Dave Katz gets after it. He’s a filmmaker, photographer, adventurer, writer, and a great friend of Peak Design. We met him a couple years ago, and ever since then we spot him every month or so with a whole new story from a whole new place. Last year he tagged us in a post he made from the remote Island of Youth off the coast of Cuba. Then we hung out with him on the Skyline in New York. A couple months later he shared a portrait video of how he uses Peak Design gear in his everyday shooting. A month later he made another portrait of adventure photographer Rikki Dunn. After that he peaced out to Estonia for a bit. About a month ago he shared with us the story you’re about to read—about his experience shooting Yosemite in infrared. When we told him that we wanted to publish it, his only concern was sending over the pictures via his fickle wifi connection at a Macedonian hostel.
Calling Dave a “Peak Design ambassador” falls short of who he is and what he does. We’ve met few folks as driven, enthusiastic, and approachable as Dave, and we’re proud to have him as a leader in our community.
For more info about Dave Katz, check out his appropriately named website, tenacityinpursuit.com or follow @tenacityinpursuit on Instagram. And now, enjoy his own words on how and why he captured these gorgeous, thought-provoking infrared images of Yosemite and beyond.
After graduating college, instead of pursuing a career as a scientist, I began a cycle of seasonal work paired with an off season of travel which lasted seven years. I worked a variety of jobs but primarily in the Sierra Nevada backcountry as an mountaineering instructor on multi-week courses for young adults. This line of work combined a variety of my interests: education, wilderness, adventure and simultaneously allowed me to continue practicing my art and passion of photography. In total I spent over a thousand days both working and creating art in this spectacular mountain range. At the end of a trip I would sit down to a computer for a few days and edit my digital images into a nice collection to share those visual experiences with the students as well as friends and family back home.
Summer after summer, I got the feeling I was becoming familiar with the mountain range and its varied landscape of light and terrain. This knowledge helped me hone my craft and find unique and compelling angles on popular subjects and locations. However, eventually I was discovering there was a limit to my ability to express myself.
Although I was easily able to satisfy a growing need to seek inspiration during an off season of overseas backpacker-style adventures, the seasonal work was becoming somewhat rote. The weather, the groups I was working with and the challenges faced in this work environment were becoming predictable. My photography also, was becoming somewhat stagnant and similar.
When I first ventured into the Sierra and watched the sunrise on a peak, or observed the Milky Way in the middle of the night, I felt alive and inspired. Years of exposure to this environment basically had taken the initial edge off, and I was losing this initial feeling. However, I still had the desire to feel alive, to express myself and to be challenged. In 2013, I completed of nearly a decade of taking other people into the high mountains of California and decided I wanted to dedicate the next decade of my life to my growing interest and passion in filmmaking and photography.
To further understand this new commitment, I invested time and energy into experimenting with variety of new techniques and roles in the world of film and photography. I bought a drone and started shooting aerials. I configured my DSLRS to be create time-lapse sequences. I bought solid tripods, underwater housings, new lenses, etc. I even worked on a few major TV shows in New York City carrying sand bags and light stands around the hundred-plus person sets.
Through this pursuit of experimentation, I realized I wanted to do something unique and different. This brought me back to my roots in the Sierra Nevada, but this time with a new camera. This modified DSLR now is sensitive to infrared light and can see the world in a new and inspiring way. It has been a joy to explore a subject that I have a decade long relationship with in a new light (literally). Through this confusing and challenging way of conveying that relationship some new creativity has sparked into my work. I hope you enjoy this presentation and I am excited to continue this pursuit and share my small discoveries with the world at large.
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