The Why of Who Am I

I’m T. Mellon — The T. Stands for Too Acustomed to having some privacy on the internet to show all my cards.

 I am a Seattle-born, forest-raised being, who still remembers a world before digital cameras. My father was a casual photographer with an eye for composition, and I used to run around in my high school and college year with his Pentax Spotomatic with very little know how, somehow getting some nice photos.

My Childhood was spent running through the Pacific Northwest forest that was literally my back yard, connecting to the backyards of other children and extending into what felt like an endless forest at that time.  With hidden tunnels through the thick underbrush sometimes hiding hidden catherdals of nature which I realize now for most would feel like portals to another realm and honestly it was something like that, but I would say something more like a secret hidden place that the outside world could not touch. We would talk quieter, share secrets and be entranced with the light shining through the little windows into the outside world — hidden ponds, moss-covered trees, and the story of the bear and the old woman up the street from us getting her mail, both looking at eachother, screaming and running in opposite directions were all just daily life for me. Summers seemed endless, and I was rarely inside except for lunch, and to come in before dark. Those moments hard wired me to look for hidden nature, and moments of light that seem magical for the rest of my life.

I arrived in Japan in 2011, 10 days after the tsunami which caused the nuclear melt downs. I never knew how long I would stay. At that time there was the genuine possibility of Tokyo simply shutting down if the Radiation continued to rise. It has since been downplayed.. . I quickly picked up the best camera I could afford with a focus on video at that time, as I’ve always secretly wanted to make films, but as soon as I bought a beautiful Voightlander lens with it’s wonderful F/0.95 Aperture, my eyes were opened to still photography — and I progessively began exiting the video mode and pressing the shutter.

By 2018 I felt a strong desire for more detail and was seeing the limits of my current camera, which brought me to full-frame. I stayed with Nikon Z mount cameras for 5 years, truly stretching my wings when I bought the amazing and legendary Nikkor 200-400mm lens, chasing King fisher, and other birds of Japan, as well as using that bohemoth for portraits, landscapes and even chasing dragon flies if you can believe it. Finally a sad fall of my Nikon Z6 to the pavement gave me time to think about what I really wanted going forward with my photography. The resounding answer was, I wanted a system that would allow me to print my works large, because at the end of the day I was always reaching for the truest representation of the light and detail I saw in nature. 2023 brought me to Fujifilm medium-format digital and that is what I shoot 95% of my works on Today. It’s a system that sees the world the way my childhood forests taught me to see it — capturing light almost impercievable by my aging eyes, with detail and color depth that only reveals itself when hung large on a wall.

I don’t hide from weather. I was forged in it — Seattle storms, Alaskan blizzards, Death Valley heat, Hawaiian salt, and now Japanese powder. My camera has to survive everything I survive.

My work exists for collectors who refuse ordinary — who want to stand in front of a print and discover new secrets months or years after they first hung it.

私の「なぜ」

T. メロン——シアトル生まれ、森で育った写真家です。誰も気づかない光を追いかけて海を渡りました。

子供時代は、別世界への入り口のような北西の森を駆け回っていました。苔むした巨木、妖精の粉のような光の筋、隠れ里——その記憶が、私を質感と一瞬の光の狩人にしたのです。

2011年、津波の直後に日本へ。生きるためではなく、記録するためカメラを手にしました。最初は動画でしたが、レンズを通して見えた静止画の世界に抗えず、戻れなくなりました。

2018年にフルサイズへ。2023年に中判デジタルへ。今、私が世に送るすべてのプリントは、子供時代の森が教えてくれた「見え方」で生まれています——壁に飾って初めてわかる、馬鹿みたいに深いディテールと色。

私は天気を避けません。シアトルの嵐、アラスカの吹雪、デスバレーの灼熱、ハワイの塩風、そして日本の深雪——それらを耐え抜いたカメラでしか撮れない写真がある。

私の作品は「普通」で満足しない人のためにあります。数年後にまた新しい発見がある——そんなプリントを求める人のために。