Photographers’ lenses capture nature’s beauty, mystery

CEDAR RAPIDS - The revealing images in a new book by Cedar Rapids nature photographers Robert and Linda Scarth raise questions about the hand of a great artist in the design of the universe.

While there may be controversy over that point, anyone who beholds the Scarths' images will agree that it was eyes of artists that looked through the lenses and recorded them.

“Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa,” a collection of 75 Scarth photos published recently by the University of Iowa Press, opens with an image of a hoverfly on the petal of a fringed gentian flower.

As you'd expect, the flower is lovely, well worth the $29.95 price of admission to this portable art gallery. But, as the Scarths so often do, they expand viewers' minds with the unsuspected universe of colors in the iridescent wings of the fly.

“They snap into focus the small features of nature that are easily overlooked by busy people today,” said Department of Natural Resources ecologist John Pearson, whose essay complements the implicit message of the Scarths' photos - that the hidden beauty of bugs, lichens and fungi enriches the biodiversity that makes life worth living.

“Our mission is to produce works with grace and emotional resonance. Pleasure for the viewer, as well as for ourselves, is paramount,” the Scarths write in the closing essay.

The photos combine hyper-realistic detail with elements of the abstract in ways that often suggest fine paintings.

Because of the Scarths' unorthodox perspectives, “you don't recognize some very ordinary subjects at first glance,” Pearson said.

For example, the intricate and colorful patterns of what appears to be an eye-pleasing abstraction gradually resolve themselves into a portion of a common sugar maple leaf.

In one of the book's most mind-bending photos, the narrow depth of field of Robert Scarth's macro lens captures in sharp focus the miniature image of cone flowers refracted in shimmering dew drops while those same flowers, decidedly out of focus outside the drops, provide the abstract pink and gold background.

The Scarths have been taking photos together throughout the 47 years of their marriage. Though they work together to set up their shots, each photographs the subject with his or her own camera.

“Once in awhile you might get lucky with a ‘grab shot,'?” but most images are carefully planned and executed,” Linda Scarth says.

Though the book's limited space is wisely allocated primarily to display the Scarths' images, a wealth of background information about the subject of each photo and how it was made can be found on the photographers' Web site, www.scarthphoto.com

To order the book, call 1-(800) 621-2736 or go to the publisher's Web site, www.uiowapress.org