Welcome to my portfolio! If the wall of text below doesn't look too bad and you don't mind hearing the story behind the name, I'll fill you in on what Fern and Fernweh is.
In short, my actual name is Daine Doucett, and Fern and Fernweh is the website where I display my photography. However you may have found it, I'm glad to see you here. For those that like to put a face to a name, above is a picture of me at the Fremont Fire Lookout in Mt. Rainier National Park.
Fern and Fernweh are not the names of two people, but rather an attempt to make a catchy sounding title with a dash of depth. I'd like to say it's a summary of both the inspiration and subject matter of my photography. It's a bit weird and cryptic, but it's grown on me and I'm thinking I'll keep it. Besides, I already made the business cards.
I think the German language has a certain charm. They have a lot of good words that lack an equivalent in English. Backpfeifengesicht describes somebody's face that really needs to be punched. Elefantenrennen, elephant racing, specifically describes when two semi trucks block all traffic trying to pass each other on the freeway. There's probably one for when someone changes the subject in a story to talking about German.
Fernweh is another of these uniquely-descriptive German words:
fernweh (n.) (FEIRN-vee)
A German word best translated as farsickness, or, more literally, far woe. A need to see unseen places, can be interpreted as being a physical urge or ache.
More colloquially in English, I might say someone has a travel bug. Personally, I just like to visit lots of different places and haul my heavy camera bag on hikes where I really could miss the added weight.
I started photography in earnest after joining the Navy in 2009 and had enough money to buy my first "real" camera. I've moved around a lot growing up and as an adult, and continue to travel for work to this day so I see a lot of new places.
The Fern part is a little more symbolic. I've called many different places home, but I claim the Pacific Northwest as my roots, where I've done most of my photography the last few years. Among the forests here you'll find a lot of ferns, which are actually kind of special and are probably taken for granted since they're everywhere here.
Ferns are among the oldest plants there are, older than the evolution of flowers, and are part of a special group called pteridophytes. They are vascular, having "plant veins" for moving water and nutrients, yet reproduce via spores rather than seeds (like moss, which isn't vascular). One of the few places in the world where ferns naturally grow in abundance is the Pacific Northwest, mostly in old growth forests.
In a way, the Fern part of the name is a reminder to not take for granted the things around you. In practicing photography you gain an appreciation for the innate beauty in scenes all around you, or rather, having this appreciation leads one to photography. I would call myself an opportunistic landscape photographer, and landscapes are easy because they mostly stand still and are pretty. You'll see lots of ferns in them around these parts.
If you're still reading, you've made it to where I actually talk about the pictures you'll see here, organized into galleries mostly based on location.
Growing up around the Puget Sound and western Washington, I've fostered a fascination with dramatic landscapes like those old growth forests, snow-covered mountains, and pristine waterways. Later on in the Navy, living around the older cities in the northeast chunk of the U.S., with their sprawl, culture, history, and character, instilled a fondness for architecture landscapes and street photography. And lighthouses. Lots of lighthouses. They'll probably get their own gallery.
The abundance of light pollution on the east coast gave me an appreciation for the lack of it when visiting the American Southwest, and I've dabbled in astrophotography. The nuances you can get into with astrophotography are a rabbit hole if there ever was one, one I'm still diving into. The red rocks, canyons, mesas, and cactuses are something everyone should see in person at least once. The landscapes I have of the region are among my personal favorites, and printed on metal, the vibrant colors and contrast in the winter shots stand out as display pieces.
The South was where I met my wife and lived for several years. The Appalachians and the plateau regions of Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolina's contrasted sharply with the sprawl of the Lowcountry. Palm trees and beaches, crocodiles and swamps, the religion that is food, the history and culture. Endless photo opportunities. Oh yeah, and church steeples. Church steeples everywhere. If I made Southern churches have their own gallery, that's basically any picture I took outside there.
I have a gallery devoted to panorama pictures, landscapes stitched together from anywhere between 2 and up to, I believe, 42 pictures. Panoramas are my favorite way to really get the full scope of a view, and they look especially good when displayed on a wall. If you haven't guessed yet, this website isn't just a portfolio for display only. You'll see big green buy buttons around the site, which will take you to the store side of F&F. There you will find an excessive amount of things that these pictures can be printed on.
The pictures are taken and edited with large display in mind, so the store offers canvas prints, acrylic prints, and by far my favorite, metal prints. Canvas will be a more traditional look and work really well with frames, but the photos really shine on metal and acrylic. Metal can be done with a white base for bright, vivid colors, or a metal base, which will give the picture a more reflective cast. The metal base works well with black and white, and gives certain pictures a depth by adding actual reflectivity to things like water, the sun, and metals objects in pictures.
Acrylic is a shiny, modern look, and can give a sense of depth to the picture because of the thickness of the base. The clarity on acrylic is high, but it comes at a price premium. Well suited for businesses, lobbies and the like.
For home decor, as I said, the panoramas are well suited, but many of them may not fit the whole picture in a single panel using the more limited wide-aspect sizes. They can be cropped when ordering, but most of the panoramas are sized such that cutting anything off makes them look off-balance. In this case, consider ordering a print split across multiple, smaller panels. If you contact me with one of the pictures that you'd like split across multiple panels, I can make it available on the Multi-Panel Panoramas gallery. Over time, I'll work on adding optimally split pictures there.
There are also the standard paper prints and greeting cards, as well as quirkier products like mouse pads, aprons, and coffee cups. Photo books can be ordered, but those kinds of things are more for personal or wedding photos. You may find a wedding photo or two here disguised as a landscape. Calendars are well suited for putting photos from a gallery together and make nice gifts. There are lots to choose from.
Thank you for visiting Fern and Fernweh, and I hope you enjoy my pictures.
I'm a nice person, so I'll put a TL,DR down here
Fern and Fernweh is my landscape photography portfolio and storefront, with landscapes from all over the United States and other countries. Check out some photos and give metal prints a try.