Jake Mosher is a multi-award-winning photographer from Montana, USA. He grew up in Northern Vermont, on the edge of a tiny village near the Canadian border, in the heart of some of New England’s wildest country. From a very young age, he found himself drawn to remote places, at home in the deep woods, falling in love with the natural world around him. Some of Mosher’s earliest memories involve seasonal change in the North Country – the calls of high-flying flocks of geese, the rattle of loose window panes during a winter snow storm, the heady aroma of fallen leaves, and the joyous transformation into spring marked by curls of steam billowing from neighboring sugar houses where maple sap was boiled into syrup.

Growing up in an era before virtual reality, social media, and high-definition video games, Mosher’s cure for childhood boredom involved taking a hatchet, some wooden matches, a thermos of hot chocolate in the winter or lemonade in the summer, and disappearing for hours into the wilderness that lay literally out his back door. He became a keen observer of nature, learning the names of plants and trees, the habits of wild animals, and studying the smallest details of the world around him. 

By the mid-1990s, Mosher found his beloved Vermont changing. The small dairy farms that had defined its landscape for four generations were going under by the hundreds, land was being developed for new homes at an alarming rate, so, like pioneers one hundred years before him, Mosher headed west seeking bigger country. As his name was read at his college graduation, he was approaching the Mississippi River, going as fast as his beat-up car would carry him, determined to settle in the Rocky Mountains of Montana where he planned to become an author. 

On the outskirts of Butte, Montana, renting a 50-year-old trailer where his bed sheets would routinely freeze to the wall on winter nights, Mosher found the frontier existence he was seeking. He worked as a logger, miner, substitute elementary school teacher, prize fighter, and big-game guide to support his fiction writing, eventually seeing two novels published. In a moment of weakness, he once applied and was accepted to law school, later burning his acceptance letter in his small, wood stove, determined to succeed as an artist. For more than a decade, Mosher lived a hand-to-mouth existence, immersed in the wilds of Montana, at home among its high mountain lakes, semi-arid prairies, and vast, unbroken tracts of wilderness. 

As early middle-life set in, with the pressures to assimilate into a more “normal” lifestyle, Mosher became an explosives engineer, eventually running a large job, enjoying some of the financial freedom that a stable career afforded him, but at the same time straying further from what his heart truly wanted.  As many of the same changes that had pushed him out of Vermont twenty years earlier began occurring in Montana, Mosher turned to photography to document the dwindling wild places he loves most.  Through a camera’s lens, he found the perfect medium to present his unique view of the natural world, drawing on a lifetime’s love of the outdoors. What began as a hobby, turned to a passion and then an obsession. By photographing the Milky Way above abandoned homesteads, taking macro pictures of butterflies and flowers, and hiking miles through snow to capture a frozen lake at sunset, Mosher realized that his true calling in life was behind his camera. 

On an early fall day, as strings of geese passed over Montana, their calls transporting him back to his boyhood home in Northern Vermont and the infant beginnings of his fascination with Nature, Mosher walked away from his job to pursue his photography full-time.  

His work has since won national and international awards, been published in many magazines, and has provided him with what he has always sought – the perfect excuse to spend his life in the parts of the Earth he loves most. He believes that in Nature there is no such thing as the ordinary and that the world, particularly off the beaten path, is a wonderful thing to see. 

I have always been captivated by the beauty of butterflies. For me, their magical emergence each spring is the personification of a world reborn and the end to a long, Northern winter. I’ll never forget the first one I saw, a mourning cloak, fanning its burgundy wings on a patch of bare ground the spring I turned three. I watched spellbound while it showed off its violet spots, remember thinking how its creamy wingtips looked like fresh milk, and was shocked at how fast it flew away when I reached to touch it. 

Equal to my love of butterflies is my passion for discovery. I have panned for gold, searched for fossils, collected everything from old coins to antique bottles, and scoured the world of Nature for all things unusual. I have been a seeker my whole life, naturally drawn to macro photography as a way to reveal Nature’s hidden beauty. 

These Metamorphosis images that I’ve created are an entirely new art form, part of photographic history, the likes of which the world has never seen. Through a complex process of high-magnification photography, using tiny sections of butterfly and moth wings, I create images that are the result of replicating, repositioning, revolving, and expanding or contracting many hundreds of individual photos. I never alter color, import any foreign designs, or do any type of artificial drawing. With precise attention to maintaining the same delicate symmetry butterflies possess, my images transform into visual showpieces as varied as the lovely insects that I photograph. 

My work is photography and artistic design intertwined, and its results are pieces that yield new surprises each time you look at them. From complicated, geometric patterns, to sublime shifts in color, to the flowing feel of wings on a summer breeze, my images are a fitting tribute to one of Earth’s most beautiful creatures.

