Charley’S Angles Unusual Perspectives Help Photographer Celebrate Nature

One morning 150 or so years ago, a farmer came upon Henry David Thoreau staring into a muddy pond. Twice again that day the farmer passed the same spot and found Thoreau still gazing into the pond.

“What air you a-doin’?” the farmer asked him.

Thoreau offered a simple explanation.

But when later recounting the incident, the farmer sounded incredulous. “… That darned fool,” he exclaimed in disbelief, “had been standin’ - the livelong day - a-studyin’ - the habits - of the bull-frog!”

Thoreau’s version of the encounter doesn’t exist, but Charley Gurche can imagine how he must have felt.

“I’m often asked the same question,” says the 44-year-old nature photographer. “Sometimes when I’m working, people will look at me and say, ‘What are you shooting?’ because they’re not seeing something I’m looking at. It might just be some reflection in the water or some leaves.

“I was shooting a historical building in Missouri a few weeks ago - taking a picture of an old window reflecting the building. So the camera was pointing at this wall with a window in it. And people were standing around asking, “What’s the picture of?”’

Since he left a teaching career 12 years ago to pursue landscape photography full time, Gurche has captured close to 10,000 images on 4-by-5-inch film. Many are the sort of magical moments that, in Thoreau’s words, are “perfectly distinct to an observant eye, and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most.”

So it seems fitting that 57 of Gurche’s photographs were chosen to illustrate a new book, “Thoughts from Walden Pond” (Pomegranate, $19.95).

This is Gurche’s sixth book. He’s currently on his seventh - a collection of Washington photos juxtaposed with ones taken from the same spots a century ago.

More than 40 calendars have featured his photography, and Gurche has contributed to numerous others, as well as to National Geographic, Outside, and other magazines.

“Thoughts from Walden Pond” includes a profile of Thoreau by writer Dona Budd, along with quotes from “Walden.”

Gurche’s accompanying photographs are scenes from all over the country. Fifteen were shot within an hour’s drive of his Spokane home.

Sites some might recognize include Manito Park and Mount Spokane.

“One of my favorites in the book was taken in an area of the Salmon River we raft through each year,” says Gurche. “When I climbed to the top of a ridge one day, I realized the setting sun would eventually line up just right to bounce light up the river. I waited a couple of hours for it to move into place.”

Sometimes, when everything is coming together to create the perfect image, “I get so excited that I’m fumbling around with the equipment, racing to be ready,” he says.

But instead of exhausting him, a good day of photographing nature leaves him feeling recharged, Gurche says.

“It’s so easy to take a trip out into the natural world and still have your mind concentrating on things back home,” he says.

“Photography helps me be really aware - to focus entirely on the present moment.”