Jim Gregg Photographer

Jim Gregg’s love of photography has spanned over 65 years. During his life time tremendous changes in equipment, techniques and process have occurred. One friend has described Jim as an, “80 year old photographer with a 60 year old camera and a wooden tripod."

Actually Jim works mostly in digital today and he owns a modern carbon fiber tripod!

But he did take his well known photograph of "Lenticular clouds over Mount Shasta" with a 60 year old, large format Crown Graphic camera. The print has been called a Northern California icon. He also has done much work with medium format cameras. His most recent work is digital.


	Jim's iconic shot of Mt. Shasta

His primary interest is in landscape and nature photography. Some of his prints are from negatives made over 50 years ago when he was a wilderness ranger in Lassen Volcanic National Park. The negatives are given high resolution scans and archival digital prints are produced.

Jim’s interest in photography began in his early teen years when he began working for commercial photographers and the daily newspapers in his home town, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state capital. At 17 he enlisted in the Navy during WWII and was trained as an aerial and motion picture photographer. He says the training was outstanding and was overseen by the famous American photographer, Edward Steichan.

After the war Jim decided to use the GI Bill to go to college and become a teacher. He says he loved photography but the idea of a career taking wedding and baby pictures was not appealing.

He majored in political science and came to UC Berkeley as a graduate student in 1950. He began teaching in 1952 in Redding and came to Chico State in 1959 to teach political science and journalism. In the summers he worked for the Chico Enterprise-Record and while working on a doctorate at UC Santa Barbara he worked for the Santa Barbara News-Press. He did free lance writing and photography for 30 years for the Sacramento Bee. He retired in 1994.

Jim’s interest in landscapes came from his admiration for the magnificent black and white work of Ansel Adams. Adams’ work inspired many in the conservation and envrironmental movements and several generations of young photographers.

Why landscapes? A reporter for the Chico State newspapers asked that question at the time of a campus exhibit of Jim’s work taken during a year in New Zealand. Jim responded that his life in teaching involved working with people every day. Creating artistic landscape photographs while away from his work environment was a perfect rewarding change of pace.