Phi­la­delphia pho­to­grapher to explore the entire Dela­ware River
as a part of a pho­to­graphic study

NOVEMBER 2009 — John Welsh, a Phi­la­delphia area pro­fes­sio­nal free­lance pho­to­grapher of 22 years, will offi­cially launch his new pro­ject and web­site in Novem­ber 2009. Welsh star­ted pho­to­graphing the river in August and esti­ma­tes the pro­ject, tit­led “Explo­ring the Dela­ware,” will take him 2 years to com­plete. He plans to tra­vel throughout the 4 sta­tes, New York, Pennsyl­va­nia, New Jer­sey and Dela­ware that bor­der the river. He anti­ci­pa­tes most of his pho­to­graphic oppor­tu­ni­ties will be found while dri­ving and hiking, although he will reach remote loca­tions by boat and bicycle.

Until exhi­bi­tions are sche­du­led clo­ser to pro­ject com­ple­tion, Welsh crea­ted the web­site exploringthedelaware.com as a source of con­ti­nuous upda­tes so vie­wers can watch as the pro­ject pro­gres­ses. Some of his ima­ges are already dis­pla­yed in web galle­ries and within sin­gle image posts on the site. “Thanks to a GPS recei­ver that attaches to my Nikon digi­tal came­ras, a WordPress-based blog and Goo­gle Maps, I’m able to easily post ima­ges that are geo­tag­ged (with lati­tude and lon­gi­tude coor­di­na­tes) and dis­play nicely with a corres­pon­ding map that shows a sate­llite view of each loca­tion,” said Welsh.

Welsh, a Pennsyl­va­nia native, has pho­to­graphed pro­fes­sio­nally and in a jour­na­lis­tic style since 1987. His lar­gest pro­ject was a four-year explo­ra­tion of Ice­land from which he built an exten­sive photo collec­tion and has had seve­ral exhi­bi­tions in the U.S. and inter­na­tio­nally. “I have always pho­to­graphed peo­ple since my career began and I have spent most of my time in Phi­la­delphia, so I haven’t had lots of oppor­tu­nity to pho­to­graph lands­ca­pes. But tra­ve­ling in Ice­land was ama­zing. I took advan­tage of my own lack of expe­rience when pho­to­graphing lands­ca­pes. I was free to expe­ri­ment, whe­reas other pho­to­graphers are often loc­ked into a cer­tain style. With the River Pro­ject, I hope to create another set of ima­ges that are as dif­fe­rent as how I pho­to­graphed Ice­land,” said Welsh. In addi­tion to the tech­no­logy Welsh is using to dis­play the geo­tag­ged ima­ges, he also has been shoo­ting high defi­ni­tion video that he plans to post on the web­site as another way to share his expe­rience. Welsh sta­tes that adding motion and sound is “just another way of telling a story.”

Besi­des his atten­tion to the river pho­to­graphy and the art he crea­tes, Welsh also unders­tands the social and envi­ron­men­tal impor­tance of the river. ”The Dela­ware is about 330 miles long, has a long and inte­res­ting his­tory and without it, Phi­la­delphia wouldn’t have the port cul­ture it has today. If this pro­ject is able to bring even more awa­re­ness about pro­tec­ting and main­tai­ning the river, then it will have accom­plished another goal.”

The project’s web­site can be found at exploringthedelaware.com and Welsh’s port­fo­lio is online at johnwelshphotography.com. To arrange for an inter­view or find out when Welsh will be pho­to­graphing in a par­ti­cu­lar area, con­tact John by telephone, 610 357 9076 or by email, john@johnwelshphotography.com.

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