Capturing a unique animal perspective

His outdoor photography has won two contests in the past two years and he currently has a solo exhibition of his unique wildlife photos on display.

Scott Dere of Cedarhurst won the Long Island Center of Photography’s regional Long Island photography competition in 2011 with his landscape picture of an irrigation wheel on a farm in the west, earning his own gallery. The exhibit, “Nature’s Last Stand,” is at the African American Museum in Hempstead, through Sept. 11.

“In the exhibit, I show a lot of wildlife from Yellowstone, a series of osprey and a series of New York animals, even a snowy owl from Jones Beach,” said Dere, who also won this year’s Photo District News magazine outdoor contest with a picture of Hurricane Irene, featured in the magazine.

Dere became interested in photography as a child; he had a camera and a dark room in his house. At age 13, he had a job with a photographer at a studio in Woodmere, where he was a lighting assistant and technician. He attended Lawrence High School before graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2001.

He began his own business, Art Photographers, which is in Cedarhurst. “The studio does pictures for weddings, bar mitzvahs and sweet sixteens; we also do products for websites and catalogues, we cover everything,” Dere said.

His mother sent him on an African safari as a high school graduation gift and that sparked an interest in wildlife photography. “I loved it so much that I wanted to take pictures of animals, but when I went to college they wouldn’t let me print them because they said it would get me nowhere,” he said. Dere stuck to the curriculum but took pictures of wildlife in his free time, as he does now.

Yellowstone National Park, Ecuador, Galapagos and Alaska are some of the places he has gone for his wildlife photos. “I go to Yellowstone about four times a year; it’s my favorite place,” he said. “I like the cold weather and snow in my pictures, and raptors, birds of prey, are my favorite thing to chase after.” Dere has also photographed jaguars, mountain lions and wolves.

When he isn’t working at his studio, Dere is carrying his heavy, top quality photography equipment with him on vacations. “Each photograph has been a unique moment and took a lot of effort and skill to do, and when you come out of it with such incredible shots they make you want to dance,” he said. “I spend hours waiting for action, element, weather and lighting that make the picture more exciting.”

Though Dere uses up-to-date digital equipment, he will use film every so often. “My studio is completely digital but I’m known to shoot film once in a while,” said Dere, whose studio began using film but was one of the first to change to digital.

Feedback from his Hempstead exhibit has been mostly positive including this endorsement from friend Elysa Parker of North Woodmere. “His photographs are not your typical photographs, they’re really works of art; they’re beautiful, crisp and the color is amazing,” she said. Her favorite is the picture of an eagle with spread wings, taken at Yellowstone. “He lives and breathes photography and looks at everything with an artist’s eye.” Dere also took the photos for her son’s bar mitzvah album.

Wildlife photography is his passion, and Dere appears to have a knack for capturing a unique perspective. Dick Lopez, the founding director of the Long Island Center of Photography since 1996, said: “[Dere] captures a moment with pretty much every species that sort of reveals something more than just a picture of an animal. I thought it was a very interesting exhibit.”