Young male photographer holding a DSLR camera with leather harness strap, black and white studio portrait.

Long exposure shot of cars crossing a red bridge with mountains and overcast sky in urban landscape.

Black and white photo of ferry boats on San Francisco Bay with the Bay Bridge in the background.

Close-up view of the iconic red Golden Gate Bridge towers with traffic and pedestrian walkway.

I'm Thomas Valine, a documentary photographer based in Minnesota

Capturing the beauty of God in his Creation

I received my first camera at the age of nine, and my love for photography has been growing steadily ever since then. Like most beginners, I started by pointing the camera at random objects and clicking away with immense satisfaction and without giving much thought to the image. As I was exposed to the work of others and developed my taste and skillset further, I began to search for the component which made a photo truly great rather than simply good. I realized that there were two different kinds of photographers: those who see photography as a way to hyper-realistically convey the visible world,

and those who see it as something more. While photography is, of course, all about light and the visible world, anyone can point a camera at something, especially today in the age of iPhones, and create a good representation of how it looked in real life. What most cannot do, however, is create images that portray what the moment felt like. I decided that I wanted to pursue the more challenging and meaningful of the two paths, and ever since then have focused on capturing the moment as it feels, so it can be experienced over and over again through the photos.