Featured Artists: Stephen Davies and G. Brad Lewis
Featured Cover Photographer: Stephen Davies
Stephen Davies grew up in central Florida. He attended the University of Virginia for a couple of years, before heading to Spain for a year, where he taught English at Berlitz School.
While Stephen was in Spain, his parents moved to Hawai‘i. He jokes, “But I was able to find them—nice try, Dad!” He decided to move to Honolulu, too, and enrolled at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, supporting himself by working in construction. Around that time, 1968, he bought his first camera, a Nikon F. His love affair with photography began.
As fate would have it, Stephen befriended a commercial photographer, Mike Janis, at a Diamond Head Crater Festival in 1969. Stephen recalls, “He let me go on photoshoots with him and occasionally I got to take some shots. When an ad agency picked one of my shots for their client’s ad, Mike asked me to join his business as a partner. We worked together for more than 10 years, had some nice accounts (Society of Seven, Bank of Hawaii, Bishop Estate, covers for Honolulu magazine, and more), but we were terrible businessmen and never made much money.”
In 1971, when the Kalama Valley protests took place against development which was pushing out the local farmers, Stephen asked the Hawaiians for permission to photograph the the month-long stand-off. His photo essay was published in Beacon magazine.
Eventually, his business partner moved away. Stephen had a hard time keeping the photography business going, so he took a part-time job as an aide in the psychiatric ward at Queen’s Hospital. That developed into his next career as a certified substance abuse counselor, working with those having both mental illness as well as substance abuse problems. He worked at Queen’s for 16 years until 1998, when he got a job on Hawai‘i Island helping to start an outpatient mental health treatment program. He bought a home in Hawaiian Paradise Park in Puna, where he has been happily living ever since.
Retiring 12 years ago, Stephen decided to get back into photography, this time just for fun.
Stephen says, “I call my photographic art Photo Impressions because the photograph is just my starting point. I use it as the raw material for the photo I process on computer, often taking five or more hours refining an image. I love having rich colors, strong compositional design and emotional impact—sometimes I get close.”
Stephen’s photographic arena broadened when master photographer Harry Durgin introduced him to night sky, Milky Way, and volcano photography. The cover image was shot on a night expedition with Harry. Stephen’s modest, “I’m still very much an acolyte in this genre, far behind the many excellent photographers on this island who specialize in those areas, but I’m slowly learning.”
Stephenʻs photos are at One Gallery in Hilo, Island Photo in Pāhoa, and Banyan Gallery in Hilo.
For more information: stephendavieshawaii.myportfolio.com
Table of Contents Photographer: G. Brad Lewis
G. Brad Lewis is internationally recognized as a leading volcano and nature photographer. His volcano images have appeared on the covers of a number of magazines, including Life, Natural History, Photographer’s Forum, and Geo, and within the pages of Time, Outside, Fortune, Newsweek, Stern, National Geographic and many other publications. Additionally, Brad’s lava and erupting volcano pictures have received numerous awards, and been widely exhibited. Interviews with Brad have been broadcast on NBCʻs Today Show, CBS Evening News and several Discovery Channel programs. Print interviews and photo essays of his volcano lava photographs have been featured in many magazines, including Photo District News, DigitalFoto, Studio Photography & Design, and Outdoor Photographer.
Inspired by nature’s diverse beauty, Brad has been based here on Hawai‘i Island since 1982, and also lives part time in Utah and Alaska, traveling several months each year to pursue his art.
About the photo featured on our table of contents pages, Brad says, “This was an incredible moment next to the largest lava river I had ever seen. I was invited by the land owners to be on their farm property, where this image was taken. I was high on a fruit picking ladder when I captured this image. Other people had ‘snuck’ into the area, and were next to the colossal river of lava, giving it some scale, which I always enjoy.”
For more information: volcanoman.com
