Featured Artist: Tom Olson

From a row home on a narrow street in Philadelphia, PA, to a property in the sagebrush foothills of Wyoming, my dream of a Western lifestyle was realized in August 2021. This desire to go West was driven by Roy Rogers and the many Western TV shows with its wide open spaces watched at an impressionable young age.

I received my first camera, a Kodak Brownie, at age 6, probably in an attempt to keep me from playing with my father’s Kodak Pony 135 camera film camera. Sadly, I inherited that Kodak Pony too soon when he passed at the early age of 42 years old. At eight years old, I found comfort in holding that camera, staring for hours at photographs of family and the few vacations we had together. It was like seeing the world through his eyes. That would be the nexus for my appreciation and love of photography and travel.

My first real foray into professional photography started with photographing my son’s high school sporting events. Posting these photos on my website resulted in parents offering to pay for photos of the other players. This eventually led to team, cheerleader, and portrait photography work with the occasional banquet and wedding gigs.

However, my real passion has always been landscape photography. With a demanding full-time job as a Philadelphia Police Officer, there was little time or opportunity for landscapes except while vacationing.

Retiring after nearly 40 years with the Philadelphia PD, I decided that a new start was calling me back to Cody, Wyoming, a place I first visited in 1976 while traveling to Yellowstone. I moved to Cody not knowing a soul. When I was accepted into the Open Range Images Gallery, I was exposed to a wonderful group of like-minded people. As a result, I’ve been fortunate to develop some great friendships.

Living in Cody has opened my eyes to the landscapes and wildlife I have dreamed about my entire life. Time spent in nature allows for introspection, resulting in peace of mind and a solitary lifestyle. As this journey of life and my photography continues, I aim to create images that people will enjoy seeing and adorn the walls of their homes or offices. Images that provide the viewer with wonderful memories of places they have visited or the motivation to find these magical landscapes for themselves and enjoy nature. My photography website contains over a thousand images from across the county, from Maine to the Oregon Coast and from North Dakota to Florida. Lately, I’ve been delving into Classic black-and-white finishes for many of my landscapes and some wildlife images.

My greatest hope is that future generations in my family look at these images and see the world as I had seen it, in the same way I see my father’s world through the photographs he left behind.

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