I was born and raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC where I still reside. As a youth my love affair with the outside began at the age of 10 when I was given a small telescope for Christmas and glimpsed the craters on the moon for the first time. That started a love affair with astronomy that has lasted to this day. As time crept on, a family and providing for them took over and my time outside was mostly limited to working outside. Later as my children grew up and moved out to start their own lives, I found myself with time once again. I started to volunteer at the National Aquarium located in Baltimore. This gave me an opportunity to see and to explore what the world has to offer while working in the various galleries. My love of the outdoors was rekindled. I soon took up SCUBA diving and quickly fell in love with diving and exploring the undersea life. I also started forming a love of the Amazon Rain Forest from the exhibit at the Aquarium. I started taking film photographs of my underwater adventures and found that not only was it a whole new experience but that it had a vastly different set of problems to overcome. As I was working through the learning curve, digital cameras finally improved to the point that I felt that they were approaching the quality of film so I made the switch. I found that I was much better at digital photography than film and I quickly became comfortable with it.
It wasn't until one of my dive buddies decided to get married in Yellowstone National Park that the world of wildlife and landscape photograph took hold. How could you not love watching and photographing the wolves of Yellowstone. I spent a week with some of my other dive buddies exploring and photographing everything we could find. Where else can you have a coyote walking alongside of your car without a care in the world while you photograph it. We pledged to make a return trip as soon as we could arrange it. Unfortunately that took several years but we did get back.
Unfortunately, loving both SCUBA and nature photography, both which are far from cheap, can make it hard to decide, do I plan a wildlife trip or a dive trip. I try to balance these conflicting loves as best I can by exploring around the Maryland and Virginia areas between the larger trips.
I hope that you enjoy the photographs here as much as I enjoyed taking them. Please come back as often you like, I will be adding pictures as my time permits
Thank you.
© 2015, Tom Major Photography. All Rights Reserved. Images may not be used without written consent.