New photographer sends a Ripple throughout local art scene

By Corin Blust
Sun contributor
Jeff Ripple may be “a Florida boy at heart,” but after marrying local Pam Lincoln last July he has begun to embrace the idyllic rolling hills and gentle landscape that characterizes Leelanau County. Ripple’s breathtakingly detailed wilderness photographs are on display at his new gallery and studio, Ripple Effect, on Front Street in Empire, next to the Blue Heron.
Jeff was born in Ft. Lauderdale, but his family moved around the American South quite a bit during his childhood. Before Ripple was seven years old he had already lived in Florida, Las Vegas, Missouri, Tennessee and South Carolina.

Even though Jeff is colorblind, he has “always been into art.” He drew and painted as a child, but “when I was about 17 I got to a point where I couldn’t do wildlife anymore so I gave up on it,” focusing instead on writing. He attended colleges in Iowa and Missouri before graduating from Florida Atlantic University with a degree in English.
That English degree led Jeff to write natural history books. He has published nine books to date on subjects spanning from Sea Turtles to Manatees and Dugongs to the Florida Keys. Jeff’s most recent book is Day Paddling Florida’s Big Cypress Swamp and 10,000 Islands, published by Countryman Press in 2004. His books feature epic photographs and eloquently written information.
Jeff’s photography and articles have also appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Outside, BBC Wildlife, Wildlife Conservation, Boating Life, Sail, Men’s Fitness, Falcon Guides and Audubon Field Guides.
After taking a three- or four-year hiatus from making his own visual art, Jeff found himself in the Ozarks, wishing for a better camera. “It’s a beautiful landscape there and there was so much I wanted to do with that, I wanted to make art of that, and all I had was a horrible little instamatic,” he remembers.
Once he moved back to Florida, Jeff “was bound and determined to get a real camera,” which ended up being an old Canon 81 35 millimeter. “A friend showed me how to load the film, and I started out with that,” he recalls.
About a year later, a coworker showed Jeff a book by landscape photographer David Muench, and “it was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. They were mostly big desert landscapes and the amount of detail from the foreground all the way back, the crispness and the depth, I was just enchanted by them. I knew that was what I wanted to do, make images like that.”
So Jeff, who is an entirely self-trained photographer, bought some books on photography and “set up in my yard with concrete blocks and worked on my depth of field until I could get the camera to do what I wanted.”
Over 20 years later, it’s clear that Jeff Ripple has certainly become a master wilderness photographer. His images, which often incorporate water, are rich with crystal clear detail, a wide variety of textures, beautiful backcountry settings, and light that spills luxuriously over the frame, elements that culminate to create a rare sense of drama.
Today he works with a “big wooden camera and very slow film, anywhere from a second to more than a minute” so that he can get a good “sense of activity- swirling water, clouds, wind,” in his photographs, he explains. His camera folds up into a box, which he then fits into a waterproof backpack and takes into the field on his kayak, or shoots from the platform he built on top of his van. This enables him to really get out into the wilderness and capture some images many of us would normally never see.
Visit his gallery and you will find yourself lost in the wilderness that Jeff so carefully documents. His large format photographs are especially enthralling because the wealth of detail he captures is so clear and crisp, it is the next best thing to actually being in the landscape; possibly even better because Jeff’s take on the land is so carefully visualized.
Since Jeff is relatively new to Leelanau County, he is still getting adjusted to the difference in climate from Florida. “I like sunshine,” he says, “It’s the lack of sun in the winter that would do me in.” Nevertheless, Ripple still enjoys the landscape around our area. “It has really expressive skies, and a kind of pastoral-type landscape, it’s not rugged. It has a very pleasing feel to it, and wonderful light, being a peninsula.”
Look for Ripple Effect in the third annual Fall For Art in Leelanau galley tour, October 5-7. Jeff Ripple will also be conducting photography classes next summer. To find out more about Jeff’s work or to purchase prints, stop by the gallery on Front Street in Empire, visit www.jeffripple.com or call (239) 642-2255.