John Elmer Lee

John Elmer Lee was born in Spokane, Washington. His family moved to Berkeley, California when he was seven. Coming of age amid the tumultuousness of Berkeley in the sixties, John established a career as a racing motorcycle mechanic and engine builder. It was during this period that John first became interested in meditation and eastern philosophy.

John moved to Corvallis, Oregon while in his thirties where he made a transition to working with NGOs first as programme director for a cooperative and then as the director of a large volunteer organisation. During that time, he established a graphic design business, a small publishing company and, with his wife, a consulting firm.

In 1998, John moved to Portland, Oregon to devote himself fully to the art of photographic interpretation. His explorations took him to Germany, France and Spain to explore medieval landscapes, and he has extensively studied landscapes of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, U.S. Southwest and Canada.

In 2000 John developed a passion for wildlife photography with a focus on the birds of the Pacific Northwest. He spent the next five years tracking and cataloguing the birds of the Columbia River Basin and surrounding wetlands. Long days out in fields and wetlands deepened his love of nature and renewed his interest in meditation. This interest combined with the intuitive skills needed to be a successful nature photographer reached fruition as he merged the two disciplines.

In 2006 John and his wife immigrated to New Zealand seeking new horizons and became citizens in 2011. The focus of his photography has been on native bush, pelagic and shore birds. He is currently expanding his catalogue to include black and white landscapes. All of the images in Portraits of New Zealand Native Birds are from the period 2006 to 2018.