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The Cook County News-Herald is thrilled to announce that a group of great local amateur and professional photographers have agreed to submit pictures to the newspaper for your enjoyment. We will introduce these men and women over the next few weeks so you can get to know who is behind the camera.
Some of these photographers have excellent websites with their work for sale or just for your viewing pleasure. We will include these websites and hope you visit them because you will find that what we can show on our pages is just a small sampling of their hard work and amazing talent.
Q- Please tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what you did, or currently do, for work.
A- I was born in Grand Marais in 1975, graduated from Cook County High School – Class of 1994. I have lived my entire life in Grand Portage other than a couple years attending school at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin. I am going on my 16th year of working for the Minnesota DNR at Grand Portage State Park, currently as the manager of the park.
Q- What or who inspired you to become a photographer? And when did you first start taking pictures?
A- I first started taking pictures in about ninth or tenth grade of high school. I’ve loved photography for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I loved looking at nature photography books. My dad was also really into photography when I was growing up and I always loved “slide show nights”, where he would hook up the projector and look at the photos he’d taken. Too many professional photographer inspirations to list them all here but a few are: Jim Brandenburg, Craig Blacklock, Frans Lanting, Art Wolfe, John Shaw, Joel Sartore.
Q- How much time during a given week do you spend on your photography?
A- It depends on the season and the weather, but sometimes it seems every waking moment away from my regular “day job” is spent on photography. If I’m not out shooting, often I’m scouting for future potential locations for capturing the northern lights or the Milky Way, or just driving around looking for wildlife to photograph. Even when I’m out biking or paddling, I’ll have a camera with me in the hopes that I will see something I want to photograph. And when I’m not out “in the field”, I’m often at home working on photos on my computer, or working on my website.
Q- Is this a hobby or something you want to turn into a profession?
A- I would say that my photography has been a part-time profession for me for almost 20 years. And I intend for it to stay that way. I don’t think I would ever want it to be my full-time profession. Photography is my passion and I think going full-time could jeopardize that.
Q- Do you have a favorite season to shoot pictures? Or favorite time of day, night, or weather you like to take pictures in?
A- My absolute favorite time is nighttime. I love the night sky and it’s kind of what I am known for with my photographs. My second favorite would be winter, mainly because of ice. Ice is easily my second favorite subject to photograph.
Q- What is your favorite subject matter? Nature? Animals? Birds? People?
A- Favorite subject matter would have to be wide-angle landscapes of nature.
Q- What is your favorite camera that you use? If you have several favorites, you can include those as well.
A- My hands-down favorite camera for overall use is a Sony RX 10 Mark III. It’s an amazing camera, especially for its size. It has a remarkable low-noise sensor and can zoom from 24mm to 600mm. It also shoots really nice video. If I could only carry one camera, that would be it. My favorite camera for shooting the night sky and sunrises/sunsets is a Nikon D750 paired with a Nikon 14-24mm lens for night sky images and either a Nikon 16-35mm or Nikon 24-120mm for sunrises and sunsets. The image quality of the Nikon paired with those lenses is superb.
To see more of Travis’ work, go his website: www.travisnovitsky.com.
His blog site is: www.travisnovitsky.blogspot.com
On Facebook he can be found at: www.facebook.com/Photography.by.Travis.Novitsky His Instagram is: www.instagram.com/travis_novitsky/
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