Eliot Vance
Quiet light, far places.
Selected work
Four series
A decade of chasing weather across the North Atlantic and the American West. I shoot for the hour before the light goes — the cold, patient end of the day when a place finally shows you what it is.
Eleven days driving the ring road in shoulder season, when the tour buses are gone and the mountains keep disappearing into their own weather. Made on a 4x5 field camera and a beat-up Mamiya 7.
A winter spent driving Highway 101 between Astoria and Bandon, waiting out the rain in the truck for the ten golden minutes it gave back. Sea stacks, fog, and a lot of cold coffee.
Between trips I keep a small north-light studio in Portland. These are the faces of the people I met on the road — guides, fishers, farmers — shot on a single soft window and a roll of Tri-X.
A week over the dune fields of the American Southwest, shot straight down from a small plane with the door off. At noon the desert is just sand; at the edges of the day it becomes a drawing.
About
I'm a landscape and travel photographer working between Reykjavík and Portland, Oregon. I came to photography sideways — I trained as a cartographer, and I've never really shaken the habit of trying to describe a place precisely. The camera turned out to be a better map.
My work lives at the edges of the day and the edges of the map: the North Atlantic in winter, the Pacific Northwest in the rain, the desert in the half-hour before it gives up its colour. I shoot mostly on film — a 4x5 field camera for the slow days, a Mamiya 7 for the cold ones — because the wait is the point.
Read the full story, press & client list →
Selected clients
- National Geographic Traveler
- Patagonia
- Kinfolk
- Icelandair
- Field Mag
- Herschel Supply Co.
- Sunset Magazine
- Visit Iceland
Prints
Take one home
Every image here is available as an open-edition archival print, made to order on cotton rag and shipped flat in a week or two. No frame, no fuss — just the photograph, ready for yours.
Desk and shelf size.
The one people stop in front of.
Signed, numbered, the big quiet wall.
To order a print, mention the image title in the form below — every print is made and signed to order.
Contact
Let's make something
Commissions, editorial assignments, print orders, or just to say a place I should go shoot — the inbox is open.