideally somewhere like the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles or another local venue or gallery. While that goal is largely up to the whims of others, I am also building up a collection of native California plant photos, and designing a framework for them to be published as a book. While there’s no publisher in line, this is something I would love to make happen!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://cpburrows.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cpburrowsphoto/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cpburrowsphotography
