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Picturing Life: Photographer's dream shots come naturally
Journal Photo by David Rolfe
Carl Galie, a nature photographer, walks along the nature-trail boardwalk in the Bethabara wetland. Galie has self--published a book of his photographs, called 175 Paces. In it he chronicles the four seasons around a friend's cabin.
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Published: December 2, 2008
Go into most bookstores, and there's a dazzling array of coffee-table books with lush photographs of faraway places and foreign lands.
For Carl Galie Jr., 60, a nature photographer who lives in Clemmons, seeing the work of other photographers was frustrating. He dreams of going to Iceland. His day job, family and financial obligations limit him to North Carolina.
So when he was planning his most recent project, he decided to challenge himself to an even smaller area. His longtime friend Gail Roberson had built a retreat in Bertie County in northeastern North Carolina -- a small, rustic cabin on the edge of two ponds. The cabin has no electricity and no plumbing, but it was Roberson's quiet getaway. Galie thought the property could be his next book project.
On his first visit, he was struck with disappointment. The road to Roberson's cabin goes through an RV court and trailer park. Galie had envisioned an isolated cabin tucked between two ponds. He anticipated something a little more, well, wild.
Then he started to photograph. He returned three times, once a season for a year, starting about 6:40 a.m. Aug. 12, 2006, and ending the following April, the weekend of the 2007 Easter freeze.
He captured the sweep of clouds across an October sky over the course of one day. Reflections of fall leaves that look like Impressionist paintings. Morning mist rising off the water like golden steam.
During his visit, he walked across the property, counting his steps. He reached 175, and that became the name of his book, 175 Paces, a straightforward name for a simple idea.
"The point of this book is simplicity and that this is as close as your backyard," Galie said. "I think I wanted to see if I was up to the task. What it's done is force me to slow down. You get out the camera and the tripod and then, you just start slowing down and looking."
Roberson is a nature writer who feels a kinship with Galie. She met him about 13 years ago when he was working on his first book, one about the Roanoke River basin. She introduced him to landowners and property managers and people who knew about the river and helped him get access to spots along the river where he could put in his canoe.
Galie grew up in the coal-mining communities of southwestern Pennsylvania. Some of his first photos were taken at Boy Scout camp, of trees in the mountains of New Mexico. He started college at Penn State Mont Alto in 1966, but said he flunked out after less than a year. He volunteered for the Army, where he spent one year as a military interrogator in Vietnam. That's where he started taking photos more seriously, with a 35 mm camera that he bought at the base exchange. When he returned home, his first job was in the electronics department of a discount store. He wanted to work around cameras. Art school was a dream, but then he met his first wife and started a family, and it was something he could never quite justify.
It wasn't until the late 1980s and early 1990s that the photography itch returned. After he divorced and remarried, Galie's second wife's job as a computer consultant brought the family to North Carolina. They were living in Louisiana and then moved to Kernersville, where Galie was a stay-at-home dad with his daughters. He started shooting again, beginning in his own backyard and moving beyond it, and later submitted a portfolio to Picturesque, a stock photo agency. Through them and his own marketing, his work has appeared in ad campaigns, calendars and magazines, including Ducks Unlimited, Outside, Women's World and other publications.
His work, including the Roanoke River project, has been shown at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, among other places.
"I've always taken the long way around, and it's been scenic," Galie said.
Today, his day job is as a photographer and sales representative for NVizion Inc., a graphic-arts company in King. Nature and landscape photography is something he still does on the side, but don't call it a hobby.
He has taught classes at Rockingham Community College and the Sawtooth School for Visual Art, was a founding member of the North American Nature Photography Association, and has received grants for his work from the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. Someday, he would like to retire and devote himself to photography full time, but he is not in a hurry to do that.
"My photography's more about passion and love of the land than it is about making money," Galie said. "I'm a terrible businessman. I have this social-worker mentality that gives things away. And I worry that if I have to rely on (photography) to pay the bills, it won't be as fun."
Galie loves the outdoors, but he also seeks simplicity. He is inspired by the Hudson River School of landscape painters as well as the writings of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The pages of 175 Paces, which Galie self-published this fall, are interspersed with quotes from both writers about living the simple life. The book and a collection of prints from it will be on display at the Hawthorne Gallery at 1281 W. Fourth St. until Jan. 10.
One of Galie's favorite images is of fall maple leaves, slightly tattered as they still hang on the tree. He would have walked right by those leaves when he was building up his stock portfolio. "It's not perfect, there are holes in the leaves," Galie said. "You know, life isn't perfect. Why are we constantly looking for perfection, when it's an illusion?"
He has inherited examples of simplicity from his own family, namely from his mother's father, Stanley Wajda. A Polish immigrant and coal miner, Wajda raised 11 children in a company duplex in the small mining town of Republic, Penn. His backyard was devoted to his garden, where he grew vegetables and flowers; a chicken coop; and a small pond for ducks and geese. Each Sunday the family -- Galie, his parents, and his aunts, uncles and cousins -- would gather for dinner. The backyard was the kids' wonderland. Wajda taught Galie about the delights of newly hatched chicks and growing your own food, lessons that he hasn't forgotten.
Roberson thinks Galie's photographs can change the way people see the land around them. She has seen it happen, once during a reception for his photographs of the Roanoke River project at Martin Community College in 2001.
Roberson stopped near a woman staring at one of Galie's photos, an image of blue sky and clouds reflected in the river's surface so clearly that it was hard to tell where the water ended and the sky began. "You know, I don't ever go down to the river," the woman said. "I know it's here, but I don't ever go down there, and it's pretty."
"He wants to move someone in some way," Roberson said. "And you can't do that unless you're moved yourself. He does that. He can take one thing, like a tree or a leaf in the water, and give you something that you've never noticed before."
■ Laura Giovanelli can be reached at 727-7302 or at lgiovanelli@wsjournal.com.
About Carl Galie Jr.
• AGE: 60.
• HOMETOWN/BIRTHPLACE: Filbert, Pa., now lives in Clemmons.
• EDUCATION: Some college at Penn State University, Mont Alto Campus, and courses at Westmoreland County Community College in Youngwood, Pa. Received a certificate in computer graphics from Guilford Technical Community College.
• EXPERIENCE: Nature and landscape photographer for 17 years.
• FAMILY: Four daughters: Tara, 36; Meegan, 34; Claire, 20; Maribeth, 18.
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