Gordon Werner Fine Art Photography

05/09/2026

A sky with no eagles in it.

If you grew up in America in the 1960s, this cropped image is closer to the truth than most people today can imagine. DDT — sprayed across this country to kill mosquitoes and other "pests" — worked its way up the food chain until it reached the bald eagle. It thinned their eggshells so severely that nesting parents would crush their own eggs just by sitting on them. Generation after generation, gone before they ever took flight.

And that wasn't all. The bald eagle — our own national symbol — was shot as a trophy. Wolves were poisoned with cyanide-laced bait, and eagles and countless other birds died right alongside them.

We did this.

But we also fixed it. Laws were passed. DDT was banned. People paid attention and refused to look away. Slowly, the eagles came back.

I photograph wild things because I believe they deserve to be seen — and because I know how close we came to a world without them.

That is why Santa Gordon is supporting Riveredge Nature Center. They are doing the same patient, necessary work today — bringing Sturgeon back to Lake Michigan, and monitoring Sandhill Lake, a quiet Wisconsin tributary that may be home to the Blanding's Turtle, one of our most vulnerable species.

The full photograph — with all that open sky — is what we saved. This cropped version is the reminder of why the work never really stops.

Through May 31st, every gift to Riveredge is matched dollar for dollar. Please give what you can.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CSLKRL418/

Photo © Gordon Werner Fine Arts

05/04/2026

This project is a project of Santa Gordon. That is me. Because Gordon, the photographer, has a passion for Local, State, and National Parks, I decided to expand my request to this page. Before you read the following, you should know one of my sayings on the Santa Page is IT IS NOT WHAT YOU SAY AT CHRISTMAS BUT THE CHRISTMAS THINGS YOU DO ALL YEAR LONG. The image posted here was taken at the North Area of the TR National Park. It was taken during the "great" oil fracking in North Dakota. One Last note before I send you on to the main event. I truly believe that I could not be doing this without the help of the staff and the many many members of the Berlin YMCA Fitness Center.

I have spent a lifetime pointing a lens at wild places — national parks, state preserves, wetlands, and riverbanks most people never slow down long enough to see. Every photograph I have ever made has been my way of saying: this matters. Pay attention.

Right now, I am putting my money where my camera has always pointed.

There is a 5-acre tamarack swamp in Wisconsin called Sandhill Lake, a quiet tributary that feeds the Milwaukee River. It is thriving with native species, free of invasive plants — and it may be home to the Blanding's Turtle, one of Wisconsin's most vulnerable wildlife species. Riveredge Nature Center is doing the water quality and aquatic monitoring work to understand and protect it.

I made a gift to support this project. And right now through May 31st, every dollar given is matched — doubled — by generous donors who believe in this work.

If you have ever loved a wild place, a photograph of one, or the idea that some things are worth protecting — I am asking you to give what you can.

Learn more and give here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CSLKRL418/

05/03/2026

I have spent a lifetime pointing a lens at wild places — national parks, state preserves, wetlands, and riverbanks most people never slow down long enough to see. Every photograph I have ever made has been my way of saying: this matters. Pay attention.

Right now, I am putting my money where my camera has always pointed.

There is a 5-acre tamarack swamp in Wisconsin called Sandhill Lake, a quiet tributary that feeds the Milwaukee River. It is thriving with native species, free of invasive plants — and it may be home to the Blanding's Turtle, one of Wisconsin's most vulnerable wildlife species. Riveredge Nature Center is doing the water quality and aquatic monitoring work to understand and protect it.

I made a gift to support this project. And right now through May 31st, every dollar given is matched — doubled — by generous donors who believe in this work.

If you have ever loved a wild place, a photograph of one, or the idea that some things are worth protecting — I am asking you to give what you can.

Learn more and give here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CSLKRL418/


The image below is from the Badlands of South Dakota

04/24/2026

I came back to this old image this morning and finally saw what Mother Nature and Father Time had been carving all along.

At the lower left, there appears to be a long-beaked bird emerging from the log — but it is not a bird at all. It is simply part of the wood, shaped by age, weather, decay, and time.

That is what I love about looking again. Sometimes the photograph waits for you. Sometimes the sculpture was always there, and you only discover it later.

04/14/2026

Here are two versions shaped from the same feeling: one for Facebook, one for your web page.

I have worked this shoreline in color many times, always believing the answer was somewhere in all that information.

Today I looked at it again and realized the problem was not the composition. It was the color.

So I went back to my roots.

Back to the discipline of black and white. Back to the old darkroom instincts—holding back, burning in, waiting through those long chemical minutes before the image finally revealed what it had been trying to say all along.

This shoreline, along Gichigami—Lake Superior—carries the marks of time and erosion. Trees fall, are stripped bare, and remain as witnesses at the edge of the water. In monochrome, the scene feels truer to me: less descriptive, more remembered. Less about what was there, more about what endures.

I matted this piece the way I would most want to see it hung—quietly, with room to breathe.

Sometimes an image does not need more.
It needs less.
If you like this one please click the like button and pass it on

04/08/2026

04/07/2026

Did not have to worry about voting today, but I did worry about Rosie, as she had some minor surgery, so I did this. Rossie is fine, but not happy about wearing the cone for 10 days

04/06/2026

More fun in the Adobe darkroom

04/05/2026

A birch tree. Two versions.

04/05/2026

This tree, this image is named Sentinel in White. My mind sees this tree, when I have finished editing it, directing traffic in Manhattan about 1945. Or maybe it will be directing oil tankersof the coast of Iran or maybe Cuba. But I will just call it abstract art