from Kevin Dowling on 14 Sep 2023
In May of this year, my industry shut down. The shut down rendered me unemployed and made my future uncertain. The strike has outlasted my emergency funds but instead of letting financial ruin consume me, I decided to use what little I had left to make a series of photographs in an attempt to fall deeply in love with our National Parks.The parks have been the subject of hundreds, if not thousands, of series of photographs. Hopefully, they will be the subject of many more going forward. We are truly fortunate to have access to the amount of protected public space that we do in this country. This trip changed my life and I hope that I can share a little bit of the incredible experience that I had along the way. I do not know when I will be able to afford to create a gallery of the images that I created on this journey but I will not show them until I can do it appropriately. These massive and wonderful spaces deserve to be shown in a massive and wonderful way. Stop 1 veered from the path of the actual mission. My official starting point for the photographic portion of this trip was Badlands National Park but the halfway point from Atlanta to there just happened to be Lake of the Ozark, Missouri. I worked on the Netflix Series, Ozark, which was set on this lake. I was one of the few crew that was actually worked on the Missouri unit. 99% of the series was actually shot in Atlanta. Bad weather and a ridiculous amount of mosquitos forced my early departure from LOTO but I did get to show off two of the 4 locations I had originally planned to feature.Next Episode will drop in a week and is an exploration of Badlands National Park and few places close by. Thanks for joining me on this journey.- Kevin Dowling