All-a-Glow Artisans of a Sedona is a boutique gallery and gift shop that features over a dozen local artisans, with beautiful works including paintings, photography, Navajo art, copper and artistic jewelry, metal art, fabric art, pottery, crystals, lavender products, and more. Featured this month at the boutique gallery is landscape photographer, Guy Schmickle, who recently answered a few of the most common questions about his spectacular work.

Guy is from the Twin Cities of Minnesota (Minneapolis/St. Paul). Since Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, water was always a main feature of his photography. Much of his work there involved lakes, rivers, streams, etc. When he moved to the desert, the desire to photograph water stayed with him and is still an important aspect of his desert portfolio.

Being primarily a landscape photographer, Guy’s influences come from similar photographers. In his early years, John Shaw and Galen Rowell were heavy influencers. Nowadays, he’s mostly focused on continuing to develop and express his own unique style. His medium of preference for exhibiting his photography has been aluminum. Aluminum prints have a vibrancy and clarity that are truly incredible, which makes them the perfect medium for the luminescent scenes of the Desert Southwest.

For Guy, photography began as a means of creating special memories of the places he’s seen and experienced. Eventually, as his work expanded and became his profession, his goal became making others aware of the spectacular landscape in which we live, in hopes that it can be preserved for future generations. As it is with a large majority of landscape photographers his favorite time to photograph is during the golden hours. This is a dramatic interval of time that generally occurs around sunrise and sunset. This is when the light is most vibrant and interesting, richly coloring the landscape and creating long shadows.

Guy describes photography as “the art of seeing.”

He says, “You aren’t creating a work of art from a vision in your head. You’re seeing something tangible and recording it (hopefully) in a way that emotionally binds you to the scene. This often requires that you look at the same scene from different angles and perspectives, which can be a time-consuming process. This is how you develop the art of composition over time. I am always striving to improve my skills more and more throughout the years.”

Open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday, All-a-Glow Artisans of a Sedona is a boutique gallery and gift shop located in Sedona Vista Village shopping center in the Village of Oak Creek.

Visit AllAGlowSedona.com for more info!