ABOUT JOHN
John Shephard grew up in Western Washington, surrounded by old-growth forest and the particular quality of Pacific Northwest light. Those early years shaped the way he sees — attentive to atmosphere, drawn to scale, patient with the landscape.
In 1998, while photographing tulip fields in the Skagit Valley, he had a chance encounter with the celebrated Australian landscape photographer Ken Duncan. Duncan was midway through a book project covering all fifty states and needed someone with local knowledge of Washington and America, in general. What began as a conversation became an apprenticeship. Over the next two years, Shephard assisted Duncan across 45 states, then followed him to Australia for two more years — absorbing an approach to landscape photography that was rigorous, unhurried, and deeply committed to the craft of the print.
He returned to Washington with a clear purpose. He invested in a Noblex 135U — a panoramic camera whose field of view corresponds closely to how the human eye actually perceives a wide landscape — and began building a body of work centered on the Pacific Northwest. He later added the Hasselblad XPAN II to his kit. His medium is film. His choice of stock is Fujichrome Velvia 50, for its saturation, its fidelity to the greens of Washington's forests and the blues of its mountain skies, and for the archival permanence of the original transparency.
His panoramic work was recognized in Terry Hope's The World's Top Photographers: Landscape in 2003. He has taught photography for over 31 years, working primarily in the field.
The production of his prints is deliberate. Each transparency is drum-scanned on a Heidelberg Tango by Michael Strickland — a fine-art landscape photographer in his own right and one of the most respected scanning and printing specialists working today. From there, the files move through a precision color management workflow before reaching Hahnemühle Baryta Rag — the same archival standard used by museum print collections.
His current project, Washington Wide, is the most comprehensive panoramic landscape photography book of Washington State. It releases in fall 2026.
In 1998, while photographing tulip fields in the Skagit Valley, he had a chance encounter with the celebrated Australian landscape photographer Ken Duncan. Duncan was midway through a book project covering all fifty states and needed someone with local knowledge of Washington and America, in general. What began as a conversation became an apprenticeship. Over the next two years, Shephard assisted Duncan across 45 states, then followed him to Australia for two more years — absorbing an approach to landscape photography that was rigorous, unhurried, and deeply committed to the craft of the print.
He returned to Washington with a clear purpose. He invested in a Noblex 135U — a panoramic camera whose field of view corresponds closely to how the human eye actually perceives a wide landscape — and began building a body of work centered on the Pacific Northwest. He later added the Hasselblad XPAN II to his kit. His medium is film. His choice of stock is Fujichrome Velvia 50, for its saturation, its fidelity to the greens of Washington's forests and the blues of its mountain skies, and for the archival permanence of the original transparency.
His panoramic work was recognized in Terry Hope's The World's Top Photographers: Landscape in 2003. He has taught photography for over 31 years, working primarily in the field.
The production of his prints is deliberate. Each transparency is drum-scanned on a Heidelberg Tango by Michael Strickland — a fine-art landscape photographer in his own right and one of the most respected scanning and printing specialists working today. From there, the files move through a precision color management workflow before reaching Hahnemühle Baryta Rag — the same archival standard used by museum print collections.
His current project, Washington Wide, is the most comprehensive panoramic landscape photography book of Washington State. It releases in fall 2026.