“Micro Climate Change”

Robert’s statement:

Humans are busy going about our lives, while nature is in shock from the choices that we make. This series is about how nature responds to climate change from a micro perspective. The images highlight the exquisite detail, mystery, vulnerability and power of nature.

As a career educator, naturalist and photographer, Robert Dash is compelled to blend art and metaphor in the service of conservation. He hopes to encourage curiosity and engagement to help steward our future. Below is a sample of the issues these images address:

Diatoms and plants make most of the oxygen on Earth. Warmer oceans make it harder for diatoms to do so. Plants take CO2 from our out-breaths and release oxygen and water in return. All of this exchange moves through stomata. As temperatures rise, these cells close, killing trees, especially in the tropics.

Climate change leads to more pollen and allergies, drought and desiccation of plants and seeds, disruption of pollinator/flower relationships, and desertification (grasslands and forests turning to deserts), to name just a few impacts.

Each image in this series was made with a scanning electron microscope, and features natural objects scaled at several times smaller than a pinhead. Most of the images are photomontages with DSLR macro photography, to allow a surreal conversation between everyday leaves, seeds or feathers, and minute details of themselves.

Robert Dash is an educator, naturalist and photographer whose work has been published by National Geographic, TIME, and Lenswork, and shown in galleries and juried shows in the US and abroad. His 2017 book, On An Acre Shy of Eternity, Micro Landscapes at the Edge, won the Nautilus Book Award Gold for Photography and Arts, and Best of Self Published.

Robert lives and works in Deer Harbor, WA.  His website is https://www.robertdashphotography.com/

Kent Krugh is a fine art photographer living in Cincinnati.
kentkrugh.com