Images.

Our whole life is made up of a vast collection of images. Photos, pictures, mementos: under any name, they are images. They make up and shape our world along with the lives we lead. Images equate with stories, new and old, obvious and obscured. And there are people, people who create the stories and capture fleeting moments through images. Today, we are going to look at one such individual.

Al Hornsby is an American writer, journalist, diver and nature photographer, a person who can take the lines between images and stories and blend them together. When Hornsby was twelve years old, his father, who was in the army, moved his family to a base in Guam. Guam was where Hornsby spent the majority of his childhood, and it was the source of his passions for both photography and nature. The vast, beautiful coral reefs surrounding the island intrigued and enchanted him. It just so happened that while he attended school in Guam, one of his class projects happened to be about fish and reefs, studying biodiversity and ecosystems. This may have been Hornsby’s turning point; as he mentioned, he learned to snorkel on the island, and it was an experience that has stuck with him even after all these years. Ever since then, he has harboured a love for the environment and its natural beauty. Hornsby first learned to dive at the Air Force base in Guam, where his father was stationed at the time. It was a surreal experience, and since then, Hornsby had taken to learning everything he could about diving and the rich biodiversity, both in the ocean and on land.

He moved back to the United States years later, but he could not quite get his mind off of Guam. Diving and the environment were now a part of him, for better or worse. So he increased his knowledge of both topics. His ambition then was to dive professionally, but he would listen to how environmental journalists and underwater photographers talk about how beautiful they found seemingly formidable, but secretly misunderstood creatures like sharks. And the images that the photographers produced… they were beautiful, too. There were hidden stories behind them, hidden stories reflected through Mother Nature’s own eyes. Hornsby wanted to see them firsthand.

When he was older, he moved to Los Angeles and enlisted a PADI instructor to further his knowledge of diving. He became a freelance photographer, capturing images for himself and for others. He wrote articles, and had his stories and images published alongside each other in dive and travel magazines. Hornsby currently aims to end the misconceptions centered around animals like sharks, and he aims to accomplish this through his images, just like the underwater photographers all those years ago. But stories and words are powerful too, and can often leave just as much of a lasting impact. “When I get around to writing, it’s usually a matter of typing fast enough to keep up with my mind.” states Hornsby. This is one of his quotes that has resonated with myself, an amateur young writer, who is constantly trying to type fast enough to keep up with her mind!

Hornsby has been a writer and photographer for over thirty five years, with his biggest inspiration and perhaps one of the sources of his love of nature being his own father. When he was young, he stated that some of his earliest memories with nature include, according to his blog, “silently leaning against the trunk of a hickory nut tree with his father, deep in a dark wood, waiting for the sun to rise and for the creatures of the forest to emerge.” He has also stated that another source for his deep regard for animal life is his spiritually-centered Creek (Native American Indian) family ancestry. The years that he spent in Guam influenced him, too, especially when it came to underwater photography. In his father’s words all those years ago: “If we can sit here, real quiet and still, the animals will often come to us. If they don’t notice us, they may walk right up. And if they do realize that we are here, they may be curious and come closer, ‘cause they’ll need to figure out if we are a danger to them or not….so, just be very quiet, boy, and you’ll see what I mean. And, what’s best, we won’t have bothered them at all…” Hornsby states that these words still resonate quite deeply with him today, and more so with his conservationist work.

Today, Al Hornsby remains one of the most influential nature photographers in America, with his images, stories and environmental advocacy well-known. His experiences as a dive photographer and as a journalist affect the way he views nature: through the lens of a camera, and the eyes of a kindred spirit: choosing instead to coexist in harmony with nature rather than disturb it for a photo. This links back to what I said before about images and stories being interconnected. One image, if it’s the right image, can change the way people view not just nature, but the world. Hornsby has seen this firsthand, and believes wholeheartedly in it. One image, if it’s the right image, can convey a story. A story reflected through the lens of a camera, and if you look close enough, through Mother Nature’s own eyes.

This is the story that Al Hornsby aims to tell. The story that one image, one sentence, one word can change everything.

And it could all happen with the click of a camera.

Click.

 

(Two of the three images on the next page were taken on site by Al Hornsby himself.)

© Al Hornsby

Reef with soft corals, Baa Atoll, the Maldives

(Caption by Al Hornsby on his website)

Leopard at night, with torn ear from fight with hyenas, Kruger Park, South Africa.

(Caption by Al Hornsby on his website. A good example of an image that captures a story!)

Al Hornsby, freelance photographer and journalist.

© Al Hornsby