Darby Hayes is a Nationally recognized Photographic Artist who specializes in fine art landscape and wildlife prints capturing images of Northern California and the Western United States. His nature photographs feature wildlife found in the Western United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, and are composed to bring the viewer into a close-up, personal relationship with the wildlife subject. All wildlife images were taken in natural settings: National Parks; National Forests; BLM lands; National and state wildlife refuges/areas; farms and ranches - he does not take pictures in zoos, wildlife parks, etc. His landscape photographs feature dramatic lighting, color and artistic composition and include Northern California landscapes, as well as iconic images of well-known western venues and National Parks.
Darby’s pictures have been well received critically and have been added to the collections of 27 National Parks, Monuments & Forests and six museums. In 2014, eight of his images were displayed in a single artist exhibit in the Secretary of the Interior offices in Washington DC. This was repeated in 2017/18 with an additional 12 images on display in a single artist exhibit. In addition, three Regional Offices of the National Park Service located in the Western US have Mr. Hayes’s images in their collections and on display. In 2016, Pt. Reyes National Seashore invited Mr. Hayes to exhibit a selection of his National Park images in a Summer-long single artist exhibit to celebrate the Centennial of the National Park service. The Wyoming State Museum is using three of Darby Hayes’s images in wall-size murals as backdrops for “For the Benefit of the People: the National Park Service in Wyoming” exhibit in the permanent collection section of the Museum.
Utilizing professional digital capture and processing equipment, Darby is able to control the photographic process from image-capture to printing and am able to achieve stunning photographs that combine a dramatic and artful blend of color, light and composition that goes well beyond the tonal range of conventional film - he produces photographs that represent what he saw and felt, not ones constrained by the limited tonal range that was found in the limitations/characteristics of camera/film combinations. Except for adjustments to contrast, sharpness, tonal detail and color detail, nothing is added or deleted from what was recorded by the camera. He does not digitally add any elements to images, but like most of the good photographers, Darby spend hours on an image in the “digital darkroom” to ensure that the final image is as close to “natural” as possible in tonal range, lighting, color rendition, color saturation, etc. He also will also use digital processing to eliminate errata - dust spots, lens flare, glare from a man-made object, etc. In order to create some of hislarger landscape images, he has stitched two or more overlapping images together to create the much larger image. Other than the stitching of overlapping images, he do not do any compositing.
All images are originals, individually printed from a digital negative, utilizing the latest large format inkjet printer technology. Images are printed on acid-free archival art papers or archival photographic canvas, utilizing pigment inks, guaranteeing a fade-free life well beyond the life of a conventional photograph. Smaller images are printed on archival art paper, while larger images can be printed on archival art paper or photographic canvas. Darby's print medium of choice is photographic canvas, which produces images with great depth and the look and sense of a fine art painting, while retaining the fine detail of a photograph.
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