Today we’d like to introduce you to Desmond Lake.
Hi Desmond , thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve always been interested in photography, and my work took me to through some less traveled roads with old barns, houses, dirt road, so I decided to start taking a camera with me. It wasn’t long before I starting going out of my way to find more photogenic landscapes and waterfalls. As time progressed, it has become harder to do much traveling, so in the last couple of years I’ve gotten more into photographing birds and wildlife whenever I can -things that are much closer to home. Every now and then I’ll spot some hawks or even a bald eagle while I’m out. Most recently, I’ve been diving into deep-space photography. The learning curve is definitely steeper than any other type of photography I’ve done, so it’ll probably be a bit before I can really take it on seriously.
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?
Having obstacles is just a part of life…and there are/have been many. If I had to pick one…I say that stuff just seems to not work out in my favor a lot of times. For instance, two years ago, around Christmas I was in Orlando right with my family. Since it was peek birding season, my oldest daughter, who absolutely loves birds, really wanted to visit the Everglades. We were only going to be there for a day, so I decided to book a boat tour that goes to all the good spots for bird viewing. I even bought my daughter her own camera. We left Orlando at 2:30 AM for the 5 1/2 hour drive to the Everglades and about 30 minutes before we were to arrive I received a notification that all tour activities in the area were cancelled for the day out of precaution due to potential storms. We made the best of it and still came away with some great memories and had a blast…but that kind of thing seems to be my luck. (It never did storm lol)
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Though, I don’t get to do it as much these days, I’m probably best known for my landscape work. I’ve had a few images make it to the finals in national competitions. That’s kind of cool.
What are your plans for the future?
Deep space will be the next frontier in photography for me. When deciding to jump into it, I didn’t realize how complex the process would be. Multiple nights can be spent photographing the same object to get the best possible image. Some images can take up to 18 hours of exposure time…or more! The processing of one image can take several hours as well.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dlphotographs.pixels.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/desmondlakephotography/
