Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Pristine becomes divine through hobbyist's lens

Through his photos, ophthalmologist Dan Montgomery shares the art and beauty of the Cove of the Withlacoochee.

By JORGE SANCHEZ
Published August 31, 2006

INVERNESS - The Cove of the Withlacoochee has always been cloaked with a sense of the forbidden.

It's a place where the rugged palmettos and swamps make travel an ordeal. It is home to the rattler, the alligator and legions of bloodthirsty mosquitoes.

To photographer Dan Montgomery, it's a place of beauty where he can get neck-deep into his subject matter.

Montgomery, an Inverness ophthalmologist and avid nature photographer, recently published a book named in honor of the Cove of the Withlacoochee.

The black-and-white photographs convey the beauty of the backwoods. Stripped of the green that the eye would normally expect to see, the black-and-white shapes capture the interplay between light and shadow, between land and water, between Earth and sky.

Montgomery has been an ophthalmologist in Citrus County for nearly 20 years.

"But I've been a photographer longer than that," he said. "It started in high school."

Working with bulky cameras, some that use a film negative as large as a piece of fax paper, Montgomery often literally immerses himself in his work.

Describing how he got one shot, he said he was chest-deep in the tannic waters of the Withlacoochee River.

While he was setting up to take a photo of the opposite bank, he noticed a large alligator swimming past. Both scenes make their appearance in Cove of the Withlacoochee.

He takes pictures from land, from aboard a boat and some majestic shots from an airplane.

Not all of the pictures were taken in the Cove. Montgomery explores other areas of Citrus as well. There is a study of the old sugar mill ruins in Old Homosassa and a scenic of a Lecanto farm.

While he has been a photographer his for many years, nearly all of the photos in the book were taken in the past five years.

"I would take the pictures and just show them to my family," he said. "They'd go, 'Nice work, Dad,' and then the photos would go in a box."

He said the book is intended to make an artistic statement that also conveys his love of the Cove of the Withlacoochee. The area in the cove lies between the Withlacoochee River and the Tsala Apopka chain of lakes. It is a wild, unspoiled piece of Florida that few people ever get to explore.

"Photography allows me to capture a piece of what I experience in these places and share it with others," Montgomery said. "It could be ego; it could be a need to communicate."

Like many photographers, Montgomery likes to shoot in the hours surrounding dawn and then again at dusk. He gets up before the sun rises on his days off, and is in his truck, looking for his muse amongst the woods and waters.

By 9 a.m., he's done shooting, and can spend the rest of the day with his family.

He seems to have an affinity for using the early morning fog as a backdrop for his photographs.

"I just look for a transient moment," he said. "I can see the art and beauty of it and want to share it with others."

The book is available at many area gift shops and book stores, including the Old Courthouse Heritage Museum. Montgomery said any proceeds from the sales that come his way will be given to his favorite charity, the Path of Citrus County, which provides shelter to homeless people and also offers drug rehabilitation.

Jorge Sanchez can be reached at sanchez@sptimes.com or 352 860-7313.

[Last modified August 31, 2006, 07:06:03]