About Glenn Lewis

ABOUT GLENN (the short version):

Glenn first picked up a camera during a semester abroad in college, and he's spent nearly every year since chasing the shot that does a place justice. He's photographed landscapes, wildlife, cultural and historical sites, and cities on all seven continents and in more than 30 countries, always looking for the light and the moment that make a place unforgettable. Since 2017, he's sold his prints on aluminum at top-tier art shows across the country, working out of a custom-built RV that lets him live full-time on the road. There's always a next trip in the works.

ABOUT GLENN (the longer version):

Glenn first got interested in photography during Semester at Sea, a study abroad program he joined while attending the University of Colorado. About 700 students spent a semester's worth of classes aboard a retired cruise ship that circled the globe, stopping in ten countries for three to seven days at a time. The trip hooked him on two things at once: photography, and the idea that the world was worth seeing in person.

He graduated in 2006 with a degree in Civil Engineering and went to work for a small firm in Denver. His first big purchase as a working adult wasn't a car or a down payment — it was a DSLR and a lens. He spent the next couple of years talking about moving abroad, and at a friend's Christmas party in 2007, he finally acted on it: he bought a non-refundable, one-way ticket to New Zealand. He moved there in April 2008 and spent seven months there, spending some time working as a ski lift operator, funding his travels and sharpening his eye in his off hours

The trip to New Zealand was originally intended to be a six-month break, but that first leap endeed up setting the pattern for the next decade. In Australia, he lived out of a van for a year, working odd jobs and circumnavigating the country with a camera. In South Korea, he taught English to fund a four-month trek through Nepal in 2011, then a two-month run through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. He kept returning to Colorado and the American West, road-tripping the Canadian Rockies, and returned to South Korea when the money ran out, teaching on the island of Jeju from 2012 to 2015. By the time he left that job for good, the photography work he'd built on the side had grown into something that could hopefully support him on its own.

In 2015, Glenn made the jump to full-time photographer, and the itinerary tells the story: China, Mongolia, Kenya, and Tanzania that spring; Canada's eastern provinces and a swing through the American South and East that summer; a season living out of a Prius and selling at art shows in 2016, followed by a summer chasing wilderness and wildlife through Alaska and Western Canada.

His career started to take off in earnest in 2017, and the pace has barely let up since. Iceland didn't surprise him at all when it became an immediate favorite in the fall, but the season didn't let him get the winter photos he wanted, and he knew a return would be necessary at some point. He picked up the Sierra Nevadas, the Pacific Northwest, and starting in 2018, a growing collection of (primarily) American cityscapes. He photographed polar bears in Canada, spent two weeks on Hawaii's coasts and mountains, and in 2019, he went on a long dreamed-of trip with his father: mountain gorillas in Uganda, followed by a traditional safari swing through Kenya since he was already in the neighborhood.

2020 started with an aggressive travel schedule: six weeks in Patagonia, a long-time dream, followed by Yellowstone in winter and stops in China, Thailand, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, before COVID shut down his entire art show season. He turned the sudden downtime into a tour of the American West instead, adding Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota to the catalog. When shows came roaring back in 2021, he hit the circuit hard for nearly two years straight, crisscrossing the country with barely a break for travel and photography ... the reason he'd become a photographer.

By late 2022, that pace had caught up with him, so he set up a home base in Japan to reset. While there, he photographed peak fall foliage, then flew out to shoot ice caves in Iceland, and spent three weeks on a cruise to Antarctica and South Georgia Island before going joining his parents for a couple weeks on his first trip to Norway. Back in the US by mid-2023, he picked the art show circuit back up and drove his custom-built RV from Arizona down to Cabo San Lucas and back that December, adding desert and seascape work along the way.

2024 brought some of his most ambitious shoots yet: the salt flats of Uyuni, Bolivia, wrapped up fast enough to leave room for a rainy-season trip to Machu Picchu, a riskier time to shoot it, but one that paid off. Later that year, a round-the-world run added Iguazu Falls and Fitz Roy (the Patagonia peak bad weather had cost him back in 2020), plus stretches in Malaysia, Greece, and return trips to Japan and Norway for winter coastal scenes.

Most recently, he went on a trip that had been near the top of his list for nearly a decade: three weeks in Indonesia. A fall/winter journey through Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia is in the planning stages, with the Faroe Islands and the rest of Europe on deck after that. Although he doesn't often return to locations he's already shot, New Zealand, where it all started, is on the short list for a return trip.

Every print in the shop is the result of this same process: get to the place, wait for the right light, and try not to leave until the shot is right. Glenn shoots with digital cameras, primarily on tripod, favoring grand landscapes and wildlife. He prints his work on aluminum in sizes built for the wall you actually have, from intimate pieces to statement-making show prints that can be printed ten or more feet wide.