The desert is Scott T. Smith’s favorite landscape. “Everything is pared down to the essentials. No clutter, no chaos,” he says. Smith grew up in Salt Lake City, on the edge of the Great Basin desert. “I get nervous when I’m in a forest and can’t see.”

His father gave him his first camera when he was in high school, and he started taking photos on his outdoor adventures – snapshots to share with family and friends. He got serious about photography after graduating from Utah State’s College of Agriculture in 1979 and going to work for his alma mater as a research technician. In 1988, he decided to quit his “real” job, and for the next year he and wife Mary (’78) hit the road in their Dodge lodge, circumnavigating the country via Alaska first and camping out in their truck so he could take as many photos as possible of the backcountry.

Over time Smith built up a sustainable freelance business. His images of landscapes, cityscapes, farmland and muscle-powered sports have appeared in text and trade books, calendars, advertisements and magazines such as Outside and Sierra. His books include Along Wyoming’s Continental Divide and Nevada: Magnificent Wilderness.

In the introduction to his Nevada book, he wrote, “Distances expand. Surrounding mountains recede, seeming to duck below the curvature of the earth. The sky becomes a vast, hot blue dome, clamped down tightly around the horizon. Yet, even as I have the impression of shrinking in the landscape, I feel more significant, more singular. In the middle of a Nevada basin, I feel like I am standing at the center of the universe.” -Jane Koerner

Contact Scott at Scott@ScottSmithPhoto.com