Terry Barnes Photography

Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: March-2022

Imagine having your favorite Highlands/Cashiers vista just a few steps away – always, no matter where you live. 

Terry Barnes, esteemed photo-artist/technician, can produce anything from a parlor-sized delight to an entire wall-full of visual wow. 

You choose your image and size. Terry prints it on canvas.  

Once installed, step back and savor Mother Nature’s beauty any time your heart desires, even if you’re taking a monumental Whiteside, a raging Cullasaja, or a jaw-dropping view on the Blue Ridge Parkway back home with you hundreds of miles away.

Terry is a veteran artist who knows how to negotiate a photo studio as well as the business of Art. 

While a lot of creatives struggled with the Covid challenge, Terry benefitted. He discovered paring down his venues to smaller galleries and showplaces homed-in on his true audience. 

Terry says, “Sometimes in large galleries there’s too much to see and people get art-drunk in an ocean of choices. Small venues are more inviting and work better for my style and my clientele.”

Galleries and Covid are more compatible now that vaccines and masking are available. 

Still, incorporating an online market is a smart and safer sales addition. Terry laughs and says, “I’m on Instagram now, though I’m still mastering the mysteries of hash-tagging.”

Even with Terry’s adaptations to an ever-changing market, his core strengths continue to define his work as they have since his career launched in the 1980s. “Getting the balance of nature,” Terry shares, “is to show as much compelling information as possible in the image. I want to make every part of the photo interesting. That’s become an instinctive part of my process.”

His goal is to make the image so interesting that the viewer’s eye is encouraged to explore the entire photo, fore-, mid-, and background, along with contrast, textures, forms, and especially the light, for it is the key to every dramatic landscape.

I asked Terry to rank four motivations (money, intellectual challenge, the emotional experience, connecting with Nature) as things that keep him behind the camera every day. 

He answered without hesitation:

1. “The experience with Nature. Going early. Staying late. I get enveloped in it, and it’s like it’s there just for me at that particular moment.”

2. “Emotion: that internal stirring that’s provided for me and thus, my viewers.”

3. “The intellectual challenge, especially keeping up with the latest technology.”

4. “The money. It’s important, but I would be shooting every spare minute no matter what.”

To see more of Terry’s work, visit TerryBarnesphotography.com. Instagram: TerryBarnes. 

You can take a live, masked visit to Gallery 441 in Dillard, Georgia, and 828 Cafe in Franklin. Terry is a member of the North Georgia Arts Guild.