Greg Kiser was born in 1974, in the city of Winston-Salem which is located in the heart of North Carolina.  Growing up, some of his favorite activities were playing outside with friends, hiking, and camping.  It was this exposure to natural areas of the state that planted the seed for what was to become a very important part of his life later on.  Having learned an appreciation for the mountains of North Carolina, Greg decided to attend Appalachian State University where he graduated with a Bachelors of Science degree in Criminal Justice in 1996.

Making use of this degree, and wanting to give back to the community, Greg became a police officer in 1999.  While he gets the opportunity to positively impact lives in the city where he serves, he is also subject to seeing some horrible things.  Early on in his career, Greg realized that he needed some kind of outlet in his life to balance out the tragedies he was seeing up close.  He tried many things, but nothing seemed to work for him.

For years Greg had been the designated family photographer, but that was the extent of it.  He made snapshot memories…the kind of pictures that really only mean something to those who were there at the time.  He knew next to nothing about cameras, and used a variety of 35mm point and shoot cameras, and even a few of the old Polaroids for a time.  In 2004, things changed.  He began using a digital camera for the first time in order to get photographs posted to internet forums quickly.  While it was great to be able to post an image just minutes after snapping a picture, there was another benefit that revealed itself.  For the first time, he was able to see how the camera captured a particular subject while he was still there allowing him to change things to get the picture he wanted.  This made learning about photography quite a bit more fun.

Greg began doing some reading on different photography techniques and became fascinated in the process…as well as the art.  When this new knowledge met up with a childhood interest in his Dad’s Konica SLR something just clicked.  Photography was going to become Greg’s much needed outlet.  With much of his childhood being spent outside, and spending four years in the Appalachian Mountains attending ASU, landscape photography was a natural choice.

Through photography, Greg is now able to focus his attention on the beauty that surrounds him, and not the negative aspects of his chosen career.  To this day, Greg is completely self taught.  He has spent long hours reading books, magazines, and various sources on the internet in order to develop and hone his personal style.  The works of Mark Lucock, John Shaw, and Ansel Adams have provided the early direction for this education.

Greg compares his photographic experiences to that of a painter.  When he is in the field composing a picture in the viewfinder, his mind becomes totally consumed in the process.  Much like a painter moving his brush over the canvas, he composes an image that shows what his mind is seeing.  For that brief period of time, nothing else matters.  It is just the photographer, the camera, and the subject.

Shooting digital with a film state of mind is an ideal that Greg has held near and dear to his heart since the beginning.  In this current age of digital photography, it is often hard to tell what is real and what is manufactured.  Greg chooses to rely on his photographic techniques and equipment in the field to achieve the final “look” of his photographs.  Serious post processing is just not an option for his photographs.  Nature is perfect in its imperfection.