This week in Selective Focus, we feature photographer Ryan Tischer. Tomorrow (Saturday, September 3) Lakeside Gallery will host an opening of Ryan’s work, and he will be the featured artist there through September.

R.T.: I do landscape and nature photography of North America, with a concentration in our Lake Superior region. My goal as an artist is to capture the emotional essence of a scene. Like many, I feel a strong spiritual connection to nature. I use this connection to guide my artistic choices when considering a scene behind the lens. Composition, exposure, filters, and so forth are all essential considerations, but the one variable in outdoor photography that cannot be forced or overtly manipulated is the light. For this reason I find myself waiting for hours at a given location and often returning time and time again until I find something magical in the light that finally makes the image. As in life and photography, light is everything. Without light from our sun we would not have life on this planet and I would certainly not be around to take pictures! I try to keep that in mind when making images and hope it comes through in my work.

I returned from a trip to Manitoulin Island to a busy week in Duluth. I visited the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, where I learned about traditional and contemporary first nations art.

I have a few friends doing G.I.S.H.W.H.E.S., hosted by Misha Collins of I think the TV show “Supernatural.” From gishwhes.com:

We’re proud to have broken several Guinness World Records including: the most global hugs, 108,121; most pledges to commit charitable Acts of Kindness, 93,376, which we did in partnership with our friends at the non-profit Random Acts  (www.therandomact.org); and of course, let’s not forget the prestigious Longest Safety Pin Chain – over a mile long! We’ve also: delivered thousands of items to the homeless; raised the money to completely furnish every room of a home for a wounded veteran and his family (we’ll be posting videos for this soon!); had a Mars rock named after us by NASA; made Christmas trees fly; and have been reported on by news organizations around the world, including Al Jazeera.

Who in Duluth is in?  There is still time to join, I think.