Charlene deJori

As a life-long artist, entrepreneur, and world traveler, Charlene deJori has captured the diversity of nature with her camera. Her photographs reveal the art of nature's mesmerizing designs. Whether it is the colors, patterns, or simply a fleeting moment to remember forever, Charlene's artistic eye is to be cherished. Her passionate dedication to document the biodiversity of our world is now available for us to enjoy and participate with.

Biography: Charlene deJori, a Fine Arts major at the University of Texas at Austin is a self-described "serial entrepreneur," and has successfully founded and built three separate companies: Luminarios—Ceramic Design; Ocean Realm Magazine; and currently, Noah Nature Alliance. The unifying thread for all three enterprises has been a strong eye for design, and a love for all things natural.

Throughout her extensive world-wide travels, she has married her interests in photography and the natural world into a thirty-year portfolio of work which showcases many of the world's most exotic and species rich destinations. Years of underwater photography have produced a unique body of amazing images that she is now complementing with her current concentration on documentary wildlife photography.

Through NOAH Nature Alliance which concentrates on preserving world wildlife, Charlene has found a perfect venue to employ her experience in graphic design, her photography of the natural world, her interest in ethnic crafts, and her passion for conservation.

Camera in hand and inspiration of Henry David Thoreau in her heart, she continues to "go confidently in the direction of her dreams."

Statement: Personally, my inspiration has always come from nature. For nowhere is there more variation of form, color, texture, and composition than that which is all around us in the natural world. Making time to take a closer, studied look, even at the most unassuming subjects never fails to produce a myriad of surprises and complexities which often can and do inspire.

It has rightly been said that wildlife photography is ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent exhilaration and so it is with much of my photography. Eye fixed to the viewfinder, unwilling to move as insects bite a transfixed photographer; waiting for just the right second, waiting for the wind to die down, the cloud to pass, or the animal to finally turn to look, this is how most "creative" days are spent.

Sometimes I think that perhaps the best images are those that simply reside in one's "mind's eye" rather than those actually captured by a camera. For the experience of being in the location and participating, at least visually, in the run-up to that moment when you instinctively trip the shutter, that enveloping experience produces complex, overlapping images that no single split second can entirely capture.

With each image though, I do strive to capture an epitomizing moment in time, one that will never be repeated, never duplicated; one very special moment which produces both an intimate and artistic portrait of the subject and is simultaneously a reflection of my personal vision. If, in my many years behind the lens, I have been able to achieve just a handful of such images, I would be very pleased indeed.

Read more in an interview with Charlene on the Artmuse blog.