I believe that now, perhaps more than ever, in a world so punctuated by discord and division, we need the beauty of art. These images are my gift. They are rooted in the urge to discover, an unwavering love of Nature, and an innate desire to create.    

2019 Royal Photographic Society Movement photo contest

2018 National Wildlife Federation Garden photo contest

2018 Fusion Art International Skies photo contest

2018 Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest

2018 International Fusion Art Color competition

2018 Shoot the Land International Nature competition

2018 Shoot the Wild International photo contest

2018 Motif Collection International Reflections photo contest

2018 Praxis Gallery International Monochrome contest

2018 Photographer’s Forum Sigma Spring Competition

2018 Juried Exhibition of night sky photography, Zoot Art Gallery, Bozeman, Montana

2017 National Wildlife Federation photo contest

2017 Juried Photography Exhibition, Old Main Gallery, Bozeman, Montana

2016 Smithsonian Photo Contest

Member of the Royal Photographic Society

  1. Favourite Colour? Violet
  2. When you were growing up what did you want to be?A professional baseball player
  3. Name the Place you’d most like to live in? Big Sky, Montana USA
  4. Seaside or Countryside Countryside
  5. You’re hosting a dinner party what’s your signature dish? Steak
  6. Dogs or Cats? Cats – large heads, extra toes and stub tails are a plus
  7. What was your nickname at school?  Woody
  8. Most influential person in your life?My mother and father, who both encouraged me to do what I want
  9. If you could go back in time to which period would you go to? The 80s. Why, oh why did mullets go out of style?
  10. Name an Instagram account you follow?What’s Instagram?
  11. Favourite Museum or Gallery? Museum of Natural History, NYC 
  12. If money was no object, what luxury item would you buy yourself?1970 Ford Mustang Cobra Jet
  13. Favorite Album (music)?Linda Ronstadt – Poor Poor Pitiful Me
  14. Person you’d love to meet?Ted Williams
  15. Describe your ultimate romantic date. A picnic high in the mountains of Montana during the middle of summer when the wildflowers are blooming
  16. You are happiest when…….I’m in remote country far from civilization
  17. What makes you sad?The rate at which this Earth’s wild places are disappearing
  18. If you could change one thing about the world. Less hate, more love, and a universal notion of compromise
  19. Whats the first thing on your bucket list? Photographing the aurora borealis from Norway
  20. Favorite Restaurant? Rib and Chop House, Livingston, Montana
  21. Book shop or Record Shop? Book Shop
  22. Name your favourite book? Walking to Gatlinburg by Howard Frank Mosher
  23. Pet Hate Bullies
  24. Prize Possession A 10,000-year-old spearhead I found in Montana, last carried by someone who believed they could kill a mammoth with a stick and a stone.
  25. How many tattoos/piercings do you have?One tattoo
  26. Gym or Jim Bean? What, is multitasking not allowed?
  27. What colour are your eyes? Blue
  28. Junk Food which is your dirty secret?Did someone say candy???
  29. What’s your poison? Starbucks
  30. Describe your morning routine. Ask myself why I run in the mornings. Go for my run. Repeat question.
  31. Where do you call home?Montana
  32. What makes you laugh?Half the things that happen to me on any given day. Better to laugh than to cry.
  33. What perfume/aftershave do you use?Aftershave? Now there’s something else I can add to my morning routine. 
  34. Whats you favourite season and why?Autumn. Changing leaves, clean air, and a sense that summer is not quite gone.
  35. Describe the wildest night out you’ve ever had. I swore on my life I’d never tell….
  36. What opportunity have you turned down?To remain in a high-paying job with great benefits, working for a good company. I chose art. No regrets.
  37. Have you ever been arrested?I’ve never been convicted
  38. Favorite Quote? “I hate rude behaviour in a man. I won’t tolerate it.” –  Capt. Woodrow Call, Lonesome Dove
  39. First live band you went to see?Metallica 
  40. Biggest Regret? Not spending more time with my grandparents
  41. Describe something that you are proud of?I’ve had two novels published
  42. Describe yourself in 3 words. Loyal, Competitive, Adventurous
  43. Favourite film.Legends of the Fall 
  44. How many pairs of shoes do you own?This is cowboy country. Do six pairs of boots count?
  45. Describe a favourite walkA hike to a mountain lake on a summer evening
  46. Tell us whats in your bag/pocketsTruck keys and a voucher for a free cup of coffee
  47. Who was the last person you called?My friend, Jeff Vickers, the ambassador for the Royal Photographic Society
  48. Whats the tune/band that you are listening to the most?Lady Gaga
  49. Whats your cure for a hangover? Nothing gets you over the last one like the next one, right?
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AVAILABLE WORKS