WILD EARTH DREAMS BY JOSSEA K. RILEA
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Jossea K. Rilea

ARTIST STATEMENT
My photography captures nature from an imaginative and artistic perspective to inspire new ways of seeing the natural world.

​HOW I GOT INTO PHOTOGRAPHY
Growing up, I heard stories about how in the early 1920's, my great grandfather developed his photographs in the bathtub in my grandmother's house. He colored black and white photographs before color photos existed and he designed artistic triptychs. My grandmother was apparently inspired, and worked in the Life Magazine photo archives (known as the picture morgue) since the magazine's conception. She also worked with Cornell Capa, a Hungarian American photographer. My mother was named after Shelley Mydans, one of my grandmother's friends from Life, who was the wife of Carl Mydans, a war photographer. My own introduction to photography happened at Camp Chingachgook on Lake George in New York where I spent rainy camp days hanging out in the dark room developing photos I had taken of a cat stuck in a tree. I over-developed all of these photos, probably because I loved swishing the photo paper around in the "magical" chemicals a little too much. The pinhole photography J-term class I took at Middlebury College (that I actually got credit for) piqued my interest some more. I was amused that I could take photographs using a shoebox! But once again, I never quite mastered the exact science behind the development process (maybe it was because the dark room was in the basement of the dining hall and I had recently watched too many scary movies). What I remember the most was my professor questioning the validity of the emerging digital technologies and the huge wave of change happening in the industry, "What is the definition of photography now that everything can be manipulated?" But to me, this all sounded so exciting! The "new" photography sounded like it combined my love for film and my love for art into one perfect way of expressing myself! During my senior summer, I led backpacking trips for international youth from Iraq, Iran, Switzerland, the UK, Canada and the US through Ansel Adams Wilderness in the Sierra Nevada in California. Here, I dabbled in black and white photography inspired from hiking inside the photographs I had studied in class. At this point, I really thought photography was going to open up as a possible career path for me but as fate would have it, the timing of my immersion into the field was short lived. For a graduation gift from Middlebury, my parents unknowingly gifted me with arguably the last known non-digital camera on planet earth (with huge lens, expensive gear, etc) and a plane ticket to New Zealand. Unfortunately, during a fun photo adventure on a beach in Hawaii, a bunch of sand got in the lens and ruined the roll of film I was just about to develop. By the time I got back to New York, the camera seemed like ancient technology. When I saw the price tags for the new digital cameras on the market (3K and up), I took this as a recently-graduated-poor-college-student sign that my short lived photography career was over. I didn't know exactly where photography was heading, so I decided to wait it out a bit to make sure I wasn't going to get caught up on another cusp of another evolution. In the meantime, I got sidetracked into other creative outlets and ways of expressing myself (artinhealth.org and leeatra.com and kitanie.com and LinkedIn). But I never lost my "eye" and vision for seeing the photos that I wanted to capture. While completing the Adirondack Fire Tower Challenge (hiking 23 mountains in the Adirondacks and Catskills) and trekking through Yellowstone National Park looking for grizzly and wolf tracks, I took photos in my mind's eye of imaginative and creative images I saw along the trails - faces in the rocks, mystical creatures made of moss, patterns in the trees, designs in the dirt. Finally, a decade and a half later, I'm starting to rediscover my love for photography once again. Even though digital technology is "old" now, I'm still so amazed that I can take high quality photos on a device that fits neatly into my pocket and has no complicated development process involved!

​MY LOVE FOR PLANET EARTH
I fell in love with our planet meandering around the mountains, rivers, lakes and valleys in national and state parks in New Zealand, Canada and the United States as well "forest bathing" in my own backyard in the Adirondacks of New York.
Mountains I've Climbed

ADK High Peaks
Cascade Mountain
Whiteface Mountain
Giant Mountain
Algonquin Mountain
Haystack Mountain

Adirondack Fire Towers
Azure Mountain
Mount Arab
Bald Mountain (Rondaxe)
Belfry Mountain
Black Mountain
Blue Mountain
Cathedral Rock
Goodnow Mountain
Gore Mountain
Hadley Mountain
Hurricane Mountain
Kane MountainLyon Mountain
Owls Head Mountain
Pillsbury Mountain
Poke O Monshine
Snowy Mountain
Spruce Mountain
St Regis Mountain
Vanderwhacker Mountain

Catskill Fire Towers
Hunter Mountain
Overlook Mountain
Tremper Mountain

Other ADK
Crane Mountain
Buck Mountain
Sleeping Beauty
Noonmark Mountain
Johns Brook Lodge
Mount Jo
Balanced Rock
​
California
Ansel Adams Wilderness (Minaret Lake, Alger Lakes)
Half Dome, Yosemite

My first hike. (Oh yeah, 70s baby!) Noonmark Mt., Adirondacks
Hiking to the top of Giant Mountain
Bryce Canyon
Catskills
Fire Tower Challenge, ADK Mountains
Fire Tower Challenge, ADK Mountains
Fly fishing in the Grand Tetons
The top of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park
Snorkling in Hawaii
Volcano National Park, Hawaii
Glacier National Park, Montana
Custer National Park, Black Hills of South Dakota
North Shore, Hawaii
New Zealand
Aspring National Park, New Zealand
Climbing up to the top of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park
Canoeing down the Brule River, Wisconsin
Sand dunes, South Island, New Zealand
Ansel Adams Wilderness
Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand
Kissing a "frog" in the Adirondacks, New York
The Adirondacks, New York
Swimming with sea turtles on a black sand beach on the Big Island of Hawaii
Wanaka Winter Hike
The top of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park
Banff National Park, Canada
Ansel Adams Wilderness, Sierra Nevada, California
Green Mountains of Vermont
Skylake Camp Wilderness Trip
Skylake Camp Wilderness Trip
Hiking in Norway
Lake Placid Snowshoe Hike
Whistler, BC, Snowshoe Hike
ADK Loj, Heart Lake, Mt. Jo
ADK Loj, Heart Lake, Mt. Jo
Mt. Jo, First Hike with my nieces!
Big Island, Hawaii
Whistler, BC, Snowshoe Hike
2013 Norway Adventure
​National Parks I've Visited

United States
Grand Teton National Park
Yellowstone National Park          
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
Canyonlands National Park
Zion National Park
Arches National Park
Bryce Canyon National Park
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Badlands National Park
Glacier National Park
Voyageurs National Park
Acadia National Park
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park
Redwood National Park
Sequoia National Park
Yosemite National Park
Death Valley National Park
Joshua Tree National Park
Hot Springs National Park
Grand Canyon National Park
Petrified Forest National Park
​Fire Island National Park

New Zealand
Fiordland National Park
Mount Aspiring National Park
Aoraki Mount Cook National Park
Westland Tai Poutini National Park
Paparoa National Park
Arthur's Pass National Park
Kahurangi National Park
Abel Tasman National Park

Canada
Banff / Lake Louise National Park
Jasper National Park
Bay of Fundy National Park

WILD EARTH DREAMS ON INSTAGRAM @WILDEARTHDREAMS

Copyright 2021 Jossea K. Rilea
All Rights Reserved

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