John Sedgwick does not photograph scenes, although his scenes are often haunting and always filled with passion, emotion, and vibrant color.

John Sedgwick photographs light.

He says, “Our world, both inner and outer, overflows with artistic opportunity. I find that my imaging changes with my mood or where I am and what light presents me. I have often thought that my best images found me. They were there all along and just waiting for me to respond to the dancing light inviting me in to explore and create.

“I am drawn to details, vibrant color, moody skies, sacred trees, and the marvelous display of abstract pattern and form all around me. This may be the colorful prow of a wooden boat, the sensuality of a rose petal, brilliant Latin color, or an edgy abstract etched in rusty steel.

“Most of all, I photograph light, nature’s extraordinary paintbrush on the palette of life.”

In reality, John Sedgwick never had a choice.

He was born with artistic expressions in his DNA.

As a young boy, he traveled the backcountry of New England in an old station wagon with his mother, Evelyn Sedgwick, who was an avid amateur photographer. He watched her work. And when they returned home, he saw her images come to life as surely as if she had been a professional painter and pastel artist.

“She never tried to teach me about photography,” Sedgwick says, “but I learned through osmosis. She would explore the rural countryside of New York and Vermont and comment on the scenes she captured on film: the barns, the foliage, the apple orchards, the stonewalls, the dairy farms. I saw the world as it existed through her eyes.”

After awhile, he saw the world through his own eyes.

It was far different from what it had been before.

As did his mother, John Sedgwick reveled in the vivid colors at play all around him, realizing that the scene always changed when the light did. Those colors, he says, were magical. A dull red suddenly became a bright one. A bright red could glisten and sometimes glow.

Light played with nature.

Light fascinated him.

It intrigued him.

John Sedgwick picked up a camera and has spent the rest of his life interpreting light.

The light is there before anyone knows it’s on the way.

The light is gone before anyone knows it has left.

The eye sees it, but light escapes quicker than the eye can blink.

The photographs of John Sedgwick reach out and grab the light as it drifts past, then tightly hold it forever.